There is great despair in Syria over what many see as discrimination against earthquake victims. – We see that Turkey receives help and rescue personnel from 65 countries. That’s very good. But why doesn’t Syria get the same attention, asks Raed Saleh. He rents the white helmets. It is the largest civil defense force in the rebel-held areas of Syria. It is their relief crews who are at the forefront of the search and rescue operations in the earthquake-prone areas. – Our teams are completely exhausted and did not stretch. We do the best we can and save lives, but we lack completely basic things such as excavators, tools for cutting through concrete and steel, and search dogs, says Saleh. A member of the White Helmets, who carry out rescue work in parts of Syria. Photo: RAMI AL SAYED / AFP Lost family, home and livelihood news has been in contact with people in the rebel-controlled Idlib province, which is one of the hardest-hit cities in Syria. This is where Omar Al Hadid lives, whom news’s local team meets at a pile of rubble that used to be his home and shop. – What should I say about what I feel? I have lost everything. In these ruins lie my family and the shop I lived from. Al Hadid is one of several million internally displaced refugees who had sought refuge in Idlib – away from the fighting that has ravaged Syria for over 12 years. Many of the refugees lived in dilapidated buildings with tarpaulins as walls. These were built together like a house of cards when the earthquake shook this area. Omar Al Hadid says he lost everything when the neighborhood collapsed. – We didn’t even have time to react. From my family, only me and one of my youngest sons survived, says Al Hadid, hiding his face with his headscarf as he cried. – Now we stand on bare ground. There is not even anyone who can retrieve the bodies of my family members. At another pile of ruins, we meet Khaled Bakkar. The young man has also lost his entire family. – I lost my wife, mother, son, sister, brother-in-law and neighbours. Everyone is under these ruins, Bakkar says, pointing to what was once a three-storey block of flats. – My family was alive under the ruins, but no one could rescue them. They died while I stood powerless nearby, says the 35-year-old. Khaled Bakkar while searching for his family on Tuesday. On Wednesday, despair has turned to anger. Huge numbers of people need help Idlib province borders Turkey. The rebels and civilians here have received most of their supplies from there, but now Turkey itself is facing a historically extensive disaster. Salah from the White Helmets criticizes the international community, which he believes has failed Syria. – It hurts to see that the world has turned its back on Syria. We feel abandoned. – Neither the EU, the UN nor anyone else has contacted us to ask what we need to save lives. The people of the world seem to be divided during this disaster. We cry desperately for help, but our cries fall on deaf ears. After 12 years of war, 70 percent of Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid, the UN Security Council wrote a few weeks ago. Western countries have provided some humanitarian aid, but have seen a hard limit when it comes to rebuilding the country, says researcher Hilde Henriksen Waage at the University of Oslo. Hilde Henriksen Waage is a researcher and professor of history with the Middle East as a special field. She refers to a law that Donald Trump introduced when he was president of the United States, which is called: “No assistance to the Assad law”. – The law will prevent international organizations such as the World Bank and the UN from starting to rebuild Syria. The Assad regime has received a number of sanctions against it from the EU, the USA and us in Norway. The reasons include the regime’s oppression of its own people and the use of chemical weapons in the war. – The EU and the West demand that Assad must step down first, i.e. a regime change. This also means that the rich Gulf countries, they have never liked Syria, also follow this line that the USA has in a way asked them to, says Waage. Emergency aid is the exception in this law, and gives as an example a conversation she had in May with the UN’s envoy to Damascus, Geir Pedersen. – He asked the EU in Brussels if they could be so friendly as to give windows to school buildings in Syria. The schools have no windows, because they are bomb sound and together. – Then Brussels replied: “Yes, you can get window eye. Yes, you can get doors. But you don’t get a ceiling, because ceilings are counted as building it up again.” The war in Syria has now been going on for 12 years. The picture shows a Syrian boy and an American soldier, and was taken on 26 January 2023. Photo: DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP The intense escalation in the war between Assad’s forces and opposition groups backed by Turkey has now calmed down. – But when it comes to other things, the picture is as terrible as it has been, Pedersen wrote in an article a few weeks ago. – This conflict needs a thorough political solution, and nothing else can work. However, that solution is not in the immediate future. Graphics: Eirik Kirkaune / news Cold for small children’s bodies Kristin Oudmayer is director of children’s rights in Unicef Norway, which brings humanitarian aid to the affected area. Kristin Oudmayer is director of children’s rights at Unicef Norway. Photo: Harald Inderhaug / news She says it is impossible to know how many children have died from the earthquake. – We know that there are children among the dead who lie in the ruins, and we know that there are many children who have been separated from their parents in this situation here. Oudmayer himself was on a trip to Syria last summer, in the city of Hama. It is now one of the hardest hit areas. This is an area with many internally displaced refugees, who came there looking for a place to live and be able to protect their children, she says. There are children among the dead who have been taken out of the ruins in Syria. Here one of them is being drilled out of the ruins in the village of Jandairis. Photo: BAKR ALKASEM / AFP Elsewhere in the country, conditions are still dangerous, with shortages of water, food and medicine. In many places it is impossible for children to go to school. – Among other things, I visited a refugee camp in the area which one can assume no longer exists. It is the most stupid and painful thing I have ever experienced. – People live with razor-thin tent walls. There is a minimum of sanitary conditions, it is easy for disease to spread, and they simply do not have what it takes to survive from day to day in the first place. In particular, she is worried about the cold wave that is hitting the area now, after the earthquake. Not only does it make the rescue work even more difficult to carry out – it also poses a great risk to the children who are trapped in the ruins. The children who are afraid face a difficult future. It is still better than no future, says Oudmayer. Photo: ABDULAZIZ KETAZ / AFP – Small children’s bodies tolerate it much worse than adults, so we are extra worried for all those who have not been found and who have nowhere to be with a roof over their heads. – These are children who have lived with great stress for a long time. Many people carry trauma with them from refugee camps that they grew up in, and then this comes on top as a new trauma, a new uncertainty, and perhaps they also lose family members. So one can only imagine that there will be a new generational trauma that hits the children in this area. “Bad veins” Several of the areas in Syria which have now been hit have previously been the center of the rebel forces in the war, says Waage. – Here, the regime under Bashar al-Assad’s rule, together with his best friend and ally, Vladimir Putin in Russia, has blanket-bombed the entire northern country from before. – They started with Aleppo and Hama, which have now been hit hard by the earthquake. They already looked like a pile of rubble. At the same time, it seems that the elite in Syria prioritize themselves over ordinary people in the areas they have taken, such as Aleppo and Hama. Idlib province, which has also suffered major damage as a result of the earthquake, is ruled by the rebels, and cannot expect help from the regime. Russian rescue workers in northern Syria on Tuesday. Photo: – / AFP There are some Russian rescue personnel inside Syria, despite the country spending large resources on the war in Ukraine. But the countries the Assad regime would otherwise have received help from, Russia and Iran, are busy with their own problems, she says. Palestine and Lebanon have also sent aid, but are also countries that have little resources to spend on this. – On the Syrian side, there are no excavators and resources to help people out of the ruins. We see the count with small pots and with his hands, and it is freezing cold. – The question becomes, when Syria only has bad friends: who will then help them to build up this ravaged country?
ttn-69
– It hurts to see that the world has turned its back on Syria – news Norway – Overview of news from different parts of the country
