Tag Archives: Syrian War

Russian truce plan fails to halt bombing of Syria’s Ghouta

FILE PHOTO: A man inspects a damaged house in the besieged town of Douma in eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

By Angus McDowall and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Russian call for a five-hour truce on Tuesday failed to halt one of the most devastating campaigns of the Syrian war, where residents said government warplanes resumed striking the eastern Ghouta region on Tuesday after a brief lull.

Moscow and Damascus blamed rebels for the collapse of the truce, saying fighters had shelled a safe route intended for civilians to leave the enclave. The insurgents denied such shelling.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would press on with a plan to stage similar daily pauses in the fighting, allowing aid to be delivered to eastern Ghouta through what Russia describes as a humanitarian corridor.

The United Nations said it was proving impossible to aid civilians or evacuate the wounded, and said all sides must instead abide by a full 30-day ceasefire demanded by the U.N. Security Council.

“We have reports this morning there is continuous fighting in eastern Ghouta,” U.N. humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said. “Clearly the situation on the ground is not such that convoys can go in or medical evacuations can go out.”

Hundreds of people have died during 10 days of government bombardment of the eastern Ghouta, an area of towns and farms on the outskirts of Damascus. The assault has been among the most devastating air campaigns of a war now entering its eighth year.

With its Ghouta offensive, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is drawing on the military methods it has used to crush its opponents in other parts of Syria, including eastern Aleppo in late 2016.

Intensifying bombardment of the besieged area has been coupled with probing ground assaults to test rebel defenses.

With no sign of decisive international pressure to stop the attack, eastern Ghouta seems likely to meet the same fate as other areas won back by the government, where humanitarian corridors eventually became escape routes for defeated rebels.

“A concrete humanitarian corridor has been set up that will be used to deliver humanitarian aid, and, in the other direction, a medical evacuation can take place and all civilians who want to leave can,” Lavrov told a joint news conference in Moscow after meeting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

ESCALATION

Residents in several towns in the eastern Ghouta described a brief pause in fighting, but said bombardment swiftly resumed. In the town of Hammouriyeh a man who identified himself by his first name Mahmoud told Reuters helicopters and warplanes were in the sky and conducting strikes.

Siraj Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Civil Defence rescue service, which is funded by Western governments and operates in rebel areas, said artillery and air strikes had hit the region.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said helicopters and warplanes had struck four towns and artillery shelling killed one person.

A U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Saturday called for a 30-day ceasefire across the entire country, but did not specify when it should start. It excludes some militant groups which are among the rebels in eastern Ghouta.

That has meant the ceasefire has not been observed in practice. U.N. spokesman Laerke declined to comment on the Russian proposal for a five-hour truce, but called instead on all sides to obey the full 30-day ceasefire.

“It is a question life and death – if ever there was a question of life and death – we need a 30-day cessation of hostilities in Syria as the Security Council demands,” Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), told a Geneva briefing.

A rebel spokesman said people in eastern Ghouta did not want to leave the area despite the bombardment, because they feared arrest, torture or conscription by the government. Russia said it would guarantee the safety of any civilians who left.

Eastern Ghouta, where the U.N. says around 400,000 people live, is a major target for Assad, whose forces have clawed back numerous areas with military backing from Russia and Iran.

Rebels based in eastern Ghouta have intensified shelling of government-held Damascus. A medical official in the capital said on Monday 36 people had been killed in four days. Syrian state media reported eight people injured by rebel shelling on Tuesday. Damascus and Moscow say the campaign in eastern Ghouta is needed to halt such shelling.

Even before the latest bombardment of the besieged area began, there was growing international alarm over humanitarian conditions in the eastern Ghouta because of shortages of food, medicine and other essentials.

The multi-sided Syrian war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of the pre-war population of 23 million from their homes. Fighting has escalated on several fronts this year, with the collapse of Islamic State giving rise to conflict between other Syrian and foreign parties.

As Assad has pressed the offensive against eastern Ghouta, Turkey has launched an incursion against Kurdish fighters in the northwestern Afrin region. Tensions have also flared between Iran and Israel, alarmed by Tehran’s influence in Syria. Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli F-16 earlier this month as it returned from a bombing raid on Iran-backed positions in Syria.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis, Dahlia Nehme and Angus McDowall; Editing by Peter Graff)

Syrian war will drag into next decade: senior Kurdish leader

Aldar Khalil, a Kurdish politician is seen in the town of Rmeilan, Hasaka province, Syria September 27, 2017. Picture taken September 27, 2017.

