Russia's and Assad's War Crimes in Syria

POSTED BY: kpo
UPDATED: Monday, September 8, 2025 15:48
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KPO

Thursday, January 28, 2016 9:01 PM

Evidence that the UN is actually watering down its reports on Syria to appease the Syrian regime - references to 'sieges' and de-mining operations were scrubbed from its latest report:

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By comparing the final document to an earlier draft that was obtained by Foreign Policy, it is evident that 10 references to “sieged” or “besieged” areas, such as that in Madaya — the town in southwestern Syria that saw 23 people die of starvation over several months before the arrival of a U.N. aid convoy in mid-January — were removed. Gone was any mention of the program to clear mines and unexploded ordnance, such as the “barrel bombs” the regime drops indiscriminately on populated areas.

...

Some aid workers believe that the U.N.’s willingness to toe the Syrian government’s line is due to the international body’s fear of being booted out of Damascus. In a separate letter on Jan. 13, 112 relief workers from government-besieged areas complained bitterly that staff in the U.N.’s Damascus office “are either too close to the regime or too scared of having their visas revoked by the same powers that are besieging us.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/27/syria-madaya-starvation-united-nat
ions-humanitarian-response-plan-assad-edited/

The picture is a depressing one. The UN needs the cooperation of the Syrian regime to maintain its presence in the country, and to deliver aid to those desperately in need. So even as they watch starving children die before their eyes they still have to water down the wording in their reports so that the Syrian government and its allies escape the international condemnation they deserve.

SIGNYM

Thursday, January 28, 2016 10:13 PM

There are many areas that are beseiged by al Nusra, ISIL, and the various other jihadist groups and (sometimes) their FSA allies. To pretend that the Syrian government alone is responsible for all of the "hard to reach" areas is sheer nonsense. Scrubbing that info out of the UN reports protects ISIL and its backers as well.

I listened to an NPR report on that. They conflated ALL sieges under the Assad banner. Its very obvious that they're engaged in biased reporting.

An ACTUAL REPORT would talk about the numbers of people living in besieged ("hard to reach") areas and who was responsible, as well as the form of siege. For example, were residents prevented from escaping by sharpshooters embedded in the population? Were aid packages commandeered by specific groups? Or was this denial of permits to deliver aid?

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

KPO

Thursday, January 28, 2016 11:47 PM

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There are many areas that are beseiged by al Nusra, ISIL, and the various other jihadist groups and (sometimes) their FSA allies.

From the telegraph link above:

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The UN's humanitarian plans for Syria, leaked last week, also suggested that that the UN had censored itself by removing the words "siege" and "besieged" between the original draft and the final publication.

The plan is also careful to stress that areas are besieged not just by the regime, but also the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and non-Isil rebels. Yet the vast majority - 49 of the 52 at risk - are held by non-Isil rebels and surrounded by the regime.

49 of the 52 starved areas are rebel-controlled, starved by the regime, says the UN. There are a few Shia villages that are also being besieged by the rebels, which is not in any way excusable, but this appears to be retaliation for what is a mass starvation tactic by the Assad regime and its allies.

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I listened to an NPR report on that. They conflated ALL sieges under the Assad banner. Its very obvious that they're engaged in biased reporting.

According to the UN Assad is responsible for the vast majority. Even so most Western reporting I've seen has mentioned the few non Assad-implemented sieges as well.

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An ACTUAL REPORT would talk about the numbers of people living in besieged ("hard to reach") areas and who was responsible, as well as the form of siege. For example, were residents prevented from escaping by sharpshooters embedded in the population?

The UN answered all of this, in its reporting on Madaya:

The Government of Syria and allied forces have surrounded the area of Madaya and Bqine since July 2015. Since September 2015, these forces have imposed increasingly strict restrictions on humanitarian access, commercial traffic on freedom of movement for the civilians inside the enclave, under the control of several non-state armed groups since late 2012. Despite the existence of a local agreement since January 2015, the access restrictions imposed on Madaya have translated into a severe deterioration of the living conditions for the estimated 42,000 people trapped in Madaya and Bqine
http://www.unocha.org/aggregator/sources/85

So the UN blames Assad and his allies. Russian media has a different spin I'll bet, but I think I know which one is lying.

