Feature: Food becomes dream for besieged Syrians in conflict zones

The 14-year-old Amani said her dream was to become a doctor. As the dense smoke of war engulfed her little town in eastern Damascus, she had shifted her dream into just finding bread to fill her empty stomach.

"We have suffered from hunger for over a year and a half... all of us were starving and we even had to sell our house to get food," the girl said with tears that soon grew into wrenching sobs, as she recalled the bitter times of starvation.

Amani, along with her parents and four brothers and sisters, had been evacuated from the rebel-held town of Bait Sawa in the Eastern Ghouta countryside of the capital Damascus, as part of the efforts exerted by the Ministry of National Reconciliation and affiliated committees that had worked to make it possible for people in conflict zones to leave into shelters inside the capital.

"Once we were evacuated and reached this shelter, my little sister asked me whether we had arrived at paradise after she saw the food and water here," Amani continued, rubbing her eyes and trying to look more collected than she really felt.

She said the crisis had destroyed her dreams, wondering how her father could ever be able to provide again for her and her siblings after selling everything he had ever possessed.

The family now lives in a displacement shelter, once was a school, in the suburb of Qudsaya, west of Damascus. About 300 families of 800 members, one third of them are children, reside in that center after being evacuated from several towns in Eastern Ghouta.

The young girl lashed out at the rebels in her town, saying they are capitalizing on the crisis to make money and control the people there.

She added that the rebels demand unreasonable prices for basic food items, such like one kilograms of sugar, which is sold in government-controlled areas at 125 Syrian pounds (0.5 U.S. dollars) while in her town the rebels sell it for 6,000 Syrian pounds (24 U.S. dollars).

"I was craving for sugar back in the town that I swore I would eat a whole kilo of sugar alone when I get out," she said.

Amani said that she and her family used to fast three days and eat on the fourth day, noting that "we are happy we got here to this shelter. They got our names enlisted for school programs and I wish all of the people in Ghouta could leave and come here."

At what appeared to be the leisure time, Amani's family was sitting on a thin brown rug at a corner in what used to be the school yard in that center.

Her mother was at first reluctant to speak out about her agony, but the tears and defiance of her daughter apparently injected some courage into her veins.

"The situation in Ghouta is indescribable... our worse enemies were the cold and sickness," she said, recounting how her younger daughter used to sleep with a bread loaf under her pillow so that she can eat cramps of it from time to time.

"The little girl used to put slices of papers in an empty dish or pot, pretending she is cooking potatoes after getting bored with the grass we used to collect and eat," she recounted.

The 32-year-old woman said she had lost about 40 kilos of her weight due to the hunger, saying "sometimes I would feel embarrassed of my body shape when my husband looked at me."

Her husband, who goes by the nom de guerre of Abu Omar, said he used to run a sawmill, with over 30 workers working for him ahead of the eruption of the nearly four-year-old crisis.

"We used to have a comfortable life but after three years of this crisis everything had changed and we had to sell all of the machines and the furniture of the house to get some food," he said.

"There were nights when everything I dreamed about was how to get some bread for my children."

The 40-year-old man said the warlords among the rebels in Ghouta used to humiliate the civilians while distributing some food to them, adding that with no medication service, he used herbs to treat his kids whenever some of them would get sick.

"I remained thinking over a year how could I leave Ghouta with all the roads there closed until we managed to leave through the al-Wafidin area to the Syrian army," he recounted.

He and other men in the shelter said the rebels in that part of the capital prevent men under 40 from leaving the area, hinting that they are using civilians there as shields.

"I say if the roads out of Ghouta were opened, no one will remain there. Everyone will run out of there but the armed rebels are preventing the people who want to leave," Abu Omar said.

Eastern Ghouta is a sprawling piece of land, largely agricultural, forming the eastern rim of Damascus. It includes many towns, mainly Douma and Jobar, both have earned a notorious reputation given the fact that both of them are considered bastions for an array of rebel groups, whose main theme is religious, not secular.

Such areas were the first to rise with the eruption of the anti-government protests and also were the first to hold up arms in the face of the government, responding to what activists used to say the harsh crackdown by the security forces on opposition activists and protesters.

The government troops managed during the past couple of years and after a series of operations to lay a siege on such areas to weaken the rebels inside, chocking off the entry of almost everything to those areas, except for the entry of some aid convoys by humanitarian organizations.

Pro-government reports, and stories told by some of the evacuees, suggest that the aid convoys used to be taken by the rebels, who distribute some of them to the civilians and keep the lion share to themselves and families.

The Eastern Ghouta is now besieged from the north, west and the south while the eastern side is opened to the Syrian desert which leads to the borders of Jordan, which has recently been accused by the Syrian government of facilitating the entry of support to the rebels in Syria, a claim totally denied by the Hashemite Kingdom.

As a result of the imposed siege and the rebels' intransigence, lives of ordinary people deteriorated and here came the efforts of the National Reconciliation Ministry and local delegations to propose evacuation of people with tough humanitarian situations. Such evacuations have boomed in the last few months.

According to Kuluna Shuraka opposition activists, around two million people used to live in the Eastern Ghouta ahead of the crisis, adding that over half of the population there left their homes.

The opposition activists blame the deteriorating situation there on the government troops' siege.

Still, as the army is evacuating people, battles and in some cases skirmishes are still taking place, not to mention the routine air raids on the rebel positions mainly in Douma, where opposition activists often report the killing of civilians as a result of such raids.

Recently, the army undertook a series of offensives and slightly advanced in some areas in Ghouta but the main bastions of Douma and Jobar are still with the rebels with no declared timeframe for a military operation that could see the return of those areas under the government control.

Muhammad al-Omari, an official at the Ministry of National Reconciliation, told Xinhua that his ministry is working to alleviate the suffering of the afflicted Syrians in all conflict-stricken areas, adding that the ministry's efforts are exerted in coordination with the Syrian army to evacuate the humanitarian cases from conflict zones.

"Local reconciliations start with convincing the armed men of laying down their weapons and returning to the government as well as dealing with the files regarding the evacuation of civilians from rebel-held areas," he said.

He accused the rebels of "using the civilians as human shields as well as stealing the aid convoys which enter their areas and sell it back to the civilians in high prices." Endit