To protect against attacks, aboveground hospitals added layer after layer of fortifications. “They want to make it impossible for people to live outside of government-held areas,” Qaddour said. Civilians must live near places where they can access the basic necessities of life, Qaddour explained, and in the middle of a war, medical care is a top priority.īy targeting hospitals, regime forces are destroying lifelines and forcing people out of their homes. They’re targeting life - the very basic needs of life,” said Jomana Qaddour, co-founder of Syria Relief and Development, a nonprofit which has operated humanitarian programs in Syria since 2011, in an interview with FP. “They’re targeting schools, they’re targeting infrastructure. The attacks are part of a total assault on civilian life in rebel-held areas. The more Syrian hospitals burrowed underground seeking protection, the harder Russian forces sought to hit them. In April, one medical facility was attacked every 29 hours. Those attacks on hospitals dramatically increased in frequency once Russia waded into the fray in the fall of 2015. Assad regime and Russian forces were behind 91 percent of those attacks, according to the report the Islamic State sometimes kidnaps doctors but has no airforce capable of aerial assaults. Since 2011, 454 strikes have targeted 310 medical facilities, according to a May 2016 report released by the Syria Campaign, an advocacy group that works to protect Syrian civilians. In addition to military campaigns against rebel groups, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have deliberately targeted medical facilities, schools, and infrastructure throughout opposition-held regions. More than 4.8 million Syrians have fled the country, pouring into neighboring countries and Europe. The Syrian civil war is the 21 st century’s deadliest conflict so far, with more than 450,000 killed and 12 million displaced. As a result, aid groups worry that reduced funding will put innocent lives at risk, exacerbate the refugee crisis, and allow extremist groups to fill the void. grants have helped make these expensive protections possible, but USAID faces drastic budget cuts as part of President Donald Trump’s America First platform. “Field hospitals inside of Syria have quite literally been driven underground into caves and into basements.”īut now those efforts could be endangered. “Healthcare in Syria has been weaponized,” said Kathleen Fallon, a co-author of the Syria Campaign report, speaking at an event hosted by the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. To save patients and medical workers, staff have moved entire hospitals underground into basements and caves, constructing military-like fortifications to try to keep operating even as the bombs keep falling. The intentional destruction of hospitals is one of the most important factors driving Syrians out of their country, fueling the largest global migrant crisis since World War II. “There are no elevators to bring the patients down, so you are carrying them down the stairs.” “You have to bring trolleys and bring unconscious patients out,” Hariri explained in a phone interview with Foreign Policy magazine. The intensive care unit is especially nightmarish during an attack. He picked it up, put it in a small box, and later returned it to the hospital.
As he fled, he discovered a human brain on the street outside. Once, while Hariri was visiting a nearby medical facility, it too was bombed. One patient pulled a tube out of his own body to flee a hospital as it was bombed. He’s seen patients die on operating tables during attacks. Mahmoud Hariri, a surgeon born and raised in Syria, has lost track of how many times his hospital in Aleppo has been bombed since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.
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