Starving Syrians eating grass as Assad uses aid as leverage
Fresh evidence has emerged of how starving Syrians are being forced to eat grass to survive as Bashar Assad’s regime defies the UN to tighten sieges across Syria.
Aid agencies say the regime is using humanitarian aid, which is supposed to be delivered freely under international law and UN resolutions, as a bargaining chip.
Aid workers claim the crisis has now spread well beyond the town of Madaya, northwest of Damascus, where pictures of emaciated children caused an international outcry.
Dr. Omar Hakim reported similar scenes of horror in the Jobar and Moadhamiya suburbs of the capital Damascus last week.
“Twelve people died last week, six of them children,” he told the London Sunday Telegraph. “There are 1,500 patients here suffering chronic diseases which require treatment or medicine which is not available. People are eating grass, and rice if it’s available.”
Sieges have been used as a weapon since the start of the war, but the situation has worsened recently.
UN workers who accompanied the convoy to Madaya two weeks ago said conditions were the worst they had encountered during the war.
Even since then, residents have continued to die. A statement issued by UNICEF described how staff were saddened and shocked when a severely malnourished 16-year-old boy named Ali “passed away in the town’s clinic in front of our eyes”.
The town has a population of 42,000, but the UN says 400,000 people in Syria are under siege, and more than four million are in “hardto-reach areas”. These estimates have been criticized for downplaying the situation to appease the regime.
Madaya was not originally on the “besieged” list. Aid groups estimate the total number of people who are being surrounded and deprived of aid in this way is more than one million.
The UN’s humanitarian plans for Syria, leaked last week, also suggested the body had censored itself by removing the words “siege” and “besieged” between the original draft and the final publication. The plan is also careful to stress areas are also being besieged by the ISIL and other rebels.