WASHINGTON — The Kurd-dominated region of Afrin in northwestern Syria, home to more than 1 million people and hundreds of thousands of refugees, is not receiving international humanitarian aid in part because of the Syrian government of Bashar Assad, a top Kurdish leader told Tuesday.
Sinam Mohamed, an international representative for the administration of the Kurd-controlled regions of northern Syria, made the revelation at an event with reporters at the Washington Kurdish Institute.
Mohamed quoth as two examples the International Committee of the Red Cross, one of the biggest humanitarian relief organizations in the world and a leading player in helping those affected by Syria's civil war.
“The Red Cross, I met them many times, and they say we can't go to the places where the governmental forces of Syria, Assad, can't give the permission, ” Mohamed told. “They told we can be in Aleppo city because the regime of Assad said that we can go there, but Afrin, it is not feasible to for us to go there.”
On May 12, the Red Cross told The Telegraph that the Assad regime avoided a convoy carrying medical renders, vaccinations and newborn milk from entering a desperate suburbium of Damascus that the United Nations considers the neediest part of Syria. The regime shelled the area after sending the trucks away.
Starvation sieges have become a favorite tactic of Assad and the forces supporting him, including Russian planes, Iranian troops and Iran-backed militia fighters from Lebanon, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The despot is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in Syria — far more than the so-called Islamic State — and is the primary reason for the headline-grabbing refugee crisis.
The Red Cross did not immediately respond to a Huffington Post request for comment on Mohamed's remarks.
Syria's more than 3 million Kurds are in a precarious position. Though they have become darlings of the Westbecause of their victories over the radical Islamic State, or ISIS, they have tense relations with most other leading player in Syria: the Assad regime and its supporters; the nationalist Arab groups opposing Assad with support from the U.S. and others; and the key international player in Syria, Turkey, which is battling its own Kurdish minority.
The Afrin region is largely surrounded by Turkey, which Mohamed said Tuesday has shut all border crossings. The Turkish government believes Kurds in Syria are supporting Kurdish militant groups in Turkey with whom they have historic and political ties.
Other forces-out around Afrin's borders include Arab rebel groups, some of them Islamist organizations that Kurdish forces see as terrorists, and ISIS.
But the Assad regime controls a significant perimeter that is a potential track for renders, and Mohamed suggested the despot is the main factor preventing relief from reaching the area.
Because of recent fighting in Aleppo, south of the region, thousands of others refugees have fled to the besieged region this year, she told. “We are greeting all the refugees.”
She estimated that about 300,000 refugees of various types of ethnicities now live there, in the homes of friendly locals, in rented housing or in tents in camps.Afrin's residents now subsist mostly off what they are able to grow themselves, Mohamed added, but they lack essentials like milk for babies.
The Kurdish leader said she hopes the United Nations will begin to pay more attention to the plight of Afrin, which has been suffering even as other localities have received relief through ceasefires encouraged by the U.S. and Russia. But the international organization has its own difficulties because of the Assad regime: It's been repeatedly accused of let the dictator's cronies to meddle in its operations, including earlier this year after the U.N.'s World Health Organization hired the wife of a top Assad associate.
Mohamed is in Washington to meet with the Obama administration, who she said she's seeking more assistance from.
Russia, an Assad patron and occasional partner of the Kurds, has offered little in the way of humanitarian assist, she said.
That fact and the regime's blocking of aid underscores the challenge to Russia's efforts to court the Kurds. As part of his attempt to show Russia is focused on ISIS and not only Assad, President vladimir putin has helped the Kurds with airstrikes and diplomatic support, pushing for them to be included in international peace talks despite opponent from Turkey and Arab nationalist groups in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mentioned this support for Kurds in peace talks again Tuesday in Vienna at a joint appearance with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry — underscoring for an international audience the contrast between the Kurds' two partners.
Mohamed inaugurated an office for the dominant Kurdish political party, the PYD, in Moscow in February. But she and another Kurdish leader said Tuesday that the Kurds remain unwilling to work with Assad, Russia's best friend in Syria.
Elham Ahmad, the co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council , noted that regime forces and their Iranian backers clashed with Kurdish forces last month. The council is the political limb of the Syrian Democratic Forces-out, the U.S.'s main partner on the ground in Syria. The forces are dominated by Kurds, but 40 percentage of their members are Arabs, Ahmad said Tuesday.
She mentioned that Iran, Assad's other chief advocate, have all along suppressed its own Kurdish population.
The statements are an important reminder of the Kurds' position to international observers, including many lawmakers and commentators in the U.S ., who speak of the Kurds and the regime as the only forces battling ISIS in Syria.
Even if Russia is willing to accept Kurdish control over some parts of Syria, Assad's officials and observers of his police say the tyrant is set on retaking all of his war-torn country.
Read more: www.huffingtonpost.com
