Starving in Syria

There is a huge refugee camp just outside Damascus, and for some weeks now the Syrian authorities have been denying access to UN food packages. Yesterday it was announced that the food had run out in the camp, and now thousands of people face the grim prospect of death by starvation, widely acknowledged to be one of the most horrible ways to die.


Starvation as a weapon of war: there's nothing new about it. Cruel leaders have engineered starvation in their opponents for millennia. In the 20th century Stalin did it to Ukraine (it was "the" Ukraine then) in the 1930s, putting future premier Nikita Kruschev in charge of the process designed to bring about mass murder. He did his job well: over a million people died as a direct result of his policies.


Now Assad uses the same method to bring the dissident factions under control in "his" country. I suppose when they're all dead he'll have won. And Russia still supports him. This is terribly, terribly wrong and the nations of the West should rise up in their opposition to these disgraceful plans so readily endorsed by Putin and his pals in the Kremlin.


Here in the West we don't fully understand exactly what is going on in Ukraine- it seems the ultra-right is now in control of the country, or at least those bits Russia isn't encouraging to split off and re-unite with the Motherland. Just who holds the moral high ground isn't easy to say. But in Syria it's much easier. Assad is using techniques that should bring down the wrath of the entire world on him. But when is it going to happen? You see, deprived of food, people die. Quite quickly.