Aiding the Hopeless

"You have an industrial-scale war, but you have a very kind of small-scale humanitarian response. There is a recognition that greater humanitarian access is needed for life-saving assistance, but at the same time we don't see the mobilization.
"It is possible, if the international political willingness is there, to grant access and free movement to aid agencies to go into these enclaves. Cease-fires could be organized as was done to allow chemical weapons inspectors in, they could be organized to allow in medical convoys."
Christopher Stokes, Doctors Without Borders

A Free Syrian Army fighter throws a homemade mortar in Deir al-Zor October 10, 2013. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Greater access to humanitarian aid for Syrians is top of mind for aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders. It's what they do, after all. While slaughter rages all around them, Syrians are desperate for food, potable water, medical supplies and the hope that they and their families may, after all, survive the murderous mayhem that surrounds them.

They have no such assurances as things stand.

The provision of food and medical aid to the desperate has become an increasingly dangerous operation, on a huge scale that would defy the hope of either those aspiring to deliver the humanitarian aid or those hoping it will come by them to resuscitate their hopes of surviving the ordeal they are living through. Nearly 7 million Syrians have been driven from their homes.

Their homes, in any event, in cities and towns throughout the country have become unlivable. They have been bombed by the regime's military and looted by the Islamist intruders. The country is now carved into rebel- and regime-controlled sections, complicating even more the delivery of humanitarian aid. An appeal was issued by the UN Security Council for access to all areas of the country.

But aid is not reaching all those who require it to prolong their lives. "One side is always blaming the other", said Christopher Stokes, for the failure to allow aid workers to help the Syrian civilian populations under such colossal stress. Yet unfettered access to all chemical weapons sites has been guaranteed in the agreement to destroy those weapons.

Doctors Without Borders operates six field hospitals in rebel-held areas and supports 70 medical facilities in other, contested areas of the country along with regions controlled by either the government or the rebels. The government will not grant the group working permission, forcing it to surreptitiously bring in supplies; with permission supplies can be brought into clinics in days, not weeks.

"There are more checkpoints, and it's harder and harder to get supplies in", said Mr. Stokes. Terrorists detonated explosives on the roofs of churches in the village of Yabroud as Muslims celebrated Eid al-Adha, The Feast of Sacrifice. These Islamists were feasting on the sacrifice of Christian churches in their celebration.

The government has bombed areas near Damascus and the southern city of Daraa. While Assad attended holiday prayers in a Damascus mosque, sitting cross-legged on the floor, in the front row of worshippers, sending his message of "business as usual", while he destroys greater Syria.

"We feel bad, we feel bad because everyone here has lost his home and family members and his money", said Ibrahim Oweis, a refugee from Damascus, sitting in the Zaatari tent camp in Jordan, home to over 120,000 refugees.