Baladi News – Yasser al-Atrash
Representative of the Russian Federation at the UN Security Council said that Russia would approve dropping humanitarian aid to the besieged areas in Syria if it is safe to do so!
Diplomats attending a closed-door meeting for the Security Council on Friday said that Stephen O'Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told the Council that the United Nations would ask the Syrian government on Sunday to approve the process of transferring humanitarian aid by air and dropping it on the besieged areas.
Assad’s government gave consent for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send humanitarian aid convoys to at least 11 of the besieged areas this June after the United States and Britain had called for air dropping humanitarian aid loads.
Indeed, the UN aid started to arrive in some of the besieged areas around Damascus, such as Muadamiyat al-Sham and Darayyaa. Last Wednesday, the first aid shipment in four years reached Darayya, but it was completely void of basic foodstuffs. Rather, it included "mosquito nets" to protect against insect bites, pesticides, and detergents, which appeared as a continuation of the international community disregard for the lives of the besieged and deviation from the real objectives of the international resolutions, which has always been the method followed by Assad’s regime.
However, better quality and quantity aid is flowing in Muadamiyat al-Sham as the city decided to surrender by raising the regime flag over its highest building in return for allowing the entry of relief. For the aid supply to continue flowing, the city also signed an instrument of surrender that provides for the declaring the names of the “armed men” as well as the types and numbers of their weapons and driving those who refuse conciliation out of the city.
Nevertheless, the regime would ask for more, as can be deduced from the disappearance of most of the flour that was scheduled to enter the city on Friday, which was ignored by both the regime and the United Nations.
Hence, It has become clear that the United Nations put, or is trying to put, the fate of the Syrian people in the hands of the regime by stipulating the entry of aid as a fundamental condition in Geneva negotiations, then showing the impossibility of delivering them without the consent and coordination with Assad’s regime, which was expressly stated by the United Nations envoy, Staffan de Mistura.
It seems that Mr. de Mistura wants to send us back in time to the first week of the Syrian revolution, impersonating Bothaina Shaaban, the regime consultant that stated that behind the demonstrations were pure economic demands, to which the demonstrators responded by shouting “Syrian people are not hungry”.
However, it seems that death has become a reality after five years of war, and that Mr. de Mistura wants to change the whole matter to a story of feeding the hungry and rescuing the besieged, partnering with Assad rather than treating him as a killer, or at least, a side in the equation of war and peace.