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Page added on January 15, 2014
Syria: Half population urgently need aid
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says that half of Syria’s population, some 9.3 million people, now “urgently need humanitarian aid”.
He was speaking at a donor conference in Kuwait launching the UN’s biggest ever appeal for a single crisis.
The UN is seeking $6.5bn (£4bn) – it raised $2.4bn by the end of Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Syria’s deputy foreign minister has said Western intelligence agencies have held talks with Damascus on combating Islamist groups in Syria.
The growing influence of such groups among rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad has complicated the conflict and caused international concern.
The UK government denied having any such co-operation with Damascus.
‘Shared burden’
Mr Ban said the conflict had “set back Syria years, even decades”. He expressed particular concern about violence against women and girls, and reports of starvation among besieged communities.
“No country, no people should face hardship or calamity for helping Syrians in need. It is vital for this region and our world that the burden is shared,” he said.
Some 6.5 million people are now displaced inside Syria. More than 2.3 million have registered as refugees outside Syria, many living in camps across the region which are barely coping.
The UN says more than 100,000 people have died since the uprising began in 2011.
By late on Wednesday, the conference had secured $2.4bn in pledges, including:
- Kuwait: $500m
- Saudi Arabia: $250m
- Qatar: $60m
- US: $380m in new contributions
- EU countries as a whole: $753m
- Norway: $75m
- The UK pledged a further $164m bringing its total contribution to $985m
Those pledges represent roughly a third of the amount the UN says it needs.
Ismail Ammar, a 70-year-old Syrian living in the massive Zaatari refugee camp just inside Jordan, appealed to the donors, saying he had “nothing”.
“No heating, no gas cylinder,” he told the Associated Press. “We need everything. I’m suffering from an injury, and I have a big family, and we suffer in this cold weather.”
‘Deliberate obstruction’
Rights groups have accused the Syrian authorities of deliberately hampering aid distribution in some areas.
Human Rights Watch said Damascus was allowing some shipments in, but had “steadfastly refused to allow aid in from Turkey to reach those in need in northern Syria” and often forced convoys to take circuitous routes.
On Wednesday, UN relief agency UNRWA said it had tried to send a convoy of six vehicles carrying food, polio vaccines and other supplies to the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, a few kilometres south of Damascus, but had to withdraw when the vehicles were fired upon.
The agency says it was obliged by the authorities to use the southern entrance to the camp as opposed to the closer northern entrance, forcing the convoy to go through areas of intense conflict where jihadi groups are active, UNRWA’s Chris Gunness told the BBC.
Distributing aid to those inside Syria has been particularly difficultThe BBC’s diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall says that for communities trapped by the fighting, what is needed is not so much more money, but an agreement on local ceasefires or humanitarian corridors.
But it is by no means clear the fragile peace process supposed to be launched at an international conference in Geneva next week can make that happen, she adds.
The main opposition alliance, the National Coalition, has still not decided whether to take part in the talks, fearing participation could undermine its credibility with the anti-government opposition inside Syria.
Correspondents say the growing disarray of the opposition is frustrating the West and bolstering the confidence of the Syrian government.
‘No alternative’
Western states have insisted that Mr Assad is responsible for the conflict and must stand down.
But in an interview with the BBC, Syria’s deputy foreign minister said Western intelligence agencies have visited Damascus seeking co-operation on combating radical Islamist militants in Syria.
Mr Mekdad said there was a schism between what Western politicians were saying and what security officials were doing in practice, and that many had finally understood there was no alternative to the leadership of President Assad.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister: “Many foreign intelligence agencies have visited Damascus”
The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet said informed sources had confirmed meetings between Western and Syrian intelligence officials.
Khaled Saleh, spokesman for the National Coalition, told the BBC that if the reports were true, “it would show a clear contradiction between the words and actions of the (Western-led) Friends of Syria group”.
The Friends of Syria is a group of countries set up to support the Syrian opposition, with 11 states in the region and in the West comprising its “core group”.
Mr Saleh said it was the Syrian opposition, not the government, that was combating “terrorist groups” such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) which he insisted was “organically linked” to the Mr Assad’s government.
