humanitarian access
For months, the Syrian army has been using starvation as a weapon of war in its fight against opposition forces. But this “kneel or starve” policy is now being seen by western countries and other supporters of the rebels as an outrage that they cannot allow to continue.
The current focus is the Old City of Homs, a rebel stronghold surrounded by the forces of Bashar Al Assad, which has been blockaded for the past 18 months. An estimated 7,000 civilians and fighters are holed up there. A Dutch Roman Catholic priest, Father Frans Van der Lugt, who has lived in Syria for 47 years, says the residents are going mad with hunger. Women who venture in to the open to scavenge for roots and herbs are subject to sniper fire. The situation is scarcely better in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, where a small number of food parcels have been allowed in.
Starvation is not just a collective punishment, it is the norm for detainees held in prisons of the Syrian security services. When photographs of 11,000 corpses of executed detainees were released just before the opening of the first round of the Geneva peace talks last month, most were visibly emaciated, and some just skin and bone.
To those who doubt the reliability of this hoard of pictures or question the timing of their release, there is hard evidence of starvation from a detainee who had the rare ability to communicate from his cell. Abbas Khan, a British doctor who was detained in northern Syria while tending to the wounded, lost half his body weight while in detention. He was found dead in his cell just days before he was due to be released.
During the Geneva talks, there was a concerted effort by the US and its allies to force the Assad regime to allow deliveries of food and medicine to besieged locations. This was rejected by the regime, which said women, children and old men had to leave if they wanted food and medicine. This was, not surprisingly, turned down by the rebel factions who understood that the departure of non-combatants would open the way for the army to destroy the Old City on top of them, while claiming that only “terrorists” remained.
The rebels are themselves not innocent of blockading hostile locations in the north of the country. United Nations officials have raised concerns over the fate of residents in two Shia Muslim towns east of Aleppo, which are besieged by the opposition forces. But that does not excuse the state’s armed forces, which should be held to a higher standard by the international community, and in particular by the Russians, who provide arms and diplomatic cover.
Homs is a battleground with symbolism for both sides. It was one of the first cities where anti-regime protests took hold, and thus a citadel of the revolution not to be surrendered lightly. The regime sees its survival dependant on controlling the city to keep open the highway between the capital, Damascus, and the north-western coastline, heartland of the Alawite minority to which the Assad clan and much of its army and paramilitaries belong. That goal has got closer since the taking of the town of Al Qusair in June last year, with the help of the Lebanese Hizbollah militia.
The western powers now look weak and outmanoeuvred. The diplomatic coup by Russia in persuading Damascus to give up its chemical weapons has given the regime security for as long as the process takes. It is going very slowly, with so far only four per cent of the chemical weapons arsenal having been removed for destruction.
During the Geneva conference, 1,870 people died in the civil war, according to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, or more than 200 for every day of the peace talks. This death toll, while regime frontmen were gathered in the presence of opposition representatives in Switzerland, has done nothing to improve the reputation of the exiled opposition leaders in the eyes of the fighters on the ground.
So far, the only things on which the US and Russia can agree are the removal of chemical weapons and the need to convene talks in Geneva.
This cannot continue. The Americans are now pressing for a binding UN Security Council resolution demanding that the Assad regime open up humanitarian access to Homs. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has denounced the regime for “starving whole communities by blocking delivery of food to Syrian civilians in urgent need”. William Hague, the British foreign secretary, has described the “deliberate starvation of civilians” in Homs and other besieged areas as “grotesque and utterly unacceptable”.
The Russians are standing against any Security Council resolution, on the grounds that it would “politicise the problem” – surely a phrase that only a diplomat could say with a straight face after almost three years of war. In the past, they have vetoed every resolution critical of their Syrian ally. Why should they stop now?
There are a couple of reasons why they are feeling the pressure. The opening ceremony of the Sochi winter Olympic Games is scheduled for Friday. Will Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who is hosting an event dedicated to global brotherhood, want to be seen as endorsing starvation as a weapon of war? The spirit the ancient Greek tradition of the Olympic truce demands that Mr Putin take action, and stop his officials mouthing on about “politicisation”.
While Russia is not the actual host of the Geneva talks – formally it is a UN show – the truth is that this is a joint US-Russian affair. If Russia wants to be accepted at the top table of diplomacy, it needs to have a broader view of the world than its own narrow interest of being taken for an equal of the US. Some conception of humanitarian standards in war, for example, would be helpful.
If Mr Putin does not want to veto the resolution, he should ensure that his ally in Damascus eases the blockade of Homs, and quickly too. Otherwise the Sochi Olympics will leave a bitter taste.
aphilps@thenational.ae
On Twitter: @aphilps