IN the Syrian city of Aleppo, there are neighborhoods that are almost entirely abandoned; blocks of buildings with their facades blown off, apartments open to the street; and other buildings, intact but empty, their curtains billowing out the windows. Broken water pipes have turned roads into debris-clogged rivers. And tribes of cats stalk around like predators; every now and then you pass one lying dead on the ground, its body torn apart by sniper fire.
The snipers, both rebel and regime, are everywhere. The MIG jets are always overhead, and shelling continues day and night. You cannot escape the smell of dead bodies, and it feels as if it is only a matter of time before you are hit, too.
This is life on the ground for the remaining residents of Aleppo. With only this in mind, it is easy to argue that the West should intervene — arm the rebels, help them overthrow the vicious rule of the Assads, and try to create something good from the chaos. After all, the rebels are outgunned, outsupplied and outfinanced. They are battling a force that is aligned with Iran and Hezbollah, and one that commits daily atrocities.
And yet, all things considered, I can't argue for intervention in Aleppo, or in the wider Syrian conflict.
For a few days in September, I was embedded with the Ahrar al-Sham, or Free Men, rebel faction in the city. These men are fierce and battle-hardened. They sit chatting or sleeping while shells fall all around, and seem nonchalant while lobbing homemade bombs into government compounds. Some taunt the enemy. Others seem almost excited to fire their guns — for them the conflict is jihad, a badge of honor. We sat with one rebel marksman as he followed government soldiers through his scope and laughed as he shot at them. "My throat is full of victims," he said.
But every couple of streets in Aleppo is under the watch of a different brigade, and while they sometimes work together, they are just as often at odds. I have seen one brigade lay down covering fire to allow another group to retrieve the dead body of one of its fighters, only to see the same two factions scream at each other later in the day and refuse to cooperate in a battle that did not benefit them both. I have met some members of the Free Syria Army who prefer to enter Aleppo illegally rather than go through the gate held by the Northern Storm Brigade, a strict Islamist group under the umbrella of the F.S.A. "They're not our guys," one explained.
In addition to great mistrust, there is a general lack of leadership. The opposition coalition in exile, the National Syrian Council, debates from Istanbul but gets no respect from the fighters on the ground. Last month, the leader of the F.S.A., Riad al-Assad, announced that he was moving his headquarters to Syria in an attempt to unify the different battalions under his watch, but rumors abound that he remains in Turkey. Other leaders who have tried to command respect are defectors from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and they are not often trusted.
Many of the rebels are fighting for a noble cause, and have no motive beyond protecting their homes and families. But it is hard to pick them apart from those who seek to take advantage of the chaos to transform Syria into a Shariah-based fundamentalist state. In Aleppo, I heard Salafi jihadists talk of slaying the minority Alawites, and call for both the immediate support of America, and its immediate demise. These extremist groups are getting weapons from Saudi Arabia and Qatar already; they are not groups that the West would choose to arm. Compared with them, it is not clear that Mr. Assad is the bigger foe.
It would be an error for the United States and the European Union to supply arms to the rebels or intervene on the ground. No one would be happier to see America mired in the country than Iran, which sees a chaotic Syria as the next best thing to an allied Syria.
The most the West can do is impose a no-fly zone under the auspices of NATO to ground the government's air force. This would level the playing field, giving the rebels space to try to form a more unified leadership near the Turkish border, while preventing the slaughter of civilians and the destruction of more cities like Aleppo. Since the rebels took over an air defense base near the city last week, this seems to be an ever more feasible option. But it won't be easy: no-fly zones are hugely expensive, and Syria is no Libya; its air defense system is far more sophisticated.
And even with a no-fly zone, it's hard to see a way out of this quagmire. Turkey has been in discussions with the rebels and the government about the possibility of beginning a peace process, but it seems unlikely at this point that the rebels will stop until they have taken Damascus.
So for all the horrors on the ground, it seems almost impossible that the United States and Europe can do much to help while the future is so blurred and so bleak. As President Bill Clinton once said, "Where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must act."
Despite what I have witnessed, I am not convinced we can in Syria.
Benjamin Hall is a freelance journalist who writes on conflict and the Middle East.
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