Exploiting Besieged Syrians
"They have provided detailed information on shortages of food, water, qualified physicians, and medicine. This has led to acute malnutrition and deaths among vulnerable groups in the town."
"Siege tactics, by their nature, target the civilian population by subjecting them to starvation, denial of basic essential services and medicines."
"Such methods of warfare are prohibited under international humanitarian law and violate core human rights obligations with regard to the rights to adequate food, health and the right to life, not to mention the special duty of care owed to the well-being of children."
Paulo Pinheiro, chairman, UN commission of inquiry documenting war crimes in Syria
"We saw people who are clearly malnourished, especially children, we saw people who are extremely thin, skeletons, that are now barely moving."
"We saw people that are desperate, people that are cold, people that angry, people that have almost lost hope that the world cares about their plight."
"Many more will die if the world does not move faster."
Yacoub El Hillo, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator, Syria
"You could see many were malnourished, starving. They were skinny, tired, severely distressed. There was no smile on anybody's face."
"The children I talked to said they had no strength to play."
Elizabeth Hoff, WHO representative, Damascus
"Twelve people died last week, six of them children. There are 1,500 patients here suffering chronic diseases which require treatment or medicine which is not available. People are eating grass, and rice of it's available."
Dr. Omar Hakim, Moadhamiya, Damascus
Aid was finally able, through the agreement of the regime authorities, to reach desperate people in Madaya northwest of Damascus. This is where government forces have been starving out the residents, viewing them as supporters of the Syrian Sunni rebels. It was from Madaya that photographs of skeletal residents reached the notice of the international public, evoking outrage that such medieval tactics of siege warfare were taking place.
But, in fact, this is what Bashar al Assad's forces have been engaging in, among other atrocities of barbarism throughout this conflict. It is all about punishing Syria's Sunni majority for criticizing their Shiite Baathist government in its elevation of the Alawite minority, as members of Assad's own tribal-sectarian community.
Those workers with the United Nations who brought humanitarian aid through their convoy to Madaya two weeks earlier described horrendous conditions of severe malnutrition leading to death. While Madaya's population of 42,000 is suffering gravely, there is an estimated 400,000 people living in siege conditions, according to the United Nations.
An additional four million Syrians whose situation is tenuously existential as a result of "hard to reach areas", also pose a problem for which a solution is nowhere to be seen. Other than miraculously removing the source of all the problems, the Alawite government of Bashar al Assad and liberating Syria from its malign influence and bloody attacks on civilians who happen to practise the 'wrong' form of Islamic allegiance.
Madaya was not even on the list of the "besieged" communities whom aid groups estimate total in excess of a million, effectively doubling the number that the United Nations claims to have been affected by the government siege tactics. In the UN's humanitarian plans for Syria the language has been altered to remove the words "siege" and "besieged", for the obvious purpose of mollifying Assad.
The softened language perhaps a bit of bait to bring him to a negotiating table for peace talks. Even though his officials have as good as stated they will be present to listen, and nothing more.
The UN plan stresses that ISIL and other rebel groups are also engaged in laying siege to Shiite towns. However the numbers of regime-surrounded populations vastly outnumber by 49 to 52 those under siege by rebels. Moreover, the regime's planes fly on missions to drop relief supplies to those besieged by ISIL or rebel groups. Something that the rebels obviously have no resort to.
Stockpiles of aid are planned to be delivered by Care International to areas being attacked by the regime. "We have to fill warehouses so that if routes are closed, people inside have a chance to survive for as long as it takes for the international community to negotiate", explained Abu Fares, a volunteer using contact networks to bring supplies into areas of Homs province surrounded by regime forces.
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| Syrians on Monday outside the rebel-held town of Madaya, which is besieged by pro-government forces including the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Labels: Civil War, Humanitarian Crisis, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Monday, January 25, 2016
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