For make no mistake about it, a government, such as the one in Damascus, that cows its opponents into submission by starving them to death, is committing a war crime. And make no mistake either about the fact that for us to turn a deaf ear to such a state of affairs implicates us in that crime.
Getting lost in the shuffle among news stories about Daesh excesses, the American presidential elections, and the undiminished stream of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia into Europe, is the story of the unspeakable suffering of the helpless civilians trapped in the Syrian town of Madaya, besieged by government troops, a town the overwhelming majority of whose remaining 20,000 inhabitants are in danger of literally starving to death — en masse.
Already, according to Doctors Without Borders, 51 have perished from lack of food, water and medicine — and that since the end of December alone. Moreover, in Syria today, the UN Security Council was told by the world body’s own chief humanitarian coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, close to 500,00 Syrians elsewhere in the country, not under siege but in need of assistance, are cut off from food by their government in Damascus, a government that has reportedly denied about “100 of the UN’s 113 requests” to deliver aid in the last year.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has had something to say about all this, and I quote at length from his statement. “People are dying, and children are suffering, not as an accident of war but as the consequence of an intentional tactic (on the part of the Syrian government) — surrender or starve,” he said last week. “And that tactic is directly contrary to the law of war.” Then he added: “We haven’t seen a catastrophe like this since WWII and it is unfolding before our eyes. People in Madaya are eating leaves and grass or animals of one kind or another that they manage to capture. The regime has a responsibility, a duty, to facilitate humanitarian access to Syrians in desperate need ...”
The regime in question, however, is out to lunch. It has not in the past felt, nor does it today feel, a “responsibility” toward its people, whether starved or satiated.
Beyond the sympathetic rhetoric, what is Kerry, and along with him the rest of the world, doing about it? This, after all, is a humanitarian issue that concerns, or should concern, all of us. Sadly, the suffering of these people under siege in Madaya, who are, literally, dying of hunger and dehydration almost daily — dying a slow, agonizing death — does not appear to have galvanized enough international support to end what, effectively, is a war crime.
For make no mistake about it, a government, such as the one in Damascus, that cows its opponents into submission by starving them to death, is committing a war crime. And make no mistake either about the fact that for us to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to such a state of affairs implicates us — all of us — in that crime, for we are all complicit in that which leaves us indifferent.
As Edmond Burke, the Irish political theorist, once remarked in this context: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.”
Meanwhile, in Iraq, as Iraqi security forces have put Daesh fighters under siege in the militant-held city of Fallujah — ironically known as “the city of a hundred mosques” — civilians there are encountering the same calamity, though not as severe, as their counterparts in Madaya. The siege there, which appears to have tightened over the last two months, is preventing supplies from reaching the city, where between 30,000 and 60,00 residents remain holed up, caught between the rock and a hard place, as they deal with shortages and as Iraqi forces gradually seal off their town, presumably to isolate Daesh militants and cut off their supply lines.
Sieges are not new to history, whether ancient, medieval or modern. But one thing that sieges have had in common is that they have always left a dreadful toll on their victims. In our times, we read of the horrific siege of Leningrad, for example, known in Russian lore as the 900-Day Siege, that lasted between 1941 and 1942, and considered the most destructive in history in terms of casualties, as we read, more recently, of the siege of the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel Zaatar in 1976 — surrounded by Phalangist militias backed by the then Syrian President Hafez Assad — that resulted in the death, from starvation, dehydration or unattended wounds, of 2,200 civilians. And many other sieges in between.
There is nothing in human history more reprehensible, more invidious — nothing more expressive of the cruelty that man could inflict on his fellow man — than putting a community of men, women and children under siege, with the intention of bringing its members to their knees by subjecting them to starvation — and ultimately slow, very slow, death.
Such is the fate of Madaya today. Alas, the city’s innocent victims cannot eat rhetoric, or survive on the empathy, of those who merely bemoan their plight — and leave it at that. Someone needs to do something. We are all, I say, complicit in that which leaves us indifferent to the effusion of evil.