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Russian-led effort to end the war in Syria will fail and the conflict looks set to extend into the next decade, a top Syrian Kurdish politician told Reuters in an interview.

Aldar Khalil, an architect of Kurdish-led plans for autonomous rule in northern Syria, also said the United States appears in “no hurry” to leave areas where it has helped Kurdish-led forces fight Islamic State, and that he expects ties with Washington to develop as U.S. recovery efforts proceed.

The Syrian Kurds are among the few winners in the almost seven-year-old war, having established control over large parts of the north with a powerful militia that has partnered with the U.S.-led coalition against IS.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s ally, has asked them to take part in an international peace conference on Syria for the first time — a peace congress scheduled in the Russian city of Sochi on Jan. 29-30.

“Yes we are invited and we might take part in the show but it will not succeed,” Khalil, co-chair of the Movement for a Democratic Society, a coalition of Syrian Kurdish parties, said by telephone.

He questioned what the hundreds of anticipated attendees could accomplish in two days and said more preparation was required.

U.N.-led diplomacy in Geneva was also set for more failure, he said, adding that the war would “ebb and flow” until at least 2021, the end of Assad’s current seven-year presidential term.

“I don’t expect any breakthrough in the Syrian situation before 2021 … it might even go on until ’25,” he said.

“Daesh (IS) might expand in other areas, and of course the Turks might try to stir up problems in some areas.”

The Syrian Kurds’ ascendancy in Syria has alarmed neighboring Turkey. Ankara views the dominant Syrian Kurdish groups as an extension of Kurdish parties in Turkey that have been fighting Ankara for more than three decades.

U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish fighters has also strained ties between the NATO allies: Turkey on Wednesday summoned a top U.S. diplomat in Ankara to protest over U.S. support of Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Khalil is seen as a key figure in plans to establish a federal region in northern Syria – a plan Washington has opposed despite backing the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the war with IS.

The Syrian Kurds say independence is not their goal. But Khalil said the Kurdish-led authorities would press ahead with unilateral autonomy plans, though elections to a new regional parliament have been postponed to allow more time to prepare.

WARNING TO ASSAD

With the fight against IS winding down, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last month he expected to see a larger U.S. civilian presence in Syria, including contractors and diplomats to focus on stabilization and ensuring IS does not return.

Khalil declined to say how long the United States might maintain a foothold in northern Syria, but said that achieving U.S. goals of helping cities such as Raqqa to recover implied a commitment of at least 18 months to two years.

“These matters will not be completed in less time than this,” he said.

“I can’t confirm to you a long-term relationship, but at least for the foreseeable time, it seems they are not in a hurry to leave,” he said. Pointing to the Mattis remarks, he said he expected U.S. ties to northern Syria to develop further.

The Kurdish-led authorities have held two local elections since September, part of their plan to build new governing structures. Discussions are underway to decide when a third vote — aimed at electing a regional parliament — will happen.

Khalil said the delay was aimed partly at giving a chance for areas recently captured from IS to decide whether to participate.

Though Assad recently condemned the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and their allies as “traitors”, Khalil said the Syrian government was incapable of attacking areas they control and warned that if it tried to “all its forces will be killed”.

He warned that Islamic State sleeper cells posed a big threat. “The Daesh campaign is not over, now the more difficult phase has started,” he said.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Damascus Refugees run deadly gauntlet to fetch aid, food

A general view shows a deserted street at the beginning of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp

y John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Palestinians living in Yarmouk refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus depend on food aid to survive the Syrian civil war. But collecting it can be lethal.

With Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front fighting each other for control of the camp, the United Nations has been unable to deliver food for more than a year and has to distribute it in neighboring areas instead.

On the journey to the collection point, tarpaulins hung between buildings offer the only protection in some areas keeping residents out of the sights of snipers, who often fail to distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Once the camp residents have run this gauntlet, they still have to get through an Islamic State checkpoint. This controls the way out to the nearby town of Yalda, where the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and other groups hand out aid when they can.

One 22-year-old resident who called himself Mahmoud – although he said this was an alias due to the risk of reprisals by the militants – described via internet messages how he makes the trip three times a week.

“I leave my house, and about a kilometer away there’s the checkpoint,” he told Reuters. “Most streets in the camp are in the sights of snipers, from both sides – I have to watch out for them. Some streets I run down, some I can just walk.”

While tens of thousands have fled the camp since the war began, hundreds of residents still brave the same journey.

The camp has existed for decades, one of many set up in the region after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes. Today they largely accommodate descendents of the original refugees, although some Syrians displaced by the war have inhabited Yarmouk.

