Syrian Aid Apathy

"The situation in Syria is as close to hell as we are likely to find on this Earth."
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

"After almost five years of fighting, it's pretty incredible that as we come here in London in 2015, the situation on the ground is actually worse."
"With people reduced to eating grass and leaves and killing stray animals in order to survive on a day-to-day basis, that is something that should tear at the conscience of all civilized people and we all have a responsibility to respond to it."
"We have agreed that we are engaged in a discussion about how to implement the ceasefire specifically as well as some immediate, possible confidence-building steps to deliver humanitarian assistance."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"What they [Syrian regime, Russian forces, Iranian al Quds forces] want to do in Aleppo today is exactly what they did in Madaya before, a siege of starvation."
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu 

Syrians fleeing Aleppo gather in front of the Bab al-Salama border crossing with Turkey

The UN sponsored a meeting in London where world leaders pledged over ten billion in aid of refugees from the Syrian civil war. At the same time they indulged in the rhetoric of bumph of ending that brutal conflict, hoping that a peace process could take place which appears to be going nowhere, to no one's surprise. The rebels have insisted, with good reason, that they would consider attending only if and when the regime stopped its bombing. And the regime said they would attend, but they continued murderously bombing.

Over 4.6-million Syrians have so far filtered desperately out of Syria to find haven in neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, straining those countries' humanitarian resources to their limits. They have gone on to perilous journeys at sea and overland to invade Europe, looking for shelter from the disasters their lives have become, and Europe is desperately attempting to cope with their destabilizing endless surge for safety.

Donor countries are finding their capacity for giving to be near depletion, but they are pledging anew regardless. The universal and collective vehicle whereby intervention could take place to halt the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from destroying his own Sunni Syrian citizens' lives has simply not been discovered; necessary resolute action at an early stage was bypassed and now the world is in the throes of witnessing medieval butchery on a grand scale carried out by a sovereign head of state.

In Kuwait last year the amount raised to support Syrian refugees and the countries sheltering them came to half of its target which meant that cuts to refugee food aid resulted. "Humanitarian aid is always just a quick fix, and never enough", said Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, deploring the obvious; that the world had demonstrated a "lack of political action and ambition to resolve the crisis."

A Syrian man comforts a boy amid the rubble of buildings following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Al Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on February 4, 2016. Thaer Mohammed/AFP

While 30 heads of government or heads of state attended the London gathering, Russia felt the event insignificant enough to merit only the presence of its ambassador to London, Alexander Yakocenko; neither President Putin nor any senior minister was available to show their concern for the unspeakable humanitarian crisis. Of course, Russia is now hugely adding by its military presence supporting the regime, to that same crisis.

But Moscow did alert all those who might be interested that in their opinion "reasonable grounds" exist to suspect that Turkey is preparing for a military invasion across the border into Syria. Images in their possession show that transportation infrastructure has been built on the border that could accommodate troop movement, according to spokesman Maj.Gen.Igor Konashenkov. And Russia knows all about troop buildups at borders threatening neighbouring states.