DELIVERING AID AMIDST CHAOS
Canadian Red Cross CEO recounts dangers in a war-ravaged country
With Syria’s civil war passing its fifth anniversary, aid agencies released tallies of the staggering human cost: 250,000 people killed, 6.6 million Syrians displaced within the country and more than 4.8 million refugees. Conrad Sauvé, CEO of the Canadian Red Cross, just returned from a trip to Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, where the Red Cross is supporting the Syrian Arab Red Crescent’s mobile health clinics. Despite a recently brokered ceasefire, getting food, water and medical care to Syrians, many of whom are still under siege, remains difficult.
What are the challenges in delivering aid?
Right now, access is complicated, fragmented and negotiated. We have to negotiate with all sides and suspicion in a time of war is extremely high. It’s not just about getting in, but also can you control the distribution and ensure supplies get to the people who need it? Sometimes we are called at the last minute, at 4 p.m., and told, you can go into this place today. It’s not just the government that has to say yes, there are numerous fighting groups and they have to accept that you go in at the same time. ISIS (Daesh) isn’t negotiating with anyone so we cannot get to the areas they control.
How dangerous is it?
In the last five years, 60 of our Red Crescent volunteers have been shot. After we’ve been told it is OK to go in, they were shot, usually by snipers. You can see the complexities of making the decision to go in. If you’re with the army, you’re exposed. You have to be accepted by all sides as being impartial and unarmed. And yet remarkably, the Red Crescent has been recruiting more and more volunteers. Syrians want to be engaged in something good.
What are living conditions like for ordinary Syrians?
There are severe cases of malnutrition in cases where forces on either side have besieged a place, cut off the electricity, water and supply lines. That was the case in Madaya (a city under siege by government forces and reached by the International Committee of the Red Cross only in January).
There are other places like that where people are starving. The United Nations estimates almost 500,000 people are living under siege in Syria, while 4.6 million are hard to reach.
How are ordinary Syrians coping?
I met one 75-year-old man in a rural area near Homs who was only two hours from his home and yet he still couldn’t go back. He said, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m living in a tent. It’s been four years, four winters. I can’t see the end.” There is a lot of despair, and yet there is also resilience.
In February, the U.S. and Russia brokered a ceasefire with government forces and the Free Syrian Army, though it does not apply to Daesh, al-Nusra or other terrorist organizations. What do Syrians think of this?
Nobody knows whether it will work or not but everyone is hopeful. That’s what keeps people going, the hope that things are going to get better. When people perceive there is no hope, they pick up their things,
sell everything and hit the road.
What was it like travelling there for you?
I walked through the old city of Homs, which is totally destroyed. It was very dramatic too see such damage.
I also went to Barzeh (near Damascus) to an area that is part of a ceasefire.
On both sides of the streets I saw houses riddled with bullet holes, an amazing amount of destruction. In another part of town, we had the leader of a rebel force on one side, and the government on the other; in between them was a hospital, and the Red Cross is funding its reopening. It was surreal.
The clinic had been occupied by one of the fighting forces and had tunnels in the basement.