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Were aid packages commandeered by specific groups? Or was this denial of permits to deliver aid?

The UN makes it clear that it is Assad's "strict restrictions" (i.e. siege) that has caused the mass starvation. That doesn't preclude the rebel fighters commandeering food for themselves of course.

SIGNYM

Thursday, January 28, 2016 11:55 PM

But there are MANY MORE AREAS that are besieged. Areas besieged by jihadists and the so-called rebels. Areas that you're not told about. Areas that you don't think to think about.

Besieging a town is a terrible thing. Focusing on ONE town does a disservice to the others.

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The real story concerning the town of Madaya located on the Lebanese border is as follows. Madaya was the crossing point for many of these terrorists from Lebanon to Syria, and which, from 2011, had been under terrorist control. A ceasefire had been implemented to help residents in Kafraya and Faouah, two Syrian villages in the countryside of Idlib which were under the terrorists siege for eight months.

When the Syrian Army achieved success in Zabadani, the U.N. helped to have that ceasefire in Zabadni in exchange for helping Humanitarian aid to reach residents in those two villages, in which many of its kids lost their lives because of hunger, and illness, as well as the car bombs ...

When the terrorists in Madya found out about that ceasefire, their [terrorist] reaction was to put Madaya under siege as they didn’t want that ceasefire to be achieved. So Madaya became their hostage. They stole the people’s food and medicine and then sold it back to them at impossible-to-pay prices.

In Madaya, there are three factions of terrorists: 50% belonging to Al Nusra (affiliated with Al Qaeda), 30% to Ahrar Al Sham, and 10% to the Free Syrian Army; the very same ‘Free Syrian Army’ that began its operations by bombing Syria and executing officials and most of whose members became what is today referred to as ISIS.

Another point here that needs to be discussed is how the Western media used the Madaya crisis–meaning starvation of our residents here–as a platform for demonizing the Syrian government. In the same way they used media outlets to demonize the former Soviet Union by establishing Radio Free Europe, we now see the same media platforms aligning against Syria such as CNN, Aljazeera English, and many others who deliberately use false information and pictures in controlling the narrative. Where was the Western media when other towns were being besieged such as Deir Al Zour, Nobbul, and Zahra?

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/01/syria-under-siege-and-the-real-sto
ry-of-madaya.html

I don't think we're getting the full story here. Supposedly there are a lot of towns in the northwest that are being besieged by so-called rebels. I'll see if I can find that article again.

In addition, you could say that the entire nation of Syria is besieged, by the west, as it is under indiscriminate sanctions.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SIGNYM

Friday, January 29, 2016 12:25 AM

So, looking into this further, the BBC had what seems like a comprehensive report

I'm just going to pick out a few pieces here and there

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The [UN] organisation says only 10% of all requests for its convoys to hard-to-reach and besieged areas in Syria have been granted [ BY WHOM?] in the past year.

'Dire situation' in besieged villages
Which parts of Syria are affected?

According to the UN, those under siege include about 200,000 people in government-controlled areas of the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, which are besieged by Islamic State (IS) militants.

In the eastern Ghouta, a rebel stronghold outside Damascus, about 176,500 people are besieged by Syrian government forces in various locations.

In the suburb of Darayya and mountain town of Zabadani in Damascus Countryside province, about 4,000 and 500 people respectively remain besieged by government forces, the UN says.

Madaya, just to the south of Zabadani, has been under siege since July. The UN says about 42,000 people are trapped there, some of whom fled Zabadani.

In Foua and Kefraya, in Idlib province, some 12,500 people are estimated to be trapped by rebel groups and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front.

...

The commission says that a father drowned in March 2015 when attempting to swim across the River Euphrates from a besieged area of Deir al-Zour to find food for his children.

Snipers in the city have targeted and killed civilians seeking to escape, including children, it says, and in April 2015 a 13-year-old girl died of hunger there.

