“Of course, all humanitarian actors face challenges in maintaining wartime neutrality. But the agencies of the United Nations, including UNRWA, carry an additional burden. They are attached to a global organization that is, in fact, highly political.”∼ David Bosco, American University
It appears that the marginalization of the plight of Kafarya and Foua continues unabated.
The two predominantly Shia villages in Idlib province are still being largely ignored by the media and Government pundits who are using Madaya to sharpen their propaganda knives and continue stabbing the Syrian Government & the Syrian people in the back.
A report has just come in from Al Manar [Arabic] and resident surgeon Dr Ali Almoustafa stating that UN officials have failed to visit Kafarya & Foua to assess the critical health deterioration of residents which include the starving & wounded from the pre cease fire daily terror bombardment by the besieging gangs of Ahrar al Sham and Al Nusra mercenaries.
The reason the UN has given for this dereliction of duty is fears about passing the Ahrar Al Sham checkpoints which have been set up along the roads that allow access to the crippled villages of Kafarya and Foua.
This statement is rendered ridiculous when one considers the fact that the UN has had no such issues entering Madaya, their entry having been facilitated by the Syrian Government in Damascus and the Syrian Arab Army surrounding Madaya.
Al Manar have reported that the UN met with a committee representing the armed thugs and another from the local residents. So, in Madaya the thugs are sugar coated?
As Dr Al Jaafari, Syrian permanent Representative to the UN, said yesterday in his address to media and UN officials:
“The information concerning the humanitarian situation in Madaya is based on false information, and totally ignores the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in other areas besieged by armed terrorist groups. The reality of the so-called besieged, hard to reach areas is that some of those areas are controled by terrorist groups who are using civilians as human shields, and other areas are be-sieged from the terrorist groups who are preventing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.
Meaning that the terrorist armed groups are two categories. One category is exerting, besieging on the civilians from within inside. And the other category is exerting, besieging from outside.
In Kafraya and al-Foua, the terorrists are besieging the two towns from outside, surrounding the two towns, in Idlib..
But in Madaya and al-Zabadani, the terrorists are inside. So they are using the civilians as human shields while they are inside.”
As evidence mounts, pointing to Western media and Governmental manipulation of the facts and exploitation of the misery of the Syrian people, we see an almost ghoulish relishing of their role as purveyors of deceit and harbingers of further suffering for Syria.
The gloves are off, the Western media and political hostility towards the Syrian people and elected Government has been laid bare and exposed for the world to see. The Emperor is butt naked, the robes of pseudo diplomacy in tatters and the crowds are starting to point and stare at the Truth which Madaya has brought to the light.
Invoking ‘The Holocaust’
However, for these neocolonialist pariahs, the show must go on. Samantha Power, the ring mistress of White House propaganda only just resisted comparing Madaya to the Holocaust, teetering on the edge of indecency by stopping at WWII but the connection was unmistakable.
“Look at the haunting pictures of civilians, including children, even babies, in Madaya,” she told the General Assembly.
These are just the pictures we see. There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now. And these images, they remind us of World War Two.” ~ report here
British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft picked up the Syrian government demonization baton and ran with it:
“Starving civilians is an inhuman tactic used by the (President Bashar) al-Assad regime and their allies.”
In the Houses of Parliament in the UK, the Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening announced:
“No one who has seen the pictures coming out of Madaya over recent days can say this this atrocious situation is anything other than utterly appalling. The situation is deliberate and man-made. The Assad regime has besieged the town since July, causing horrific suffering and starvation. I should remind the House that the UK has been at the forefront of global efforts to help ensure, from day one, that people suffering inside Syria have been helped over the past four years.”
And as a final example of dogged hypocrisy, French Ambassador Francois Delattre said there could be:
“no credible political process without progress on the humanitarian front.”
The levels of sanctimonious posturing from these representatives of “Democracy” is staggering when one considers the sheer scale of destruction that their Governments are responsible for globally.
The Yemen Lie
Yemen is being systematically destroyed by the Western ally and primary trade partner in the region. Saudi Arabia is a despotic regime despatching its regional & national opposition with customary lawlessness and brutality, fully endorsed by the same Governments that are levelling unverified accusations at the Syrian government.
The siege of Yemen supported by the UN, NATO and the US is decimating the already poverty stricken country, not to mention the raining down of US and UK manufactured bombs and illegal explosives that are maiming and massacring the Yemeni civilian population on a daily basis.
Last week a home for the blind was bombed in Sanaa and images of bewildered and shocked residents emerged from Yemen. Children unable to find their way back to their familiar surroundings because the walls had been reduced to rubble.
Lethal and flesh tearing cluster bombs were used to target densely populated civilian areas of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa.
DESTRUCTION: Saudi Arabia’s brutal destruction of Yemen has torn apart thousands of communities and families.
Ambassador Power’s statement on Madaya is particularly disturbing when put in context. She is rubbing her hands in covert glee at the impending massacres in Burundi, supporting the supply of weapons and military aid that ensures the wholesale slaughter of the Yemeni people and stepping over the bones of murdered Palestinians, Iraqis, Libyans, Nigerians, Somali among others in her climb to the top of the political tree.
Another siege that is not discussed with the same intensity as Madaya is of course, that of Gaza but cynically speaking the abject misery of the Palestinian people living among the rubble of 3 Israeli wars on the besieged strip of land, does not serve the NATO US Israeli GCC “regime change” agenda in Syria and is therefore to be marginalised in deference to another trade and military industrial complex partner, Israel. One more regional Western ally of note for their brutal and oppressive illegal occupation.
It appears that brutality and oppression are to be sanctioned when of benefit to the West.
As Dr Al Jaafari stated yesterday:
“Those who are besieged are all the Syrians. We are talking about Syria being be-sieged by enemies, by criminals, by murderers, by hostile governments targeting the whole Syrian people.
…It’s about 23 million Syrians besieged, by economic sanctions, by terrorists crossing from Turkey, from Jordan, from Lebanon, from Iraq. This is the reality. The whole Syrian people are besieged.”
When we watch Dr Al Jaafari navigate the hostility from Western, Qatari & Saudi media, we are struck by his patience & dignity despite the knowledge that these media outlets have been caught red handed, disseminating fraudulent photos not even from Madaya, and failing to either ask the salient questions or to report important factual elements that would have completely altered public perception and portrayed the Syrian Government in the Humanitarian light that is deserved.
It is bewildering that whenever there is a step forward towards a political solution in Syria, certain incidents are fabricated to de-fame the Syrian government and to negatively impact the political process….
The examples of such incidents are many and happened before certain United Nations Security Council meetings, as well as before Geneva 2 meeting, and Moscow 1 and Moscow 2 consultative meetings.
Now, and when the Syrians are going to meet in Geneva, end of this month, certain regional and international parties supporting terrorism in Syria are not satisfied that the Syrian government is engaging positively in the political process. And thus are trying to demonize it…. torpedoing the meeting in Geneva.” ~ Dr Al Jaafari.
In fact, how Syria responds time and time again to the pack of hyenas that are baying for its blood, NATO US Israel, KSA, the western media ghouls, will go down in history as heroism, nothing less.
Notes
Thank you to Eva Bartlett for the Transcript of Dr Al Jaafari’s address.
Please also do read Eva Bartlett’s articles on Kafary and Foua
Untold suffering in Kafarya and Foua
