Madaya’s shocking media war exposed
My previous post talked of the difficulties of seeing through the fog of war, balancing the media reports from all sides and trying to reach an understanding of the truth. The case of Madaya was highlighted.
Now the German newspaper Bild has uncovered evidence showing just how ruthlessly the Madaya story has been exploited by the Assad regime to further its own narrative of the war and to inflict maximum damage on the reputation of the opposition rebels.
The English version of the story can be read here in full:
http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/syrien-krise/hell-of-madaya-44151008.bild.html
In summary, it concludes that the 300 men, women and children “rescued from Madaya” and interviewed by the waiting Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Assad press, were ‘actors’, fake residents bussed in by Hezbollah fighters on the morning of 11 January from the nearby village of Bloudan.
The predominantly Christian village is about 5km from Madaya and supports President Assad. The same people always spoke in all the interviews, thanking Assad for saving them and blaming the rebels for stealing their food. Photos of these 300 people were sent all round the world, but not only were they far from starving, they were also filmed at the last Assad checkpoint before Madaya. The Syrian flag gives this away.
Real residents of Madaya say they did not recognise any of them – none of them were from Madaya.
When shown the Russian TV report, a doctor in Madaya told Bild it was a farce. The reality, he said, was that many Free Syrian Army soldiers sold their rifles to buy food for their families from the regime checkpoints, where government soldiers were selling rice at $200 a kilo.
Bild goes on to conclude that:
“None of this can be seen in official images and there is reason to suspect that the aid organisations have been put under pressure by Assad: either they showed the regime’s actors or they could no longer carry out their work in Syria.”
This brings us to another vital point which, as it happens, is discussed in an article in the January 2016 issue of Chatham House’s International Affairs, entitled ‘The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: neutrality, sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012-15.’ The authors are Jose Ciro Martinez and Brent Eng.
They show how ‘paradoxically, aid has accomplished exactly the opposite of what its proponents and distributors, at least in public, claim. Our observations and analysis suggest that foodstuffs distributed by UN agencies and most humanitarian organizations, despite their pretensions to neutrality, have contributed to supporting sovereignty and political outcomes at odds with those neutral aspirations.’
In other words, in the case of Syria, aid cannot be neutral because the international aid agencies have to operate through Syrian regime channels to be allowed into the country. The distribution of this aid is then controlled by the Assad regime and its agencies like SARC (the Syrian Arab Red Crescent) and used to legitimize the government by ‘enabling the regime to fulfil some of its welfare responsibilities and to project an image of comparative security’. By contrast the rebel opposition areas receive no aid because the regime prevents SARC from working there. As a result ‘rebel groups unable to feed those under their control have seen their legitimacy eroded’, which has in turn ‘undermined public support for various fighting groups.’
The full report can be read here:
Tragically, the real residents of Madaya were still starving inside the town, as the aid agencies’ own photos later showed:
The UN and the international community must loudly condemn these practices, which are taking places all over Syria, not just Madaya. My caretaker has been eating grass since 2013 in Eastern Ghouta, in another ‘starve or surrender’ siege by the regime. Pressure must be applied on the Assad regime to allow aid to be properly ‘neutral.’ The chances of anything positive happening at the upcoming peace talks – ‘the Vienna process’ – remain very small as long as the current level of mistrust prevails.
Related:
http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/syrien-krise/hell-of-madaya-44151008.bild.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-35309814
dianadarke 
How heartbreaking to watch this happening to all these villages, but especially hard to watch people you know personally starving. Can more publicity in mainstream press make a difference? This should be on the front pages! Thank you for your post updates.