Yarmouk has been bombarded, besieged and isolated from the outside world since early in the multi-sided conflict, which is now in its sixth year. Government forces, rebels and jihadists have all fought for control of the camp that lies just a few kilometers (miles) from the heart of Damascus.

NO MAN’S LAND

Islamic State entered the densely built up Yarmouk in April last year, helped by Nusra Front fighters in a rare instance of cooperation between the jihadist rivals, capturing most of it.

Since then they have turned their guns on each other, and fighting in recent weeks has destroyed countless more homes as Islamic State tries to take areas held by Nusra Front.

“Things got worse recently. This is a fight taking place only inside the camp, not spreading out to another area – it’s concentrated,” said Mahmoud. Fighters were targeting houses and burning them, even with occupants still inside, to hamper advances by the other side, he added.

Across a strip of no man’s land from Islamic State territory, rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army control Yalda.

“The route to Yalda is more or less dangerous depending on how heavy the clashes are. Lately, people living in the fighting hotspots have to move around behind tarpaulin curtains and banks of earth,” said Yousef, who like all the Yarmouk residents interviewed by Reuters also asked to use an alias.

“Last Thursday, someone got shot by a sniper,” said Yousef.

Mohammed, 30, who before the latest violence sold food from a street stall, said: “If someone leaves their house to get a bit of water, they might not come back. Getting bread, getting food, could cost someone their life.”

FRAGILE AID SUPPLY

Islamic State controls at least two-thirds of Yarmouk and has been trying to prise the rest from Nusra Front since April, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that several civilians have been killed in recent weeks.

Many do not venture out. “Most people just sit at home … we’re stuck here and stuck in the camp,” said Abu Anas, a former manual laborer.

“There’s very little water, and little fuel. We chiefly rely on aid from UNRWA. It’s not much but it’s our best hope – every 20 days we get a parcel which is just about enough for a family.” These include around 4 kg (9 pounds) of lentils, 5 kg of sugar, 1 kg of pasta and tins of tomatoes, he said.

Fighting can close the checkpoint for days at a time. But if they can get through, Mahmoud, Yousef and their fellow residents also buy any extra provisions they can afford at market stalls in Yalda, before returning.

Even getting aid the few kilometers from Damascus to Yalda, through government and then rebel-held territory, requires painstaking talks with local authorities, community leaders and commanders of the warring sides.

“When we first had access to Yalda, just to get there the U.N. had to negotiate 17 separate agreements,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said. For at least a month beginning in April, UNRWA could not even reach Yalda, and warned that residents faced starvation until supplies resumed.

“Inside Yarmouk, the fighting forces have been using indiscriminately large munitions,” Gunness said. “For a U.N.-assisted population in the 21st century to find itself in this situation in the capital city of a U.N. member state is completely unacceptable.”

EXODUS

Frequent power and water supply cuts mean people have to rely on generators and drinking water sold from the back of trucks which residents bring in by a different route. Water from wells – many of them hard to reach because of the fighting – is polluted and can be used only for washing, Yousef said.

Among the thousands who have joined the exodus from Yarmouk, some have sought refuge inside Syria with others heading to neighboring countries or Europe.

An aid worker for the Jafra Foundation, which monitors human rights in Palestinian camps in Syria, said several hundred people had left Yarmouk in recent weeks alone.

The camp’s pre-war Palestinian population of 160,000 has plunged to between 3,000 and 6,000 residents. At least the same number of displaced from the camp also live in Yalda, he said.

Mahmoud, who said his mother was killed in shelling by government forces three years ago, will stay.

“My home is here and my dad lives here. When I go to Yalda, I feel like a displaced person,” he said. “Yarmouk is my camp, I can’t leave it.”

(editing by David Stamp)

First Ever Withdrawal from Svalbard Global Seed Vault Due to War

Scientists have requested the first-ever withdrawal of seeds from  the Svalbard Global Seed Vault , a Doomsday vault built in the Arctic to safeguard the world’s food supplies, officials said Friday. The International Center for Agricultural Research (ICARDA) said it has made a request to take back some of its samples due to Syria’s Civil war.

On September 21, Reuters reported that officials from the ICARDA seed bank in Aleppo — which has moved to Beirut, for now, because of the Syrian civil war — requested 116,000 samples from the Svalbard Vault. The seed samples were needed to restore a collection that had been damaged by the conflict, which has killed approximately 250,000 people and caused more than 11 million to flee their homes.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, preserves millions of seeds, representing more than 860,000 important crop varieties from around the world: a final backup to protect against natural disasters, war, and climate change. It is located 500 feet deep inside a mountain on a remote island between Norway and the North Pole.