Presidential candidates might not be experts on everything, but they are expected to follow the news. So the twittersphere lit up when Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson stumbled on a simple question during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. "What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?" asked panelist Mike Barnicle on Sept. 8, 2016. "About?" Johnson replied. "Aleppo," Barnicle said. "And what is Aleppo?" Johnson asked. "You're kidding," Barnicle said. "No," Johnson said. Barnicle explained that Aleppo is in Syria and called it "the epicenter of the refugee crisis." At that point, the lightbulb went on and Johnson said "Okay, got it. Got it." Johnson went on to say that Syria "is a mess" and that the only solution is to join with Russia to bring a diplomatic end to the conflict.

An Aleppo primer Aleppo is Syria’s largest city, with about 2.5 million people, at least back in 2011. For the first year of the conflict, Aleppo remained peaceful. Then, in July 2012, a variety of rebel units attempted to wrest control of the city from the government and the battle for Aleppo hasn’t stopped since. Particularly in the western neighborhoods where insurgents dug in, the city lies in tatters. The violence reached new heights early in 2016 when the government, backed by a Russian air strikes, hammered rebel positions. Tens of thousands of refugees fled the war zone, many of them seeking sanctuary in Turkey.

In August, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees described a dire situation. "Humanitarian access to the estimated 250,000 to 275,000 civilians trapped in the eastern part of the city has been cut off since early July, after fighting closed the main access route in and out of the area," the agency wrote. "Heavy fighting in recent days has also cut off the main access route used by UN agencies to deliver aid to civilians in the western part of the city, raising fears that civilians throughout the city are effectively cut off from any assistance." In a troubling turn, recent reports accuse government helicopters of dropping chlorine barrel bombs on an Aleppo suburb. Syria denies the allegations. A U.N. panel concluded that Syria has used chlorine in previous attacks.

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