Coverage is nauseating

Subverted by “higher powers” to take a certain line, their coverage just serves to undermine the BBC as an independent national institution.

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s correspondent in Western Aleppo has documented in her recent reports about how the inhabitants of East Aleppo were shot at by rebels if they tried to leave their enclave.

Articles from the start of the war in 2012 documented the bewilderment of the ordinary citizens as gunmen from outside moved in to take control of their neighbourhoods.

None of this nuance is included in the bipolar good guy/bad guy routine mandated by “establishment forces”.

Worse still, just over a year ago the House of Commons voted in favour of bombing Syria leading to the immediate dispatch of RAF aircraft from Cyprus to bomb a deserted airfield near Raqqah in – a classic politician ego boost.

Fast forward to December 2016 and Islamic state have been able to mass fighters, artillery and tanks and deploy them over hundreds of miles from Raqqah to attack and recapture Palmyra, a Unesco world heritage site.

The landscape across which they travelled is featureless stoney desert. Yet there was not a single attack from the RAF or the coalition at any point?

One has to wonder why?

Henry Pearce