GENEVA: The upsurge in violence in Syria, combined with its plummeting economy, is making life increasingly bleak for civilians, United Nations investigators said Tuesday.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said war crimes were still being committed and the increase in fighting was only adding to Syria’s woes and making it unsafe for refugees to return.
Syria’s war has killed an estimated 500,000 people and displaced millions since it started with the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in 2011.
“The overall situation in Syria looks increasingly bleak,” Commissioner Karen Koning AbuZayd said in a statement.
“In addition to intensifying violence, the economy is plummeting, Mesopotamia’s famous riverbeds are at their driest in decades, and widespread community transmission of Covid-19 seems unstoppable by a health care system decimated by the war and lacking oxygen and vaccines,” AbuZayd said, adding it was “no time” for refugees to return.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and record all violations of international law since March 2011 in the country.
Its latest report covers incidents between July 1, 2020 and June 30 this year.
The three-member panel said there seemed to be no moves to unite the country or seek reconciliation, with incidents of arbitrary detention by government forces continuing unabated.
The report said tens of thousands of Syrians were still desperately awaiting news from missing and disappeared loved ones, while tens of thousands more were being unlawfully detained.
Recent months had seen increased fighting and violence in the northwest, northeast and south of the country, it said.
Commissioner Hanny Megally called the siege of Daraa Al-Balad an unfolding tragedy.
“It’s only two or three months into it but it’s the same tactic of preventing food, medicine and other goods coming in and preventing people from leaving,” he told a press conference in Geneva.
Commission chair Paulo Pinheiro said it was “scandalous” that an estimated 40,000 children — half of them Iraqi and the rest from around 60 other countries — were still being held in Al-Hol and other detention camps for the displaced and families of defeated jihadists, because their home countries refuse to take them back in.
“Punishing children for the sins of their parents cannot be justified,” he told the press conference.
The commission will present its report to the Human Rights Council on September 23.
Syria ‘bleak’ with violence upsurge, economic woes: UN
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Syria ‘bleak’ with violence upsurge, economic woes: UN
- The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria said war crimes were still being committed
- "The overall situation in Syria looks increasingly bleak," Commissioner Karen Koning AbuZayd
Baghdad says it will prosecute Daesh militants being moved from Syria to Iraq
- The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad will prosecute and try militants from the Daesh group who are being transferred from prisons and detention camps in neighboring Syria to Iraq under a US-brokered deal, Iraq said Sunday.
The announcement from Iraq’s highest judicial body came after a meeting of top security and political officials who discussed the ongoing transfer of some 9,000 IS detainees who have been held in Syria since the militant group’s collapse there in 2019.
The need to move them came after Syria’s nascent government forces last month routed Syrian Kurdish-led fighters — once top US allies in the fight against Daesh — from areas of northeastern Syria they had controlled for years and where they had been guarding camps holding Daesh prisoners.
Syrian troops seized the sprawling Al-Hol camp — housing thousands, mostly families of Daesh militants — from the Kurdish-led force, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops last Monday also took control of a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, from where some Daesh detainees had escaped during the fighting. Syrian state media later reported that many were recaptured.
Now, the clashes between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, sparked fears of Daesh activating its sleeper cells in those areas and of Daesh detainees escaping. The Syrian government under its initial agreement with the Kurds said it would take responsibility of the Daesh prisoners.
Baghdad has been particularly worried that escaped Daesh detainees would regroup and threaten Iraq’s security and its side of the vast Syria-Iraq border.
Once in Iraq, Daesh prisoners accused of terrorism will be investigated by security forces and tried in domestic courts, Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
The US military started the transfer process on Friday with the first Daesh prisoners moved from Syria to Iraq. On Sunday, another 125 Daesh prisoners were transferred, according to two Iraqi security officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
So far, 275 prisoners have made it to Iraq, a process that officials say has been slow as the US military has been transporting them by air.
Both Damascus and Washington have welcomed Baghdad’s offer to have the prisoners transferred to Iraq.
Iraq’s parliament will meet later on Sunday to discuss the ongoing developments in Syria, where its government forces are pushing to boost their presence along the border.
The fighting between the Syrian government and the SDF has mostly halted with a ceasefire that was recently extended. According to Syria’s Defense Ministry, the truce was extended to support the ongoing transfer operation by US forces.
The Daesh group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key US ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating Daesh.
During the battles against Daesh, thousands of extremists and tens of thousands of women and children linked to them were taken and held in prisons and at the Al-Hol camp. The sprawling Al-Hol camp hosts thousands of women and children.
Last year, US troops and their partner SDF fighters detained more than 300 Daesh militants in Syria and killed over 20. An ambush in December by Daesh militants killed two US soldiers and one American civilian interpreter in Syria.
