This is a tale of two cities. Both are, in whole or in part, occupied by militants holding to an extremist reading of Salafist Islam which gives no space to other faiths or opposing voices.
In both cases, the defenders are using civilians as human shields and preventing them from leaving in the breaks granted by the besieging forces. Both are under attack by the internationally recognised governments of the countries in which they are situated and in both cases those governments have sought, and received, assistance from foreign governments in taking their countries back.
In both cases, civilians are suffering. In both cases, however, the narratives in the west are wildly different.
In Mosul in Northern Iraq, the 'goodies' (as the former Prime Minister might say), in the form of the Iraqi government aided by the US and its allies, are laying down a withering air and artillery bombardment to cover their entry into a frightened city held by Daesh (IS) using civilians as hostages.
The western media are cheering their advance and breathlessly awaiting the imminent liberation of the city and vindication of Iraqi sovereignty. The 'baddies' are either on the defensive or, as some reports suggest, using the corridor left to them by the besiegers to flee to ...
... Syria, where in Eastern Aleppo, the besieged are a mixture of Al Nusra (Al Qaida) and other like-minded militant groups, and the besiegers are members of the Syrian Arab Army, backed by Hezbollah, Iran and, most significantly, Russia. (One, unfulfilled, condition of the recent, short-lived, truce was that the US was to let the Russians know which 'moderate' rebels not to bomb.)
Here the media coverage, as Patrick Cockburn points out, is exactly the reverse. The Syrians, like the besiegers in Mosul, have left humanitarian corridors open for civilians to flee. The rebels (as in Mosul) have no interest in losing their 'human interest' cover and so very few were allowed to leave.
Yet here, as Stephen F. Cohen, the US professor of Russian history, notes, those who brought down the World Trade Centre to kick off the great War on Terror are now magically transformed into the heroic rebels, fighting the evil regime.
"It may be that all of the involved parties have already carved out spheres of interest which they will eventually be allowed to occupy relatively undisturbed after sufficient 'collateral damage' and bloodletting among their proxies."
In a final touch of irony, the