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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Starving In Syria, But Still Plenty Of Money For Weapons |
| 2010-06-28 |
| Drought-ravaged areas of Syria continue to face “catastrophe' with tens of thousands of malnourished people excluded from international relief efforts, according to the head of the United Nation's World Food Programme (WFP) in Damascus. Muhannad Hadi, who is leading the WFP's emergency response plan in Syria, said 110,000 severely impoverished people would not receive aid, despite UN officers identifying them as needing help. Describing conditions in drought-hit eastern regions as “a nightmare', Mr Hadi said the WFP was unable fulfill its responsibilities to desperately poor communities because of a funding shortfall. The UN agency has received less than half of the US$22 million (Dh81m) required to support 300,000 vulnerable people this year and, as a result, has carried out drastic cutbacks in its aid programme. Global economic difficulties and lingering political tensions between Syria and the United States, have both been suggested as reasons for donors' unwillingness to give the additional $12.2m. The WFP began distributing emergency food packages earlier this month in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Hasaka, three vast semi-arid provinces in eastern Syria that were once the nation's breadbasket. The aid scheme, the second of its kind here since last year, was originally scheduled to run until August but UN officials now say the need is such that it could be extended until October, if money can be found. Estimates vary but as many as a million people may have fled the land in Syria's so-called Jazeera region as a result of three consecutive years of crippling drought. Some 160 villages have been abandoned entirely, researchers say, their residents moving to already over-populated urban centres in search of work. Squalid camps of rural migrants have sprung up on the outskirts of Damascus and other cities. The UN reports that 40,000 families have left the once-lush farming areas, a number likely to amount to more than 300,000 individuals In addition to handing out packages of basic supplies such as oil, rice, flour and salt, the WFP has provided thousands of pregnant and nursing women with nutritional supplements, in order to prevent growth abnormalities in their children. Syrian government figures suggest wheat production in 2010 will be cut by half from its 2007 level, forcing the country – once self-sufficient in wheat – to again rely on expensive imports it can ill afford to pay for. A recent €2 million (Dh9m) donation from the European Union had come as a crucial lifeline for the aid effort, Mr Hadi said, propped up by a large shipment of dates from Saudi Arabia. If money is not raised soon, Mr Hadi said, the rural communities in eastern Syria would be faced with an even bigger problem next year. The Syrian government, weighed down by heavy budget deficits and with dwindling oil revenues, has taken steps to ease the burden on farmers, including providing cut-price seeds, rescheduling loan repayments and drawing up new irrigation blueprints. One large-scale irrigation scheme is being supported by Kuwait. Earlier this month Abdullah al Dardari, Syria's deputy prime minister for economic affairs, announced plans to increase investment in the Jazeera areas and to build a dam, in an effort to provide long-term solutions to poverty and an over-reliance on apparently unsustainable agriculture. Critics of the government, including leading Syrian academics, accuse it doing too little, too late to head off the farming crisis. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |
| #5 It's not a bug: it's a feature. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2010-06-28 20:48 |
| #4 f money is not raised soon, Mr Hadi said, the rural communities in eastern Syria would be faced with an even bigger problem next year. Eastern Syria... I assume that would be largely Kurds and Arab Shiites. |
| Posted by: Free Radical 2010-06-28 15:43 |
| #3 Just another example of prioritizing Death over Life... |
| Posted by: imoyaro 2010-06-28 15:21 |
| #2 Oh don't worry 3dc the good ol US willl cough up the money. Even though we have hungry and homeless in our own nation the gov. never misses an oppurtunity too give the cash too a third world dictatoship. |
| Posted by: chris 2010-06-28 12:52 |
| #1 They could ask their best buddies Iran and Hamas for food. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2010-06-28 10:59 |