The snow that has brought delight to people living in the north of the Kingdom has brought misery to displaced Syrians inside and outside their war-torn country. Refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan have been subjected to torrential downpours, flooding tent cities and often ruining the few precious possessions the inhabitants managed to bring with them. It is as if the malignant poison of the Assad regime's brutal attempt to crush its own people has leached up into the skies to compound the horrors that refugees have to face. Moreover, the UN's World Food Program has warned that some one million Syrians, who have fled the worst of the fighting but stayed within their country's borders, are facing severe hunger simply because it is no longer possible to transport the necessary amount of emergency food around the country. Most international shipping agents have closed down their operations in the key port of Tartus which was the main conduit for aid shipments. They have withdrawn employees because it is no longer possible to guarantee their safety. The World Food Program itself has pulled its people out of Homs, Aleppo and Qamishli, as well as Tartus, in response to the rapidly degenerating security situation. The local Red Crescent has been primarily responsible for the movement and distribution of food and medicine and for providing shelter to internal refugees. Its trucks have been targeted in the fighting and many routes within the country have become impassible. Now it seems that, in any event, there will not be enough aid for them to distribute. What is so striking is the total disinterest of the Assad regime in the care of citizens whom it claims to be protecting from “massive interference by foreign terrorists.” If Damascus were genuinely concerned for Syria, and were also still the real government, it would be focusing part of its attention on looking after the helpless people within its own borders. It has not done so. Nor indeed has it sought to make propaganda out of the terrors and hardship being experienced by its citizens. This is because the regime knows, as indeed does the whole world, that it itself is almost entirely responsible for the massive disruption that has been visited on the lives of ordinary people. Besides, the regime sees the great majority of refugees as sympathizing with the insurrection and therefore cares nothing for their fate. Moreover, if the homeless and desperate who are sheltering in territory lost to Assad's forces impose a burden on the rebels that now control it, then doubtless the government sees this as a highly desirable bonus. What his guns and warplanes cannot destroy, Assad will willingly see eliminated by starvation and disease. In yet one more dimension, this bloody regime demonstrates its utter moral bankruptcy. Yet international condemnation is not going to feed and care for a million Syrians in appalling conditions. Someone has to try and persuade Assad to facilitate the desperately-needed aid work of the Red Crescent, working with the World Food Program. The Russians look to be the only option. If food and medicine could now be landed at the Russian naval base at Tartus and picked up by the Red Crescent, there is a chance that the horrors of disease and starvation among refugees could be avoided. Or does Moscow care even less about the fate of ordinary Syrians than Assad?
