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| Residents look for survivors at a damaged site after what activists said was an air strike from forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Karam Al-Beik area of Aleppo, Dec 15, 2013. REUTERS |
By
Chris Green
As the vast majority of the western world makes final
preparation for celebrating the Christian festival of Christmas and pretty much
the entire world prepares for New Years Eve revelries, there are millions of
people who are not going to be in any position to be particularly joyous and
certainly, nothing to celebrate. Winter is proving to be particularly bitter in
parts of the Middle East this year with snow reported in Jerusalem, Tehran and
other locations where this meteorological condition is a relatively rare sight.
To employ a Christmas-related analogy, the weather conditions in parts of Syria
are merely the ‘icing on the cake’ but bitter tasting fayre this cake would be were
it to be real.
The plight
of Syrian refugees worsens as the winter winds moan and thousands are forced to
shelter in flimsy tents, woefully inadequate as they are against the elements.
But even these people are relatively fortunate compared to others of their
compatriots. According to Russian news sources, more than 80 civilians in Adra, which is located 20 KM to the northwest of the
Syrian capital of Damascus, have been executed by extremist rebels with many
others tortured and kidnapped, massacred it seems, by foreign-backed extremist
militants while many others were kidnapped to be used as human shields. Syrian army forces are continuing a large-scale operation against
al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and Liwa Al-Islam militants, who captured the
town earlier this week. As we know, the war in Syria has raged unabated now for
almost 1000 days and in excess of 120,000 men, women and children have lost
their lives.
In relation to the events in Adra, according to SANA news
agency, around 1,000 militants were in the town when it was enveloped by the
army on Friday. The military sources said the “armed groups have performed an
execution of civilians” in Adra, so an Arabic correspondent Abutaleb Albohaya,
reported from Syria. “For now it’s established that over 80 people were killed
in the areas now taken over by the army. Often whole families were murdered,”
he was quoted as saying.
The
number of executed civilians is expected to rise after army troops manage to
recover the rest of the town - which has a population of around 20,000 - from
the extremists, the military source added. “Some families were kidnapped in
order to be used as human shields in areas where the Syrian army is now trying
to free the civilians.” Albohaya observed. Additionally, Iraqi Al-Ahd
television has suggested that this is the reason the Syrian army is abstaining
from using artillery on Sunday 15th December. Sources also suggested
that that the other kidnapped families were moved to the area south of Adra in
the direction of the town of Douma, which has been the opposition’s strategic
back yard since the start of the Syrian crisis and it is also where the most
important rebel fortifications are apparently situated.
In the
meantime and as Syrian society teeters on the brink of final collapse after
three years of internal conflict, ferocious warfare and economic devastation,
the United Nations view the Syrian crisis as the gravest in the history of the
organisation and accordingly, they have appealed for some £4 billion GBP for Syria
and its neighbouring countries, the biggest ever such appeal for a specific
crisis, to aid around 16 million people who are homeless and starving, for the
next twelve months. There is, of course no end in sight for this human tragedy.
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| A Syrian child stands in the snow in a refugee camp in the town of Arsal in the Lebanese Bekaa valley on December 13, 2013. AFP Photo |
The Syrian appeal accounted for half of an overall funding plan of $12.9
billion to help 52 million people in 17 countries and is the largest amount
that the UN has ever had to request at the beginning of a year. The increasing
numbers of internally displaced people and refugees is generating far greater
need across all sectors and is severally straining the resources of
neighbouring countries. The U.N. sent its first delivery of humanitarian
aid by air to Syria from Iraq on Dec. 15 and said it planned to deliver more
food and winter supplies to the mainly Kurdish northeast in the next 12 days.
It is widely anticipated that the number of Syrian refugees in the Middle East
could double during 2014.
U.N. agencies primarily aim to provide food, clean drinking water,
shelter, education, health services and polio vaccines to Syrians inside and
outside the devastated country. Meanwhile, the price of bread in Syria has
soared by 500 percent since its 33-month conflict erupted and it is understood
four out of five Syrians were now worried about food running out, while more
than half of them were struggling for access to clean water. The costs of
blankets too have risen to the extent that a single blanket has a value of
around 93% of the average monthly income.
The 19th century carol, ‘In
the bleak midwinter’ which was based on a poem by Christina Rossetti during
the 19th century will be sung time and again during the various
services to be held in the run up to this and all Christmases. In Syria this
winter, it is very bleak indeed and frosty wind makes moan for millions of
innocent people.
Chris Green
Besparmak Media Services
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