The horror of the Bosnian Muslim massacre of 1995 is being repeated today in Syria

Eastern Ghouta is another Srebrenica, we are looking away again

With every child who dies, with every act of brutality that goes unpunished, eastern Ghouta more closely resembles what Kofi Annan once called the worst crime committed on European soil since 1945. Eastern Ghouta is turning into Syria’s Srebrenica.



'It's not a war. It's a massacre': scores killed in Syrian enclave Read more

Like the Bosnian Muslim enclave in 1995, eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, has been besieged by regime forces since the early stages of the Syrian war. Years of attrition have failed to dislodge rebel factions that control it.

As was the case in Srebrenica, food supplies, aid and medical assistance have been cut off. In 1993, the UN designated Srebrenica a “safe area”. Last year, as part of Moscow’s abortive Astana peace process, the Russians declared eastern Ghouta a “de-escalation zone”.

Quick guide What is happening in eastern Ghouta? Show Hide Where is it and why is it important? Eastern Ghouta is a rebel-held enclave that borders the city of Damascus. Once a breadbasket of the Syrian capital, since 2013 it has been under a siege that has tightened severely over the last year. In 2013 the area was targeted in a chemical attack by the Syrian regime that killed more than a thousand civilians and nearly prompted a US intervention in the war. Who controls it? The enclave is controlled by a mix of rebel groups dominated by the Islamist leaning Jaysh al-Islam, though the day-to-day affairs of the towns in the area are run by local civilian councils. How bad is the humanitarian situation? The situation is catastrophic for the 400,000 civilians who still live in eastern Ghouta. Prices for basic foodstuffs have skyrocketed and medical supplies are mostly absent because of the siege. Treating the injured is especially difficult because of the repeated bombing of hospitals and clinics. An estimated 700 civilians have been killed in the area in the last three months alone, not including those killed over the last week of escalation. The first aid convoy to the region in months arrived a week ago but did not do much to alleviate the suffering. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP

To no avail. As in Bosnia, nobody attempted to protect the civilian population when a regime offensive began there in December after negotiations failed. The airstrikes and bombardments now taking a terrible toll are carried out with impunity by Syrian forces and their Russian backers.

The UN has almost begged the pro-Assad coalition, which includes Iranian-led militias, to agree to an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Its appeals have been ignored. Relief agencies’ pleas for access have also gone unanswered.

The attention of the big powers – the US and Russia – and regional actors such as Turkey, is focused instead on a grand strategic game played over the corpses of half a million Syrians. Their eyes are on future control of a country in effect partitioned into zones of influence.

For the Trump administration, this means curbing Iran’s supposed ambitions to create a “land bridge” to the Mediterranean, or a “Shia crescent” stretching from Herat in Afghanistan to the Bekaa valley in Lebanon. For the Turks, it is all about crushing the Kurds. For Vladimir Putin, it is about power.

Play Video 0:57 Bodycam footage shows children being rescued from rubble in eastern Ghouta, Syria – video

But for the residents of eastern Ghouta, it is about survival. Record numbers have died in the past 36 hours in an area where the overall death toll since 2011, when the war began, runs into uncounted thousands. And there is no escape.

More than 100 dead, over 500 wounded and five hospitals bombed. The violence is relentless and unbearably cruel.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A boy weeps among the headstones of the victims of the Srebrenica massacre. Photograph: Amel Emric/AP

In Srebrenica, about 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in a few days. Between 25,000 and 30,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly people were subject to forcible displacement and abuse. The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia later decreed that these crimes constituted genocide.

At the time, the world stood back and watched as Gen Ratko Mladic’s Bosnian Serb army and Scorpion paramilitaries closed in, overrunning Dutch peacekeepers. The international community knew full well what Mladic might do, that a massacre was imminent. It looked the other way.

The agony of eastern Ghouta, already infamous as the scene of a 2013 chemical weapons attack using sarin gas, is slower but similarly ignored. Once again civilians, including large numbers of children, are being killed. Once again, the western powers, with forces deployed in the country, refuse to intervene. Once again, the UN is helpless, the security council rendered impotent by Russian vetoes.

“This could be one of the worst attacks in Syrian history, even worse than the siege on Aleppo … To systematically target and kill civilians amounts to a war crime and the international community must act to stop it,” said Zaidoun al-Zoabi of the independent Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations.

But for now at least, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad – like Mladic in 1995 – appears to be impervious to reason or outside pressure. The evidence implicating Assad in war crimes and crimes against humanity is plentiful. So far no charges have been brought, and he carries on regardless.

Today, in eastern Ghouta, like Srebrenica in 1995, vile crimes that could constitute genocide are being committed. In November, Mladic was finally convicted of genocide in The Hague. That took 22 years. How many more children will die before justice is served in Syria?