As if the Syrian tragedy weren’t terrible enough, with a death toll now topping 200,000, and over half of the population uprooted by the civil war, another ingredient has been added to the plight of this nation: some of the international humanitarian aid seems to be slowing down to a trickle. In a decision intended to ring alarm bells, the United Nations’ World Food Programme has announced that it is suspending food aid in the region because of a lack of funding. The WFP needs around $60m to provide critical food vouchers to over 1.7 million Syrian refugees through the month of December. The money hasn’t been forthcoming, in part perhaps because of donor fatigue. One can only imagine the devastating impact that any interruption of food distribution will have on the countless camps and shelters in which those Syrians who fled the war now live. More than 3 million Syrians are refugees in neighbouring countries, mainly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
The Syrian conflict, which has been grinding on for over three years, has demonstrated the impotence of the international community in the face of a multi-pronged crisis. The war started when the Syrian regime used weapons against its own people to crush a popular uprising. Bashar al-Assad has spared his citizens no horror, from the all but confirmed use of sarin gas and barrel bombs dropped on cities to the killings inside his torture chambers. Radicalisation on all sides was the result.
Now that the international fight against Islamic State has taken precedence over any notion of halting Assad, the Syrian dictator seems to have succeeded in casting hinself as the west’s tacit ally in fighting radical jihadism. Plans to orchestrate a “political transition” in Damascus are now little more than the empty slogans of international diplomacy, deployed especially by a US administration that has shown much indecision on Syria.
No one wants, or seems able, to deal with the root of the Syrian problem – the Assad regime – but now we are not even dealing with the symptoms. Food aid is essential. Governments of the richest nations, starting perhaps with those in the Gulf, must give the UN the money it needs to feed Syrians going hungry. The very stability of the countries sheltering those refugees may be at stake.
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