A resident of Madaya, Abdel Wahab Ahmed, told the BBC on Thursday that two people had died of starvation in the town on one day in January alone.

I still need to find that info about the northwest.

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SIGNYM

Friday, January 29, 2016 12:34 AM

And finally ... for now ..

ADEN, Yemen — While the media was flooded with images of the starving children of Syria, the thousands of children suffering from Saudi Arabia’s U.S.-backed onslaught on Yemen made far fewer headlines.

The mainstream media was eager to report on the struggle for survival in Madaya. The mountain town near Syria’s southwestern border was once known as a popular resort destination in the Middle East, but its population is now reportedly being starved under a siege by the Syrian army.

However, the actual situation is far more complex. The U.S.-supported, so-called “moderate” rebels including the Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, had first laid siege to the cities of Kefraya and Fua, leading to a retaliatory siege on Madaya by the Assad government. Those same rebel groups were also, in turn, responsible for allowing the starvation in Madaya to continue by occupying the city and keeping humanitarian aid out of reach of the populace as a strategic tactic. Additionally, many images used in media reports on Madaya turned out to be fake or misleading.

Meanwhile, far fewer journalists are covering the large-scale starvation and displacement taking place in Yemen, a situation caused by a bombing campaign and blockade led by Saudi Arabia and its allies and backed by U.S. military aid. The Nusra Front, one of the groups responsible for skyrocketing food prices in Madaya, also has the backing of the Saudi government, like many of the rebel forces in the region.

Saudi Arabia is currently engaged in a proxy war with Iran, who Riyadh blames, inaccurately, for the rise to power of the Houthis in Yemen and setbacks to the kingdom’s agenda in Syria, leading to a bombing campaign and embargo on crucial resources that began in April.

UNICEF reported in October that 537,000 Yemeni children were at risk of severe malnutrition nationwide, while Alexi O’Brien, reporting for Al-Jazeera in September, noted that the United Nations warned that 96,000 children were “starving and close to death” in the port city of al-Hodeidah, and an additional 8,000 children faced starvation in Aden in 2016.

The situation was so dire nationwide that, in June, the U.N. reported “that at least six million people in Yemen are in urgent need of emergency food and life-saving assistance, a new United Nations (UN) investigation has found … 10 out of Yemen’s 22 governorates are facing an ‘emergency level’ food security situation amid the ongoing conflict, including major areas like Aden, Taiz, Saa’da and Al Baida.” In July, Oxfam reported that the number of starving people in Yemen had topped 6 million — nearly half the country’s population of 13 million. Aid workers are struggling to reach the needy, with the World Food Programme reporting that it had served 3.5 million Yemenis by August.

While the suffering of the residents of Madaya is heart-wrenching, some critics have questioned the motives behind the media’s focus on this single town rather than suffering in Yemen or even elsewhere in Syria. Vladimir Safronkov, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the U.N. Security Council, lamented recently that the timing of the reports seemed calculated to undermine the budding peace process in Syria, according to a report from RT. “It looks like that, under the pretext of the deterioration of the situation in besieged cities, attempts are being made to undermine the launch of the inter-Syrian dialogue scheduled for January 25,” he told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Saturday.

Safronkov said the West practices a “double standard” by raising the alarm about Madaya while ignoring cities besieged by anti-Assad forces:

“Much is being said about Madaya, but not a word about the villages of Nubul and Az-Zahra in the province of Aleppo. And we are talking about the fate of tens of thousands of people.”

On Monday, Ben Norton, politics staff writer for Salon, cited the siege of Yemen, as well as Israel’s decade-long blockade of Gaza, when he questioned why some atrocities are condemned and others are “barely even

KPO

Friday, January 29, 2016 5:12 AM

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Areas besieged by jihadists and the so-called rebels. Areas that you're not told about. Areas that you don't think to think about.

Areas that you can't come up with any evidence for, or even name - they're so mysterious.

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In Foua and Kefraya, in Idlib province, some 12,500 people are estimated to be trapped by rebel groups

The two Shia villages I've already mentioned.

