As Syria approaches the 10-year mark in its civil war next month, the United Nations says the nation’s youngest generation is suffering most, as millions of children suffer malnourishment, stunted growth, and a lack of schooling. “More than half a million children under 5 in Syria suffer from stunting as a result of chronic malnutrition, according to our latest assessments,” U.N. Humanitarian Chief Mark Lowcock said Thursday in his monthly briefing to the Security Council on the situation. “We fear this number will increase,” he said. Lowcock said stunting is especially bad in the northwest and the northeast of the country, where data show that in some areas, up to one in three children suffers from impaired growth and development due to poor nutrition and recurrent illnesses. The effects of stunting are irreversible. Last week, Lowcock spoke with a group of Syrian doctors. At one pediatric hospital, the physicians said malnourished children occupy half of the facility’s 80 beds. In the past two months, five children have died from malnutrition. “Another pediatrician told me that she diagnoses malnutrition in up to 20 children a day,” Lowcock said. “But parents are bringing their children to her for completely different reasons, unaware that they are suffering from malnutrition. Malnutrition, she said, has become so normal that parents cannot spot the signs in their own children.” Neglect Drives Child Labor in Syria Millions of displaced Syrian children work difficult, dangerous jobs just to survive Robbed of childhoods In a decade of war, Syria’s youngest citizens have known nothing but conflict and suffering. They are among the millions of internally displaced and refugees; young girls have been married off in their teens, and boys have been recruited to fight. Children have been physically and psychologically wounded from the violence of war — both perpetrated on them and in front of them. Thousands have been killed. ...
Syrian civil war
China Mocks Biden Syria Bombing: ‘America Is Back’
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper mocked President Joe Biden on Friday, quoting his declaration, “America is back,” in a headline about his decision to bomb Syria on Thursday evening. Biden made the remark in a speech about foreign policy in early February, in which he vowed to limit American military engagement. “And they know when you speak, you speak for me,” Biden told diplomats at the State Department. “And so — so is the message I want the world to hear today: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” On Thursday, 36 days into his presidency, Biden took unilateral action in Syria, ordering what the Pentagon dubbed a “defensive precision strike” on members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a legal wing of the Iraqi armed forces. “At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement. “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).” The named groups are among the most influential members of the PMF, particularly KH, or the Hezbollah Brigades. The Global Times suggested Biden had undermined his promises to the American people in its coverage of the strikes, in an article it titled with Biden’s words, “America Is Back.” the Communist Party-approved experts quoted in the piece made the case that, under President Donald Trump, the White House preferred to use economic incentives and punishments like sanctions to confront national security threats by starving them of funding. Under Biden, military violence superseded the sanctions policy, they claimed. “During the Trump era, the US tended to use economic sanctions against Iran and did not ...
U.S. airstrike in Syria kills 1, wounds several, says Iraqi militia official
BAGHDAD — A U.S. airstrike in Syria targeted facilities belonging to a powerful Iranian-backed Iraqi armed group, killing one fighter and wounding several others, an Iraqi militia official said Friday, signaling the first military action undertaken by U.S. President Joe Biden. The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops. The Iraqi militia official told The Associated Press that the strikes against the Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, hit an area along the border between the Syrian site of Boukamal facing Qaim on the Iraqi side. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak of the attack. Syria war monitoring groups said the strikes hit trucks moving weapons to a base for Iranian-backed militias in Boukamal. “I’m confident in the target that we went after, we know what we hit,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters flying with him from California to Washington, shortly after the airstrikes which were carried out Thursday evening Eastern Standard Time. The Biden administration in its first weeks has emphasized its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China, even as Mideast threats persist. Biden’s decision to attack in Syria did not appear to signal an intention to widen U.S. military involvement in the region but rather to demonstrate a will to defend U.S. troops in Iraq and send a message to Iran. The U.S. has in the past targeted facilities in Syria belonging to Kataeb Hezbollah, which it has blamed for numerous attacks targeting U.S. personnel and interests in Iraq. The Iraqi Kataeb is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors the war in Syria, said the strikes targeted a shipment of weapons that were being taken by trucks entering Syrian territories from Iraq. The ...
