This holiday weekend has seen hundreds of people killed across the Middle East with bombings and continued fighting in Yemen and persistent violence in Iraq and Syria. On the first day of Eid in Syria, the Syrian army dropped barrel bombs in the northern Part of the country. Away from the violence Bashar Al-Assad, president of a state that is in its fifth year of civil war, prays at a mosque in Damascus surrounded by religious figures in Syria. This is a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and has created the largest refugee crisis in recent history.
“I think that since the second world war there hasn’t been a catastrophe of this magnitude,” says Ameer Ahmed Mohamedy from the Jamiatul Ulema Kwa-Zulu Natal.
A few days ago, Mohamedy and members of the Jamiatul Ulema returned from a volunteer mission to the borders of Syria in order to conduct relief work in the refugee camps. The group was also able to safely navigate their way into Syria through an open border.“We managed to cross the border from Turkey safely and legally into Syria,” Mohamedy said.
“There were large amounts of destruction and there were areas that were littered with graves.”
A few days ago there were bombings in Aleppo which mainstream media failed to report on as the bombings in the area are ever so constant. Mohamedy received news that a mosque was bombed whilst families were breaking their fasts and most of the children inside the mosque was killed.“Children have no part in the war and they are dying, unfortunately the government of the country is destroying their own country,” he went further.
It has also been reported that the UK is busy with their offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria with air strikes conducted in the region.While there is much need for poverty alleviation in Syria, the borders of neighbouring countries have also played host to the destitute refugees fleeing from their homes.
“All the bordering areas are littered with refugees, but there seems to be no xenophobic fighting,” Mohamedy continued.
However, war is an opportunity for people to make money and the refugees are faced with exorbitant rentals along the borders of Syria and Turkey. Those who cannot afford to live in rental accommodation have stayed in the refugee camps for extended periods of time.“Labour has become cheap and because of desperation they (refugees) will work for half the labour rate,” Mohamedy noted.
Refugees will work a entire day for a minimum wage in order to make some form of income to be able to support their families. Sadly, employers are willing to exploit the desperation of people.Mohamedy added that NGOs from South Africa have played a great part in establishing containerised villages for refugees, which is some form of relief from them. A year ago the Jamiatul Ulema KZN distributed tents to refugees and the refugees are still using these tents to this day.
“Living in a refugee camp is no normal thing. The NGOs have tried to bring some normality to these people’s lives by bringing in some form of schooling environment for children,” he explained.
“This is far from growing up in a normal environment and living a normal life”.
The Jamiatul Ulema KZN will continue with their relief efforts in Syria and asks the South African community to donate whatever they can to help alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people. VOC (Umarah Hartley)