Children play atop graves in the only Syrian city under ISIL siege

Syrians in besieged Deir Ezzor do what they can do survive, including buying furniture to chop up and sell for firewood to use for cooking or heating because fuel is in short supply. Ayham Al MohammaShow more

DEIR EZZOR, SYRIA // Mohammed Al Obeid used to be a taxi driver. The only park in his district used to be a popular place for townsfolk to relax under the many shady trees. But two years under ISIL siege have changed all that.

Instead of ferrying customers around Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, Mr Al Obeid now buys old furniture and chops it up to resell as firewood for cooking and heating.

“People sell me household furniture — beds and wardrobes — and other wooden objects so they can use the money to buy food,” he said. he sells the wood outside his home in Jura district.

In 2014, ISIL extremists seized parts of Deir Ezzor after a lightning advance across large areas of Syria and neighbouring Iraq. In January 2015, they imposed a choking siege on the regime-held western half of the city. According to the United Nations, nearly one million people in Syria are living under siege, mostly in areas surrounded by Syrian government forces. Deir Ezzor became, and remains, the only place in Syria where ISIL holds a pocket of government-controlled territory under siege.

With no way in or out except by military helicopter, the 100,000 or so civilians — around a third of the city’s pre-war population — are trapped with scarce supplies of food and fuel. The World Food Programme and Russia, the Syrian regime’s ally, have airdropped aid to the city — the only besieged part of the country to receive such assistance.

But in the market on Al Wadi street, there is still little on offer to weary, hungry residents. Rocket and spinach are almost the only vegetables available alongside tinned goods. And what is available is often beyond the means of local residents, with a kilo of fly-ridden meat on sale for 15,000 Syrian pounds ($30) .

“In two years I haven’t eaten meat, fruit or biscuits because of the siege,” said 12-year-old Mustafa Al Musa. “I miss all those foods.”

The government now provides free bread to needy residents, distributing it through the Syrian Red Crescent society which expects to hand out 17,000 batches by the end of November.

Outside a nearby public bakery, dozens of locals gathered to wait for rations.

“We stand here for hours waiting for a bag of bread to keep us alive,” said Um Khaled, a retired government employee in her sixties. “The siege means we never have enough, and we suffer for hours in the cold and the heat to get a few loaves.”

Residents have also been forced to dig wells for water, because fuel shortages make it virtually impossible to power pumps.

Without fuel, residents can also no longer make the long drive to the outskirts of the city to bury their dead at the official cemetery. Instead, the only park in Jura district has become a sun-baked burial ground, where children play among dozens of makeshift headstones.

“The park used to be full of trees and green grass, and was a relaxing place for locals,” said Khalaf Al-Saleh, a local in his forties. “But the blockade and the main cemetery’s distance from the city meant the park had to be turned into a cemetery for the dead from the besieged neighbourhoods.”

ISIL militants have also cut the city’s electricity supply and internet access, leaving residents with little in the way of both light or ligh relief from their predicament. with no television, they feel cut off from the outside world. Cafe owners who can afford generators have set up TV sets for customers — if they can pay inflated prices for a hot drink and a water pipe while they catch up on news.

The government has hired Chinese companies to link the town via satellite to the mobile phone network, but lack of fuel means it only operates a few hours a day.

“We have nothing left but the clothes we are wearing, which barely cover us enough because they have been washed so many times,” said Um Bassel, housewife in her fifties. “We want to break the blockade and go back to feeling like we are humans who deserve to live.”

* Agence France-Presse