Report: Eastern Ghouta in Syria - The Neighbourhoods below the Bombs

Report: Eastern Ghouta in Syria - The Neighbourhoods below the Bombs

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Whole neighbourhoods in Syria's Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus have been flattened and thousands of families displaced, amid a government assault to retake it from rebels.

Daily "humanitarian pauses" - ordered by the government's ally, Russia - have failed to stop the bloodshed in the enclave, where hospitals, schools and shops have been pounded by air and artillery strikes.

The population is living in "hell on earth", UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said.

In one district, 93% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed by December, according to UN satellite imagery analysis. A recent wave of bombings has caused further destruction.

Western districts were already devastated by December

Source: Damage assessment by UNITAR-UNOSAT and map boundaries by the REACH Initiative. Satellite image Google/DigitalGlobe. Damage assessments cover the densely-populated western districts of the Eastern Ghouta to December 2017.

Bombing in January and February caused further damage

  

Source: Damage assessment by UNITAR-UNOSAT and map boundaries by the REACH Initiative. Satellite image Google/DigitalGlobe. Map shows rapidly-assessed damage between 3 December 2017 and 23 February 2018.Presentational white space

The agricultural region, home to almost 400,000 people, is the last major rebel stronghold near the capital.

The enclave - the size of Manchester in the UK - has been besieged since 2013, but the humanitarian situation has worsened significantly since hostilities between government and rebel forces escalated last November.

See how Jobar has been destroyed since 2013

February 2018

Satellite image shows many buildings have been destroyed in the residential neighbourhood of Jowbar

 

August 2013

Satellite image shows part of the residential neighbourhood of Jowbar in 2013
 

The most recent wave of bombings has been among the fiercest of the Syrian war, now entering its eighth year. The UN says more than 580 people are reported to have been killed since 18 February.

Essential civilian infrastructure and services have been hit. Satellite imagery analysis by McKenzie Intelligence Services suggests a water tower in the Harasta neighbourhood was among the sites targeted.

Damage to water tower, Harasta, Eastern Ghouta



Both sides have accused each other of continuing attacks during the five-hour "pauses" that began on 27 February.

So far, no civilians have used the "humanitarian corridor" designated by Russia to leave the Eastern Ghouta. UN agencies and their partners have meanwhile said it has been impossible to deliver urgently needed humanitarian supplies under the circumstances.

A doctor working in the area described the situation as "catastrophic", with civilians left with no food, no medicine and no shelter.

 

The UN says hospitals, clinics and ambulances have also come under attack.

In the more densely-populated western parts of the Eastern Ghouta, analysis carried out by the UN in December had already identified approximately 3,853 destroyed buildings, 5,141 severely damaged buildings and 3,547 moderately damaged buildings.

Jobar

Map showing damage in Jober, Eastern Ghouta


Jobar has suffered the worst damage in areas so far assessed. Some 93% of the buildings had been damaged or destroyed by December.

It was an active frontline for many months and the civilian population has fled. Only armed groups remain.

Neighbouring Ein Tarma, which became home to many of those who fled Jobar, was the focus of a government offensive in June 2017.

A sharp increase in shelling and air strikes forced Ein Tarma's residents and displaced families to flee to other areas of the Eastern Ghouta.

A total of 71% of the area's buildings had been damaged or destroyed by December. More than 75% of the pre-conflict civilian population has fled.

Zamalka

Map showing damage in Zamalka, Eastern Ghouta


Zamalka has the third highest rate of damage in the Eastern Ghouta area assessed by the UN. Some 59% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed by December.

There has been no water or electricity supply for at least two years, and more than 75% of the pre-conflict civilian population has fled.

The intensified bombardment in February saw the area suffer further loss of life and damage levels are certain to have risen beyond those of December.

Hamouria

Map showing damage in Hamouria, Eastern Ghouta

 

Due to Hamouria's more central location within the Eastern Ghouta, the amount of damage assessed in December was lower than other areas. Some 11% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed.

However, the area has come under repeated attack during the latest round of bombardment.

Video footage obtained by Reuters showed wreckage at the Al-Shifa hospital, which staff said had been hit by air and artillery strikes.

"The clinics department is out of service, the clinical care unit is out, the surgery unit is out, the incubator unit is out, the paediatric section is out, all of the departments of the hospital are completely out of service," a man identified as a medical worker said.

Much of Hamouria's population has fled and and almost half of the current residents are from elsewhere. Water and electricity have been unavailable since June 2016.

Saqba

Map showing damage in Saqba, Eastern Ghouta


Saqba, which has avoided the high levels of destruction suffered by neighbouring areas, has also come under sustained attack in February and March.

By December, 27% of its buildings had been either damaged or destroyed. That figure is likely to have increased.

More than half the population is made up of people who have fled other areas.

Water and electricity are unavailable.

Kafr Batna

Map showing damage in Kafr Batna, Eastern Ghouta


Kafr Batna, where 21% of buildings had been damaged or destroyed by December, has been attacked again by government warplanes in the latest round of bombings.

A number of people have been killed.

Douma

An injured child in Duma, SyriaImage copyrightAFP


Douma - the biggest town in the district - was not included in the UN's damage assessments in December. However, it has been hit badly in the latest round of air and artillery strikes.

Basema Abdullah, a widow huddled in a basement with her four children, told Reuters: "We are in desperate need for your prayers."

Douma is the largest town in Eastern Ghouta

Map showing control areas around Damascus and Eastern GhoutaPresentational white space

Satellite imagery of Al-Biruni University Hospital, near Douma, appears to show a roadblock on a nearby highway.

McKenzie Intelligence Services analysts say it suggests the hospital is only accessible by areas still loyal to the government.

Roadblock at Al-Biruni University Hospital, near Douma

Satellite image of a roadblock near a hospital, Eastern Ghouta



Satellite images also show a trench network has been constructed in Harasta, south-west of Douma, next to a military barracks.

Analysts say the trenches are likely occupied by rebel fighters, given their location, and would allow them to move around the area without being hit by shrapnel and out of the sight of observers who could call in artillery or air strikes.

Networks of trenches can be seen in residential areas

February 2018

Trenches and destruction in residential area between Jobar and Douma

 

December 2014

Residential area between Jobar and Douma
 

Humanitarian crisis

Aid workers have described how thousands of families are now living in underground basements and shelters - many without water, sanitation or ventilation systems, making children vulnerable to the spread of disease.

The government has allowed one humanitarian convoy into the Eastern Ghouta since late November, and there are severe shortages of food and extremely inflated prices.

A bundle of bread cost close to 22 times the national average, and 11.9% of children under five years old are acutely malnourished - the highest rate recorded in Syria since the beginning of the war.

Residents have described going days without eating, consuming non-edible plants, or reducing the size of their meals due to a lack of access to food.

The Syrian government has denied targeting civilians and insisted it is trying to liberate the Eastern Ghouta from "terrorists" - a term it has used to describe both jihadist militants and the mainstream rebel groups that dominate the enclave. 

[This report was originally published on the BBC.] 
 
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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