Spotlight: Syrian humanitarian file between politicization, people's suffering

Syria's five-year-old conflict has developed one of the world's worse humanitarian crisis since the World War II, with people caught up in the middle of the crushing fighting, sectarian rivalries, and siege.

Each party of the conflict accuse the other of capitalizing on the humanitarian crisis to achieve political gains, but despite all of the wrangling, the people are paying a steep price for the never-ending conflict.

Since the early days of the conflict, the armed rebel groups have started appearing and taking hold in largely residential areas across the country. They would fire on the regime positions from civilian districts, and when the response to their fire would come, they would go on cameras and accuse the government forces of massacring people.

None of them actually took responsibility for taking cover in residential areas, as if they think that it's their given right to shell and never receive any reprisal.

Same thing happened with some mosques in rebel-held areas where the opposition activists accused the government forces of deliberately shelling worship places, but they never confessed that rebel snipers sometimes used the mosques' minarets as a high ground for targeting Syrian soldiers.

In the tit-for-tat shelling and the rebels' use of residential areas as bases, they have brought unimaginable suffering to the people.

Throughout the last few years, several protests erupted in rebel-held areas, most notably in the Eastern Ghouta countryside of the capital Damascus.

The people were protesting the poverty and hunger, accusing the rebels of keeping food supplies to themselves without caring about the civilians.

In a video circulated recently online, Zahran Alloush, the late commander of the Islam Army, a main rebel group in control of large swathes of Eastern Ghouta, appeared wrangling with another rebel commander over the situation in Ghouta.

The other commander was speaking of the millions of U.S. dollars that reach the Islam Army each month in Ghouta, while the people are suffering from hunger.

Alloush's response was that the millions of U.S. dollars that reach the group are for the soldiers of the Islam Army, not for the Ghouta.

After the video went viral, people and observers started wondering, if this rebel group is receiving millions of dollars each month, why the people in Ghouta are suffering.

Only one explanation makes sense, that these rebels are capitalizing on the suffering of the people and using them as shields and propaganda materials, and in fact they only care about themselves and the families of their fighters.

One Syrian humanitarian worker told Xinhua recently on condition of anonymity that large chunk of the aid that enters rebel-held areas goes to the rebels and their families.

In government-controlled areas, the opposition rebels have carried out several suicide car bombings against security and military positions, which are also largely located in civilian areas.

When civilian casualties fall, the radical rebels would say "if they were good people, they would go to heaven, and if bad they would go to hell."

While the first side, which is the opposition rebels, has apparently used the civilians as shields and a crying face for publicizing their case and draw in international sympathy, the government side has opted to lay siege on rebel-held areas across the country, to coerce the rebels into surrendering themselves.

But in the course of the long sieges, people in rebel-held areas have starved almost to death, with no proper food, medicine or healthy environment.

In some besieged rebel-held areas, people have actually started eating tree leaves, and stray cats, let alone the sickness that have started developing in their communities.

In cases where the civilians were allowed to leave their besieged neighborhoods, they were not allowed to bring back enough food for them, as the checkpoints would confiscate any extra food, so that the fighter may not get it.

In Qudsaya in Damascus' countryside, the rebels have reportedly breached a truce they concluded with the government forces, prompting the later to re-impose a siege on that area.

The people were the main affected by the siege.

In the midst of the crushing humanitarian crisis, which has also resulted in a massive exodus toward Europe, voices from both conflicting parties accused the international community of being a reason behind the deteriorating humanitarian situation.

On the rebels' side, the militiamen have assigned the blame on the international community for not helping in removing the administration of President Bashar al-Assad by force and end the conflict.

For the government side, there have been several instances where blames were assigned on the West for politicizing the humanitarian crisis.

Local observers and analysts believe that Western countries often use their rhetoric about human rights violations from the government side every time the army achieves important gains.

Maher Murhej, a Syrian politician and head of the Youth Party, told Xinhua that "some Western and regional countries use the humanitarian file to practice pressure on the Syrian government, in retaliation to the achievements of the Syrian army."

"There are countries, mostly Westerns, that don't want to see a solution for the Syrian crisis, and that's why they use the humanitarian file as a wild card they use anytime they feel their interests are threatened," he said.

He added that the humanitarian file is also being used to push the government to give more concessions at the negotiation tables in Geneva.

Murhej gave an example that the international community always cast a light about the areas, which are besieged by the government, but make almost no mention of others besieged and shelled by the rebels.

Like in the besieged rebel-held areas in Zabadani and Madaya, those towns have become the talk of humanitarian organizations and Western countries in general, which were demanding the government to loosen its siege for the sake of the people.

Still, such countries were shy to point out to a similar situation in the northwestern province of Idlib, where the al-Qaida-linked groups have for long been besieging the Shiite towns of Kafraya and Foa, both are loyal to the government.

Murhej said the government was more positive in terms of dealing with the humanitarian side.

Other observers said many women and children hosted in displacement shelters inside Syria, the government knows that some of those are families to rebel fighters, but they are still hosting them and dealing with them as Syrian citizens, the way it should do.

Sharif Shihadeh, a former lawmaker, told Xinhua that the "West has tried repeatedly to use the humanitarian file to practice pressure and corner the Syrian government, while in fact the tough humanitarian situation and the high prices are due to the unjust sanctions the West imposed on Syria."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said recently that 13.2 million people need immediate humanitarian assistance in Syria, of whom six million are children.

Now in its sixth year, the conflict in Syria is the largest and most complex humanitarian crisis in the world, with no end in sight, the ICRC said. Endit