Alle afventer – og frygter – en militær optrapning, som vil lægge nye humanitære byrder på verdenssamfundet – Jordan kan stadig tage flere flygtninge, mens et andet naboland, Libanon, har nået det absolutte mætningspunkt, hedder det i en analyse fra FN-bureauet IRIN.
ANTAKYA/DUBAI, 2 September 2013 (IRIN): Aid agencies responding to the Syrian crisis are updating contingency plans and pre-positioning stocks, warning that any US-led military action against Syria could lead to an increase in humanitarian needs.
“It is already a complex situation with profound humanitarian consequences,” said humanitarian coordinator Yacoub El Hillo, the highest ranking UN humanitarian official in Syria.
“If you are talking about five million people displaced (fordrevne) and two million people who are now refugees in neighbouring countries; if you have one million refugee children who are now away from their homes and their schools, this is already a dramatic situation”, noted he:
“So imagine if this is to be compounded by a military strike? It will only add to the suffering,” he told IRIN, citing possible displacement of civilians, increased exposure to risk, and reduction in service delivery.
“Disruption to life is likely to happen and this will produce a lot of difficulties for civilians, which means more challenges for the humanitarian community to cope [with] and to deliver under these very constrained circumstances.”
On 31 August, US President Barack Obama announced he would seek approval from Congress to take military action against Syrian targets, as punishment for an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government which the US says killed more than 1.400 people.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government denies responsibility for the attack.
Panikken breder sig i Damaskus
“There is a state of panic in Damascus,” according to Sham Land (ikke hans rigtige navn), an activist in Damascus who documents civilian casualties for the Syrian Network for Human Rights and uses a pseudonym for security reasons.
“People are lining up to get bread… Many people are preparing to leave the city, especially people who live near the government security buildings.”
In the past week, the value of the Syrian pound has depreciated (faldet) sharply, and fewer people are walking around on the streets or driving through the city in the evenings, Land, a 31-year-old former dentist, told IRIN via Skype.
“Some people are preparing food and storing it. If they have a house in the countryside, they are leaving to go there,” he said.
“Pro-Assad people” have started “running away and taking their families out of Damascus,” said Susan Ahmed (ikke hendes rigtige navn), 30, an activist living in a regime-held part of the city.
Regardless of their political beliefs, “people are afraid” and some are fleeing to “safer areas”, she added.
More than two years of conflict between government and rebel forces in Syria have killed over 100.000 people, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and driven more than six million from their homes, either internally or to neighbouring countries.
But the capital Damascus has been largely spared from the worst of the fighting.
Although limited and targeted strikes would be unlikely to cause a significant increase in humanitarian needs, aid workers said, “there is a lot of uncertainty about what the worst case is,” as one aid worker put it.
Libanon
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98685/analysis-readying-for-escalation-in-syria