8 Comments on "Syria: Half population urgently need aid"
Arthur on Wed, 15th Jan 2014 6:07 pm
And who again is responsible for this tragedy, but will never be mentioned by the BBC?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz-s2AAh06I
The truth will only be heard from old politicians with nothing to lose any more, like former Italian president Cossiga, who had terminal cancer when he said in 2007 in an interview with the largest Italian newspaper that 9/11 was a CIA-Mossad operation:
tinyurl . com/2792an
Northwest Resident on Wed, 15th Jan 2014 6:13 pm
I wonder if dwindling oil revenue and/or exploding population in Syria has anything to do with all the turmoil this region is experiencing. In Egypt, where suppressed dissent and untold suffering by the population is getting ready to explode, the depletion of oil reserves combined with the need to spend increasingly greater $$$ on food imports to feed that massively growing number of Egyptians has EVERYTHING to do with the problem. It won’t be much longer, in my opinion, before the entire Middle East is embroiled in the types of problems that we are seeing in Syria and Egypt and Iraq. There will not be an “international brokered summit” that brings peace to this region, where way too many people are in competition for far too few resources. From now on, it gets uglier and uglier.
DC on Wed, 15th Jan 2014 9:32 pm
Syria is in the US’s ‘way’. Its an ally of Russia, and Iran, and opposed to Israeli aggression.
Exactly Arthur, the people of Libya, Iraq, and Syria now were all doing *much* better, before the US and its lackeys came along to ‘liberate’ them. The US and Britain are waging proxy war against Syria. Those are the ones responsible. The US\UK\Zionist alliance does not care one bit how many die or are displaced. If anything, the *more* misery, the better, as far as the planners in the Wash\London\Jewish axis are concerned. Instability is the new currency of the peak oil age.
Less for them means more for ‘us’.
Bernd1964 on Wed, 15th Jan 2014 10:54 pm
The article above is nothing but typical Western media propaganda to propel the agenda of the criminal corporate empire. The United Nations (UN) is legally only in function because there is up to this day no peace treaty for Germany after the second world war. To end the reign of the UN, which is a completely corrupt tool of the US Dollar empire in order to unleash undeclared wars all over the world whenever wanted by the masters of the corporate empire, we need to push for a real peace treaty for Germany concerning the second world war. The corporate empire is owned by a handful of super-rich interbreeding families (Illuminati) and steered by freemasonry, it is a criminal bloody organization by every standard.
The big Western media corporations are owned and controlled by corporate interests and completely serve the agenda of the criminal corporate empire. We therefore must never trust what their media outlets try to communicate to us. We must understand the agenda behind all these fabricated lies, it’s all designed to support the evil agenda of a criminal corporate empire.
We don’t want this empire of lies, freemasonry and its endless dirty wars anymore. We have a right to live as sovereign citizens in nations with real democracies controlled by peoples, the reign of the corporate empire and its privately owned central banks which started by the ‘Act of 1871’ in the United States, has to end now and forever. Please boycott all kind of corporate (matrix) media, don’t buy the lies and deceptions of this evil and truly satanic empire. Press releases like the above have to be denounced for what they are: steered deceptions serving the enslavement of humanity by the Illuminati.
Arthur on Wed, 15th Jan 2014 11:51 pm
Just watched this movie:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurt_Locker
Probably gives an accurate picture of the total futility of meddling into the affairs of other countries.
DC on Thu, 16th Jan 2014 12:51 am
Seriously? the Hurt locker? About a combat junky that re-ups after his ‘year’ is completed? He cant adjust to life back in the ‘world’. So what does he do? Goes back to doing what he loves. Killing Iraqis. Doesn’t help it was made by the CIA’s favorite new jewish propagandist. There wasnt 15 seconds of anti-war in that entire movie.
Yes, it was well-acted and competently made. But it was pro-war, and pro-US imperialism for nearly 2 hours. Every Iraqi were just faceless ‘insurgents’. Scary violent arab-types, only good for being shot by the heroic combat adrenaline junkies of the uS war-machine.
Arthur on Thu, 16th Jan 2014 8:15 am
Your correct observations don’t contradict mine. Iraqis were not portrayed as innate evil, just hostile. Yes, it portrayed the US ZOG-bots as heroic, albeit excessive violent, but many scenes were probably very realistic. It was not intended as an antiwar movie, but for me it was in end effect. Iraq was a total useless operation and this film about a totally destroyed country clearly shows it.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 16th Jan 2014 3:32 pm
Arthur, when you write that “Iraq was a total useless operation…”, it depends on who’s perspective. Remember Dick Cheney once said that “Iraq is THE prize” — that was before the Iraq war, and we all know that Dick Cheney is speaking from the oil mogul’s point of view. I read a detailed article not long ago that explains how that most of the untapped (not yet drilled) easy-to-get high-grade crude oil is in Iraq, and it showed a history of how American government and oil company policy constantly bypassed opportunities to develop oil extraction in Iraq — almost as if there was a conscious but unpublicized policy of saving that oil as an untapped reserve for future use. Now I think we all know why America ended up in Iraq, and with all the military bases around Iraq, I think it should be obvious that the Iraqi oil is there for the “taking” whenever it is needed. From that perspective, Iraq was much more than a total useless operation.