Syrians need help

While we prepare for a new decade in relatively secure and prosperous surroundings, the misery inflicted on the people of Syria continues unabated. As the reports by our correspondent Josie Ensor have highlighted, a major humanitarian crisis is unfolding as winter tightens its grip. Families huddle for warmth as their meagre supplies of wood and gas run out.

More than a quarter of a million people have fled the recent airstrikes and shelling by Russianbacked Syrian forces in Idlib, the last rebel stronghold still fighting against Bashar al-assad.

Most of the 3.5 million people living in the province had already been displaced from formerly rebel-held areas across the country and have nowhere left to go. The exodus has overwhelmed the makeshift refugee camps along the Turkish border with thousands forced to sleep in the open. The government says they can no longer cope with the numbers and is warning that a tide of refugees will soon be heading for Europe.

Yet this calamity is taking place amid almost total indifference in the West. True, Donald Trump used his favoured device for foreign policy announcements by tweeting “Russia, Syria, and Iran are killing, or on their way to killing thousands of innocent civilians in Idlib Province. Don’t do it!” Notwithstanding the US air strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, there appears to be no obvious co-ordinated Western strategy to bring pressure on Syrian and Russia to end the conflict.

The international community – and the EU in particular – need to take this crisis seriously. Statements of condemnation help no one.