UNOCHA Update on Wadi Barada, Syria

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UNOCHA Update on Wadi Barada, Syria

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[This report was issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on 14 January 2017.]

Syrian Arab Republic: Wadi Barada
Flash Update No. 1
14 January 2017

Highlights

  • Since 22 December, an estimated 5.5 million people in Damascus and surrounding areas have been cut off from their main source of water supply, the Ein Elfijeh and Barada springs, after those were damaged.
  • Following an agreement of 13 January, government and SARC technical teams entered the Wadi Barada area the same day to carry out a damage assessment of the water sources and infrastructure at the Ein Elfijeh spring site with a view to repairing the facility as soon as possible.
  • At least 715,000 people living in
elevated areas in rural Damascus
have not been reached with regular
water supply for the last three weeks,
while an emergency rotation system for water supply was put in place for other residents of Damascus city living in lower lying areas.
  • According to SARC, at least 15,000 people have been displaced from Wadi Barada to neighboring villages since the beginning of the fighting.
  • The UN calls on all parties to ensure unrestricted and sustained access in order to restore the provision of water which is essential for the survival and well-being of the civilian population.

Situation Overview

Wadi Barada (the Barada valley) is located in rural Damascus, some 25 kilometers south-west of the capital, and is under the control of Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs). Most roads leading to Wadi Barada and the surrounding heights are under control of the Syrian Government. Heavy clashes were ongoing up to 11 January, and an agreement between both parties was reportedly on 13 January.

On 22 December, water reservoirs were reportedly contaminated with diesel and organic solvents. In the following days, conflict escalated, resulting with the main pipeline being damaged and ever since, an estimated 5.5 million people in Damascus and surrounding areas have been cut off from their two primary sources of water supply, after Ein Elfijeh and Barada springs. Previously, the two water sources satisfied 70 per cent of the demand for clean and safe water in and around Damascus.

Within Damascus city the Water Authority has initiated an emergency rationing system under which each neighborhood receives water through the supply network every five to six days for three to four hours. This water is provided from groundwater wells located across the city, however, the water provided is only enough to meet about 30 per cent of the daily water needs. The Water Authority has plans to scale its daily provision, currently 140,000 - 150,000 m3, to 180,000–200,000 m3 per day, or enough to meet an estimated 40 per cent of water needs.

Some 715,000 people living in elevated areas are not covered through this rationing system and have been without access to water in their homes for nearly three weeks. This has led many to rely on the purchase of sometimes untreated water from private vendors at high prices, putting additional financial strain on families and increasing risks of waterborne diseases.

According to information received, government and SARC technical teams entered the Wadi Barada area on 13 January to carry out a damage assessment of water sources and infrastructure at the Ein Elfijeh spring site with a view to repairing the facility as soon as possible. The UN team is following up with the water authority and SARC, and stands ready to enter the area and provide additional support to ensure the swift repair of the water infrastructure.

According to SARC, fighting in Wadi Barada since 15 December has displaced at least 15,000, mostly to Al-Rawda, Al-Tkiyeh, Zabadani Plain and the Dimas areas. SARC in conjunction with the UN and other partners is leading on the response to those displaced.

The UN’s request to reach Wadi Barada with a humanitarian convoy under the January plan had been denied. 

Humanitarian Response

  • UNICEF, in coordination with the Water Authority, is supporting the preparations for repair works in Wadi Barada, pending approval to access the site. The team stands ready to enter the area and provide additional support to ensure the swift repair of the water infrastructure.
  • UNICEF is providing around 15,000 liters of fuel (almost 38% of total need) on a daily basis to water production centers in Barzeh, Zahra and Qaboun. As of 10 January, a cumulative total of 71,000 liters had already been delivered.
  • UNICEF is supporting the repair and maintenance of 65 water pumps across Damascus, and additionally delivered two generators (capacity of 250 & 400 kVA) and 30 km of cables.
  • Daily water trucking activities to schools is ongoing, and the intervention has to date reached 95 schools in one week, benefitting around 85,000 children.
  • Since 2 January, daily 1000 m3 of water are being trucked per day to Al-Kisweh City in Rural Damascus, which has also been affected by the water cut. A total of 9,000 m3 of water have been delivered to date.
  • WHO is providing chlorine detection equipment, conductivity meters, and bacteriological contamination kits.
  • WHO also reinforced the surveillance program of communicable diseases and rumor verification in Damascus, with daily communications with surveillance team at MoH. WHO additionally prepositioned medicines and kits in Damascus for a rapid response in case of any potential outbreak.
  • In cooperation with the Water Authority, the UN is conducting a public campaign to raise awareness on safe water consumption practices.
  • SARC is leading the response to Wadi Barada displacement with support from UN, NGOs and ICRC. Food, nutrition and health items, education material and winter clothes and blankets have been made available to those displaced.
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412