Hospitals and refugees get bombed in Syria while ‘civilisation’ is celebrated

Two very different events happened in Syria last Thursday. While the Kamouna Refugee Camp on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey was being hit by an air strike which killed at least 35 people, most of them women and children, Russian maestro Valery Gergiev conducted a classical music concert in the ancient Roman city of Palmyra, about 300 kilometres to the south-west. The concert was held to celebrate the recapture by Syrian regime forces of the city from Daesh in March, and was attended by senior Assad regime and Russian military officials. Presumably, it was meant to celebrate Palmyra’s return to “civilisation” and progress, its ancient heritage now safe from the backwardness and intolerance of the extremists.

Try telling that to the refugees. There were no rebel positions near their camp and nothing around the makeshift collection of tents which could possibly be identified as a military target or even a permanent civilian structure. Anyone viewing the camp from the air would have been able to see this, but fighter jets belonging to the regime or Russia were still flying overhead two days later, terrorising the civilians who survived the 5 May attack.

May 5 was also the second day of a new “ceasefire” in Aleppo, announced the day before by the United States and Russia. In the 13 days before that the regime and Russia killed nearly 300 people in the city and injured more than 1,500. The victims included the last paediatrician in the rebel-held area of Aleppo, Dr Mohammed Moaz, who was killed along with 30 other people, many of them medical staff, in an air strike on Al-Quds Hospital, which was run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

“It is hard to describe what it is like to live in Aleppo, waiting for death,” commented Osama Abo Al-Ezz, the Aleppo coordinator for the Syrian American Medical Society. “Some people even pray for its swift arrival to take them away from this burning city. The bombardment has reached such ferocity that even the stones are catching fire… The universal sanctity of medical neutrality has been eviscerated.”

Aftermath of Assad-Russian strikes show injured children being carried away in rebel held areas in Aleppo. Image by AMC photographer on the ground

The strike on Al-Quds Hospital was by no means the first on a medical facility this year. In February, an air strike hit another MSF hospital in Maarat Al-Numan, killing 25 people. Approximately 60 facilities belonging to MSF alone have been targeted this year. There is now an open war on hospitals and medical professionals in Syria, with doctors and medical staff singled out for special attention by the regime and its Russian ally. The rationale for this is very simple. In a speech at a demonstration in London in solidarity with Syrian medical staff, Rob Williams, the CEO of War Child, said that the killing of one doctor forces 10,000 people to flee a conflict zone. By denying the inhabitants of a city the medical care they urgently need, a party to a conflict can leave civilians with no other option but to flee.

For a long time now, many Syrians have suspected that that the Assad regime, whose powerbase is found among the Alawite community, is intent on carrying out a demographic change in Syria by decreasing the number of Sunni Muslims there. While this is a highly controversial subject which people are reluctant to discuss for fear of being labelled “sectarian”, what is beyond doubt is that the regime’s support base within the country is not strong enough to keep it in power. It has to rely on support from outside, including “advisers” from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, Iraqi Shi’a militias and Afghan mercenaries recruited by Iran, as well, of course, as Russia. Without this support, most observers say that the regime could not have survived this long.

On the other hand, the popular protests against the Syrian regime which began in March 2011 and which continue today despite five years of war have shown the government in Damascus that it cannot govern in the way that it used to. The fear barrier which made Syrians afraid to criticise the regime and its abuses has been broken forever. The regime knows very well how difficult it will be to regain control of and pacify the opposition-held areas of Syria. Hence, it seems to have adopted the depopulation of these areas as a conscious strategy so that, today, one in two Syrians are either refugees or have been internally displaced.

It is not clear whether it was the regime or Russia which bombed the Maarat Al-Numan Hospital, Al-Quds Hospital and the Kamouna Refugee Camp. The only thing that is clear is that despite negotiations and truces, the war of extermination — the exact word used by the UN in February to describe the actions of the Syrian regime — is continuing with full vengeance, regardless of any declared ceasefire or negotiations. The Assad regime violates ceasefires whenever it pleases and it knows that there will be no consequences. The US reaction to the bombardment of Aleppo is illustrative of this. Washington remained silent on Russia’s participation in the air strikes and instead announced that the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusrah Front, which is not officially part of the ceasefire, was “primarily” in control of Aleppo. In actual fact, Al-Nusrah Front has only a token presence there, on the outskirts of the city. Neither the regime nor Russia could have hoped for a clearer indication that the US has no problem with what they are doing to the people of Aleppo.

This is the Syria of today, a place where air strikes on hospitals, refugee camps and markets happen on a regular basis without any reaction by the international community. Meanwhile, classical music concerts are held to demonstrate how “civilised” those responsible for the killings of innocent civilians are.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.