Dated: Monday, October 10, 2016
[headline] THE WORLD’S 500 MOST INFLUENTIAL MUSLIMS [/headline]
So much has changed in one year.Aleppo, now the last Syrian city under rebel control, is at risk of falling to the Syrian Army and its allied fighting forces — above all, Russian war planes bombing with devastating effect those parts of Aleppo still under rebel control . Unless the U.S. and perhaps some NATO allies, France or perhaps the U.K., intervene in some drastic way that cannot but involve a direct clash with the Russian Air Force, or unless that very threat of war, however limited between Americans and Russians, forces both powers to enforce a ceasefire, Aleppo is doomed to fall. Perhaps its fall will be the price for Russia and America to sit down despite the combative verbal exchanges by both as the bombing of Aleppo intensified, and work out a political solution for Syria that takes into consideration a role for the greatly strengthened Bashar al-Assad.