Damascus countryside has been suffering from a severe siege for more than two months, resulted in difficulties to supply food, and it reached to an extent to consider getting bread into besieged areas a crime as weapons and arms trade, and do not forget the difficulty in providing medicines.
Many stories tells the difficulties of providing and getting food to people in Damascus countryside and suburbs, as Abo Ayman, a taxi driver who gambled many times to get some bread to his children, but Community Committees barriers took them away.
Strict inspection do not exempt anyone, even women, as reported by Umm Mohammed, who, at a barrier, had to admit hiding three bags of bread under her coat because she was afraid of detention.
Walid, a man from Doma,15 km east Damascus, wanted to fulfill his daughter’s desire to get some sweet, as she kept asking him for months to bring her some, however, as usual, the sweet were taken away at a barrier.
Luckily, there is still some animal and agricultural production to cover some of people’s needs; otherwise, people would have suffered more.
"It is clear that there is a generalized policy to starve people in besieged areas the Regime adopt, therefore, people depend mostly on aid charities and the local council” said Abo Abdo, an activist from Eastern Ghota. He added that civilians suffer from hunger more than military groups, because they have their own access to food, but civilians are not allowed to bring any kind of food inside, even a piece of bread.
About Breakfast (Iftar) in Ramadan, Abo Abdo said that several projects tried to provide food for fasting people as well as distributing Ramadan meals through common relief offices and charities of the local council.
Abo Abdo wanted to draw attention to a serious issue and said: “Something must be highlighted is that there is discrimination in distributing aid where sometimes it occurs by mistake as people’s needs wrongly evaluated as a results of untrained staff, or intentionally, where there are some opportunists who work for their own personal advantage”.
Special report by Eqtsad, Business newspaper, affiliated to Zaman Alwasl
Editing By Yusra Abo Hamed
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