Syrian-Kurdish refugees stand by a mountain of coats provided by the United Nations in northern Iraq. (Getty Images)
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
on December 29, 2013 at 7:00 AM, updated December 29, 2013 at 7:06 AM
The Jersey Journal
President Obama took a moment in his recent news conference to congratulate himself for his efforts to rid Syria of chemical weapons. Give him that. Despite the criticism over his red line, it did galvanize international efforts to get those weapons out of the regime’s hands, and that will save many Syrians from a particularly gruesome death.
But what is that worth if the regime continues its campaign of genocide through other means? When a child dies of starvation, the absence of chemical weapons is no consolation. When a family is forced into a squalid refugee camp, it hardly matters which weapon drove it to such desperation.
Syria is today’s answer to Darfur and Rwanda. It is a genocide that the world is watching, paralyzed by reluctance to become entangled in a messy civil war.
Our hope is that in 2014 Obama gets religion on this and launches a humanitarian relief effort that measures up to this historic challenge. That could mean establishing no-fly zones where the regime is bombing civilians, or establishing protected zones for refugees near the borders, or breaking the regime’s barricades by dropping food and medicine by air. It is time, at least, to ask the Pentagon for options and start that debate.
The United States can’t end this civil war. We are a depleted nation after the bitter fights in Afghanistan and Iraq. And with jihadists now playing an outsized role in the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, we have few friends on either side.
An international conference planned for late January is unlikely to produce a breakthrough, given that Assad’s grip on power has been reinforced this year by aid from Iran and Hezbollah.
But the carnage in Syria has reached the stage where it’s immoral to turn away. The regime is now using starvation as a weapon of war, blockading city neighborhoods and stopping aid workers as they try to bring in food or medicine. Some of the jihadi rebel groups are accused of similar crimes.
The International Rescue Committee stockpiled 300,000 doses of polio vaccine after learning of fresh outbreaks in Syria, but it has been unable to deliver them.
"We are going back to the dark ages, really, when civilians were targeted — that’s happening — when aid workers are targeted, when there are religious edicts that it’s all right to eat cats and dogs because of the scale of the shortage of food, and now the return of polio," the IRC’s David Miliband told the BBC.
Roughly one in 10 Syrians have fled the country, most of them to squalid refugees camps in Jordan and Turkey. Three times that number are homeless but still living in Syria. In all, the United States estimates that 9.3 million Syrians are in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
This is death and suffering on a horrifying scale, and it is likely to get worse this winter. On behalf of the civilians caught in this barbaric crossfire, the United States needs to urgently step up its efforts.
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