The Telegraph
Britain must ensure that emergency supplies are air-dropped to starving Syrian civilians, Lord Ashdown said on Monday, amid signs that the United Nations is retreating from a promise to begin deliveries this week.
An international plan to provide desperately-needed aid drops by Wednesday was thrown into doubt when Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, said this would be too dangerous without the approval of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Syrian government has previously allowed air drops to Deir Ezzor - one of only three areas under its control which are surrounded by rebels. Another 49 areas – with a total population of over a million - are under siege by Mr Assad’s forces, placing their inhabitants at risk of starvation.
The regime has shown no willingness to allow air drops to these locations. Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, said that Britain must ensure that emergency deliveries go ahead anyway, in accordance with the plan.
“The UK helped secure this important agreement, setting a 1st June deadline for aid getting to people living under medieval-style sieges in Syria,” he said. “The UK has to see that this international commitment to the people in desperate need is fulfilled.”
Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, had described the agreement, reached on May 17, as an “important step forward” that would save “countless thousands of lives”.
The most extreme effects of Syria’s sieges have been felt in Madaya, a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border, where scores of people have starved to death.
Air drops are seen as a tactic of last resort because they are fraught with technical and logistical difficulties. But their advocates point to the failure of alternative options.
Earlier this month, the people of Daraya, a rebel-held area of Damascus two miles from the aid warehouses in the city centre, were promised their first relief convoy for almost four years. Although the UN secured the regime’s permission to make the journey, the convoy was turned away and Daraya was immediately shelled, killing a father and son as they waited for the aid which never arrived.
Lord Malloch Brown, a former deputy secretary general of the UN, said the Syrian government had made a “mockery” of the agreement that life-saving food and medicine must be allowed into besieged areas.
“The lives of innocent men, women and children hang in the balance,” he said. "If the Syrian government is allowed to veto even this ‘last resort’ of aid delivery, then we risk being set back years in our efforts to help those being starved to death. The time for action is now.”
As Syria’s war continues for a sixth year, almost half a million people have been killed and another 4.5 million driven out of the country. Mohammed Alloush, the chief opposition negotiator, has resigned his position, citing a lack of faith in UN-sponsored efforts to end the fighting.
Earlier this month, a surge in bloodshed around the shattered city of Aleppo wrecked a 10-week truce sponsored by Washington and Moscow that had allowed peace talks to continue.
But more than 160,000 Syrian civilians are now camped out along the Turkish border, trapped by fighting between Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and Syrian rebels mounting a last stand against the terrorist group.