Open Letter from Aleppo to Prime Minister David Cameron

Farah Alfarhan is a British national who has seen the horrors of the Syrian conflict at first hand. She lived in Aleppo for 27 years and was detained by the Assad regime, enduring torture for 35 days while in detention. The letter below is addressed to British Prime Minister David Cameron, urging him to take action on Syria. Despite a recent “ceasefire”, the regime and its allies continue to bomb civilian areas of Aleppo and the surrounding countryside with apparent impunity. Britain, the United States and their allies have carried out airstrikes against Daesh in Syria but have taken no action to protect civilians from the Assad regime.

Dear Prime Minister,

You don’t know me, but my name is Farah Alfarhan. I was born in Preston, Lancashire, and I am a British citizen who has lived and worked in Aleppo, Syria, for 27 years. As a result of my humanitarian work with displaced children, I was arrested by the Assad regime in October 2014 and spent a total of 35 days in detention. I was subjected to brutal and humiliating torture at the hands of this regime. Upon my release, I returned home to Britain.

I have been outraged to see that the violence and human rights abuses in Syria are not only continuing to increase in number, but also continue to be met with a failure to act by the British government. At a time when my neighbourhood in Aleppo is under constant attack, I cannot understand why you, as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, continue to fail to take action in order to protect the people who I have left behind.

In the past week alone, hundreds of airstrikes have fallen upon Aleppo; over 200 civilians have been killed, including the last remaining practicing pediatrician in the entire city, Dr Muhammad Wassim Maaz. The suffering of children in Syria, which in itself is incomprehensible, has taken on a new dimension now that there is no doctor to attend to them.

For my friends who remain in Syria, the horrors spoken about and shown on the news are a daily part of their lives. Bombings, airstrikes and violent attacks have all become reality for Syrians every day. It is normal for them to walk down the street and see dead children who will never make it home to their families. I have had to comfort a friend whose daughter’s skull was pierced by shrapnel when a bomb exploded as she played in a garden. I speak regularly to friends who have lost their homes because of the bombs; friends who spend their nights in mosques, tents or underneath bushes, trying to keep their children protected from the horrors to be found in Syria today. Five years on, the Assad regime continues to terrorise the Syrian people, killing civilians, destroying buildings and endangering any sliver of hope that remains.

Imagine for a moment that you do not know whether your children will return from school, or whether they will return to their family, let alone their home. Imagine seeing your own children, and the children of your fellow countrymen, having to witness such brutality and be the victims of unspeakable violence. Would you fail to act against the perpetrators of atrocities if these war crimes were happening in your own country — our country — and to your own children? Britain is not immune to this conflict or its fallout. The numbers of refugees fleeing from the war cannot be ignored, nor can the threat from extremists, who are allowed to flourish in Syria by the Assad regime.

Prime Minister, as someone who has lived through the horrors of the Syrian conflict, I am urging — indeed, demanding — that the British government makes use of the Royal Air Force based a short flight away in Cyprus to deliver humanitarian aid to the starving civilians living in besieged areas across Syria.

Prime Minister, as someone who has lived through the horrors of the Syrian conflict, I am urging — demanding — that the British government takes steps to ensure that the Assad regime’s crimes do not go unaccounted for. We should back the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal without delay.

Prime Minister, as someone who has lived through the horrors of the Syrian conflict, I am urging — demanding yet again — that the British government, of which you are the leader, puts pressure on those such as Russia who fund the brutal Assad regime, provide it with weapons and kill Syrians on its behalf.

Prime Minister, you know what is happening under the noses of the world in Syria; it is time to take concrete action to bring this conflict to an end.

Yours Sincerely,

Farah Alfarhan