Faizel Patel, 2016-07-22
As the Syrian conflicts continues in its fifth year, a US born journalist and documentary filmmaker in Syria has told Radio Islam that more needs to be done to educate the world about the Syrian crisis.
Syria’s civil war is the worst humanitarian crisis the world has ever seen with more than 250,000 Syrians that have been killed in the fighting and almost 11 million Syrians – half the country’s pre-war population – have been displaced from their homes.
While Families are struggling to survive inside Syria or make a new home in neighbouring countries, others are risking their lives on the way to Europe, hoping to find acceptance and opportunity.
Bilal Abdul Kareem who was injured during a drone strike attack says, life in Syria is very difficult, adding that while an airstrike in America will make front page news for a month, cities in Syria like Idlib and Aleppo are struck up to 14 times a day in broad daylight with little or no coverage.
“That’s like a local bully robbing the local bank in the middle of the day and getting on a bicycle and riding away with the money. That means he (Assad) has no fear for what he’s doing and he knows there’s not going to be any consequences.”
Kareem says the airstrikes target mostly civilian areas.
“There has been significant uptake of airstrikes that are going on. Yesterday I myself heard cluster bombs. The use of cluster bombs in a civilian populated area is a war crime.”
Kareem emphasizes that the solution to the Syrian conflict is not the West, because Russia and the US are joining forces to combat Jabhat al-Nusra, a group that hasn’t been connected to any attacks in the West or even outside the Syrian territories while ignoring Bashar al Assad whose killed a half million people.
“This has got to show you that any solution is not coming from the West. The Syrian people are not going to accept that there is going to be additional Syrian casualties so that America can carry out its war against Al-Qaeeda.”
He says the Syrian conflict will continue until a Muslim country decides to assist with state sponsored help.
“That includes militarily, financially and most importantly politically behind rebel forces. Because if you look at the situation, the rebels had been fighting against Bashar al Assad, the Hezbollah forces that have come from Lebanon, Russian forces, Iranian forces and they’d been able to fight them to a standstill. How they are able to do that? Only Allah knows.”
Asked about the attempted coup in Turkey last week, Kareem says the Syrian people adore the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“No one was happy to see what was attempted there in Turkey. That was just something that caught everybody by surprise and if Erdogan would have said ‘look we need the guys to come from Syria to come help us out,’ you would’ve seen lots of people lining up for it, they really like him that much. I think that Erdogan is a very decent person and probably one of the best, if not the absolute best leader of any of the Muslim countries around the world.”
According to the United Nations it will take $7.7 billion to meet the urgent needs of the most vulnerable Syrians in 2016.
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