{"id":283,"date":"2011-06-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/?p=283","title":{"rendered":"Is there a scorched earth policy in Syria?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nIs there a scorched earth policy in Syria?<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nBy Neil Sammonds, Amnesty International’s Syria researcher
\non the Turkish-Syrian border\n<\/p>\n

\nThe road south from the southern Turkish town of Hatay rises
\nsteeply through verdant agricultural land. At the small border village of
\nGuvecci I get out of the car and immediately see dozens of men sitting on the
\nedge of the road or otherwise milling about the stone houses, waiting.\n<\/p>\n

\nSyrians all, few wished to give their full names and some
\nwould not specify the names of their villages. They had sneaked across the
\nborder so as to be able to pick up food to take it back to their families
\ncamped out in tents and under trees on the other side.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt is impossible to verify the exact number. But many agree
\nthat a figure of some 10,000 within a couple of kilometres of the border is
\nlikely.\n<\/p>\n

\nMany of the villagers had left a week ago, following
\nkillings in the town of Jisr al-Shughur over the weekend of 3-5 June.\n<\/p>\n

\nAhmed, 22, from a village a few kilometres from Jisr
\nal-Shughur, said he and his family had stayed on at their village longer than
\nmost to look after their homes, until yesterday when they headed up to the border.\n<\/p>\n

\nA young man in a pink sweater said 400 people from the
\nvillage of Shughur Kasmiyah had spent one week in the hills.\n<\/p>\n

\nShabiha – regime-backed militiamen – had poisoned the water,
\nhe said. Several people in the area, another young man added, had died as a
\nresult.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe alleged poisoning of the water was agreed upon by all
\nthe Syrians I spoke to in Guvecci, all of whom said they didn’t drink it.\n<\/p>\n

\nHow did locals know the water was poisoned? Before I arrived
\nin Turkey, a UK-based man from Jisr al-Shughur told me that a few members of
\nthe Syrian security forces who were unhappy with the events had let locals know
\nthat drinking the water could be lethal.\n<\/p>\n

\nMobile phone lines in the Jisr al-Shughur area had been cut
\nfor days, the pink-clad man told me.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne tall young man said he was from the village of
\nal-Sarmaniyah, some 10km south of Jisr al-Shughur, where the army entered on 10
\nJune with “hundreds” of men in tanks and armoured personnel carriers.\n<\/p>\n

\n“They shelled and machine-gunned the village,” he told me.\n<\/p>\n

\n“They shot my friend Rafit Deeb and when I or anyone else
\nwent to try to save him, they shot at us. We could see he was alive, losing his
\nbreath. Five hours later the army left, but by then Rafit was dead. He was 22.\n<\/p>\n

\n“Not only did they shell houses and shoot people but they
\nalso burnt crops and seeds and they machine-gunned the cows. Tanks drove
\nthrough the orchards, destroying hundreds of olive and almond trees.”\n<\/p>\n

\n“They are worse than the Zionists,” he said, making a
\ncomparison with what he saw to be the nature of the abuses committed by the
\nIsraeli authorities.\n<\/p>\n

\nWard Khalifeh, 21, also came from al-Sarmaniyah but had been
\nworking in Lebanon.\n<\/p>\n

\n“About five days ago I called home but there was no answer.
\nI travelled to the village and found it completely empty.”\n<\/p>\n

\n“No one camped by the border knows what happened to the nine
\nother members of his family.”\n<\/p>\n

\nA group of about 15 people around me, from the towns and
\nvillages of Bdama, al-Za’eyniyah, Bataybat, al-Kafir, Sheykh Sendayan and
\nal-Kastun – all in the area around Jisr al-Shughur, said the same had happened
\nwhere they were from.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne person said that only a few elderly people had stayed
\nbehind.\n<\/p>\n

\n“They are ghost towns now. Only soldiers may be there,” Ward
\nKhalifeh said.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs we speak, there’s a commotion as a delivery of bread arrives.
\nSome of the men and boys walk off with plastic bags of Arabic bread.\n<\/p>\n

\nA few haggard elderly men invite me to break bread with
\nthem. I respectfully decline and walk up onto the roof of one of the houses and
\nlook out towards Syria.\n<\/p>\n

\nSome hundred metres away, beyond the young olive trees and
\nthe border fence, are a few dozen tents and some vehicles. In the woods rising
\nup again, and in the woods yet beyond the peak, are said to be thousands of
\ndisplaced Syrians living exposed to the elements, sleeping on the ground under
\ntrees, some under makeshift awnings.\n<\/p>\n

\nIt’s overcast, blustery and at times raining lightly. The
\nsun sears my skin. No wonder these people are hardy.\n<\/p>\n

\nI write these notes at night in my hotel room. For several
\nhours now there has been heavy rain and thunder.\n<\/p>\n

\n \n<\/p>\n

\n \n<\/p>\n

\nListen to the latest audio interview with Neil Sammonds on
\nthe situation on the border:\n<\/p>\n

\nhttp:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/news-and-updates\/video-and-audio\/syrians-who-have-fled-turkey-tell-army-assault-<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n \n<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nIs there a scorched earth policy in Syria?<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nThe road south from the southern Turkish town of Hatay rises
\nsteeply through verdant agricultural land. At the small border village of
\nGuvecci I get out of the car and immediately see dozens of men sitting on the
\nedge of the road or otherwise milling about the stone houses, waiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}