{"id":48831,"date":"2015-10-21T01:46:24","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T08:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=48831"},"modified":"2015-10-21T01:46:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T08:46:24","slug":"why-is-the-u-s-silently-bombing-syrias-electricity-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/10\/21\/why-is-the-u-s-silently-bombing-syrias-electricity-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is The U.S. Silently Bombing Syria’s Electricity Network?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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By Moon Of Alabama Information Clearing House<\/a>”
\n<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

October 19, 2015 “Information Clearing House<\/a>” – The Aleppo power plant is a 1,000 megawatt thermal plant in five units build by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry in 1995-1998. It is situated some 25 kilometers east of Aleppo city center.\u00a0 During the fighting around Aleppo various electricity distribution stations were damaged and electricity in parts of the city<\/a> has become scarce and unpredictable. But the main power station had so far not been hit.<\/p>\n

The plant is in the hands of the Islamic State but there is an informal agreement<\/a> between the government, which controls the distribution network, and those who hold the power generating station:<\/p>\n

[T]he agreement of understanding pertains to the division of the electricity supply between the parties, whereby ISIS will receive 60% of the quota and the Syrian regime will receive 40%.<\/p>\n

Both sides will have some electricity and the civilian as well as fighters on both side will be better off than without electricity. No side has a motive to destroy that plant.<\/p>\n

But last night the U.S. coalition bombed<\/a> the Aleppo thermal power plant and destroyed parts of it:<\/p>\n

A military source told SANA that warplanes of the Washington alliance violated Syrian airspace and attacked civilian infrastructure in Mare\u2019a, Tal Sha\u2019er, and al-Bab in Aleppo countryside on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The source added that the warplanes attacked the biggest electric power plant that feeds Aleppo city, which resulted in cutting off power from most neighborhoods in Aleppo city.<\/p>\n

Just a week ago U.S. air attacks had attacked another power station and a big distribution transformer al-Radwaniye also east of Aleppo.<\/p>\n

The electricity generation and distribution system is civil infrastructure. It is used and useful to everyone no matter what side of the conflict. After the first U.S. attack on a power station a week ago the Russian president Putin was asked about the strikes. He called<\/a> them “strange”:<\/p>\n

“On Sunday, the American aviation bombed out an electrical power plant and a transformer in Aleppo. Why have they done this? Whom have they punished there? What\u2019s the point? Nobody knows,” the president said at a meeting with the Russian government members.<\/p>\n

The Russians and the Syrians are sure that it were F-16 planes from the U.S. coalition that bombed the power infrastructure even though the coalition reports do no mention<\/a> the attacks. Why are these bombings not mentioned in the U.S. coalition reports?<\/p>\n

The U.S. claims it is only fighting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. It accuses Russia of not only attacking ISIS even though Russia, and Putin himself, always said<\/a> that ISIS is not their sole target but that supporting the Syrian government against all its enemies is the overarching aim. The Russian just snuffed out<\/a> a 16 vehicle ISIS convoy. Something that the U.S. somehow never manages to do. The U.S. itself, by the way, has killed and kills<\/a> some non-ISIS “moderate rebels”. All its complains against the Russians are just nonsense.<\/p>\n

But why would fighting ISIS or this or that “moderate rebel” terrorist necessitate the destruction of valuable infrastructure which serves all sides of the Syrian society?<\/p>\n

Without the plant Aleppo city, with some 2-3 million inhabitants and refugees, as well as the surrounding areas in Aleppo governate have no electricity. The damage the U.S. bombing caused will make sure that any repair will take a long time. This will make life for people on every side of the war more unbearable and more people will leave to seek refuge in foreign countries.<\/p>\n

Is that the purpose of the U.S. bombardment of electricity infrastructure in Syria? If not what else is this supposed to achieve?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Moon Of Alabama Information Clearing House” October 19, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – The Aleppo power plant is a 1,000 megawatt thermal plant in five units build by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry in 1995-1998. It is situated some 25 kilometers east of Aleppo city center.\u00a0 During the fighting around Aleppo various electricity distribution stations were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}