We share responsibility for Syria's murderous stalemate. We must come together to break it

posted on: Jun 18, 2015

The 3,823rd person to be interviewed by the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic was a 16-year-old boy recovering from massive injuries in a hospital in a neighbouring country. His injuries were too severe to be treated inside Syria, where hospitals are intentionally attacked and indiscriminately shelled, and where medical aid is deliberately prevented from reaching communities who are desperately in need.

The boy, known as Z, thus became one of more than 10 million Syrians – more than half of the country’s population – to have fled their homes in search of care and safety. The timely intervention of Syrian search and rescue workers, the skill of foreign doctors and good fortune prevented Z becoming one of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed since the crisis began in March 2011.

One in every 122 people is displaced by war, violence and persecution, says UN
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Syria is one of the world’s most chaotic and lethal battlefields. With hundreds of armed militia, there are now wars within wars, all of them tearing the country and its people apart. Z told us that he was injured when a government helicopter dropped a barrel bomb on his village in the southern Dara’a governorate. These aerial bombardments by government forces have killed countless other children in locations across the country, including recently in Idlib and Aleppo.

Others have been killed and injured by rockets fired into Damascus city by armed groups. Schoolchildren in Homs have been killed and maimed by car and suicide bombs detonated by members of Jabhat Al-Nusra. Boys no older than Z have been publicly executed by Isis; others have died while fighting as child soldiers. The trauma suffered by the children of Syria is intolerable.

Injuries like Z’s are inflicted daily on men, women and children held and tortured in the warring parties’ official and makeshift detention centres. Countless more have lost relatives who have died or disappeared.

Millions of people have fled, and are fleeing their homes and their country. This is a suffering that knows no gender, ethnicity, or religion. All Syrians are the victims of this all-consuming and bloody war, regardless of whether they are Sunni or Shia, Kurdish or Palestinian, Christian or Druze, or from the myriad other Syrian communities.

Source: www.theguardian.com