Not sure what else in that BBC article you wanted to highlight, as nothing in it really helped your case.

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Besieging a town is a terrible thing. Focusing on ONE town does a disservice to the others.

I'm focussing on the 52 towns and the party that is responsible for besieging 49 of them (the Assad regime).

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I don't think we're getting the full story here. Supposedly there are a lot of towns in the northwest...

"Supposedly". Rumours, and rumours of rumours. From blogs, no doubt.

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In addition, you could say that the entire nation of Syria is besieged, by the west, as it is under indiscriminate sanctions.

A desperate and weak attempt to deflect away from Assad and Putin's guilt.

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And finally ... for now ..

ADEN, Yemen

A desperate and off-topic attempt to deflect away from Assad and Putin's guilt.

SIGNYM

Friday, January 29, 2016 12:13 PM

First of all, KPO, it's very clear from the title of your thread that you're only interested in RUSSIA'S and SYRIA's war crimes. For some reason, you're not interested in anyone else's war crimes; why is that?

Anyway, I read your links carefully, and what I found was a pronounced emphasis on Assad and Madaya - yanno, your favored focus - and not much information about anything or anyone else. One article (FP) was full of "some say" and "some feel". The other (Telegraph) really minimized anyone else's contributions to the problem.

But in looking at the BBC article and just roughly totaling up their list, the other actors (yanno, the ones supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the USA) account for about half of the population under siege. Furthermore, the Syrian government has been pressured into allowing aid into Madaya, but ISIL/ Nusra/ FSA still haven't allowed any food into their areas of responsibility. When are you going to start agitating about that? Never?

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

SIGNYM

Saturday, January 30, 2016 7:28 PM

Meanwhile: "Rebels" war crimes in Syria. I put "rebels" in quotes because many of them are foreign actors from Iraq, Libya, Morocco, as well as CIA-funded actors.

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Hundreds of residents in the pro-regime a-Zahraa neighborhood in Homs city pitched tents and burned tires for the second day on Thursday of a sit-in demonstration. Protestors demanded the resignation of the provincial governor and other regime and security officials, reported pro-regime and pro-opposition media on Thursday.

The demonstrations follow a car bomb and a suicide attack at a regime checkpoint in the neighborhood that killed 24 people and injured more than 100 others on Tuesday reported the regime affiliated Organization of Syrian Arab Radio and TV (ORTAS) on Wednesday. The media outfit reported that “terrorists” with the Islamic State (IS) were behind the bombings.[Why did the authors put quotes around the word "terrorists"? It indicates a certain amount of disbelief or disagreement about the use of the word, but if ISIL is setting off car bombs, it seems to me they deserve the use of the unquoted word. So what does that say about the bias of the article?- SIGNY]

IS did in fact claim responsibility for the attack via its media affiliate Amaq on Tuesday.

The latest Islamic State attacks even on the periphery of the locked-down district of a-Zahraa has rattled residents. The twin bombings this week are the latest in a string of unclaimed car bombings that have rocked pro-regime neighborhoods in Homs over the past two years. In one infamous October 2014 incident, two explosions directed at a school killed more than 40 children.

http://syriadirect.org/news/pro-regime-reporter-in-homs-city-%E2%80%98
no-confidence%E2%80%99-in-security/

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

KPO

Monday, February 1, 2016 8:53 PM

Medecine Sans Frontieres from 2 days ago: 16 more die of starvation in Syrian government-starved Madaya:

http://news.yahoo.com/16-more-starve-death-syrias-besieged-madaya-msf-
083223561.html

Quote:
MSF said the additional deaths in Madaya brought to 46 the number of people reported to have died of starvation in the town since December.

It said real toll could be worse.

"The real number is almost certainly higher, as MSF is aware of reports of people dying of starvation in their homes."

This is happening to innocent men, women and children. In the 21st century.

Signy, if you are going to deflect away from this by accusing the rebels of atrocities equally as bad, then PROVIDE EVIDENCE. Not just rumour.

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