The Syrian regime invites rebels in east Aleppo to a football match

On Wednesday morning  Syrians citizens received on their mobile phones two “absurd” text messages from the regime. They were addressing civilians and rebels in east Aleppo, asking them to participate to a football match on Thursday at noon, “a goodwill gesture on the road to national reconciliation.”

“Rebels in the neighborhoods of east Aleppo, anyone who wants to attend or participate in the football match should come to Hamdaniyeh Stadium on Thursday 11/24 at 12:00 pm through the passageways announced previously”

“Rebels in the  neighborhoods of east Aleppo, the governorate of Aleppo invites you to attend and participate in a football match, as a gesture of goodwill on the way to achieving national reconciliation”

 

The account has been active since 2011. It was a way to reach civilians, and spread propaganda. As my sources explain, this is the first time the regime sent something so “surreal.”

“People usually make fun of these messages, because we keep receiving texts like drop your weapons and hand yourself over to the authorities,” an Aleppo residents said to me (I am not going to name any of my source for security reasons, since they all live in Syria). Everybody gets these.

The texts arrive in a critical time for Aleppo. The city is split in two, on one side the “rebels” and on the other the regime of Bashar Al Assad. The city, which before the war counted at least 5 million residents, was the industrial center of Syria. Assad, with the help of the Russians, wants to get Aleppo back at any cost, and then start negotiating a real peace process throughout the country. In the meantime the regime is bombing and targeting hospitals and schools, in an attempt to draw civilians out of the rebel controlled area.

In a recent trip to Damascus I noticed a growing skepticism about what will happen to Aleppo. Everyone explained that the rebels are not from the area, and they arrived from other cities because inhabitants won’t revolt. “Everybody was too wealthy and also too business orientated to actually take to the streets. So they infiltrated the city,” said a Kurdish woman.

Also many Syrians I talked to, they are not fond of the regime, though they are more scared of the Islamist groups taking over the country.

The regime strategy is, for now, to push all the rebels in Idlib and start “a national reconciliation process” with civilians.