{"id":4569,"date":"2020-02-18T09:36:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T09:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=4569"},"modified":"2024-04-06T17:07:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T17:07:44","slug":"doctors-under-siege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=4569","title":{"rendered":"Doctors under Siege"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First published in the NASGP Newsletter in December, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bashar al Assad, President of Syria, Damascus, April 2011<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, Hamza was a young Syrian doctor learning German in the hope \nof going abroad for specialist training. Then the civil war broke out \nand he opted to stay in Aleppo, operating in makeshift hospitals on the \npeople wounded by collapsing buildings, by barrel bombs, by snipers. \nFive years later government forces, backed up by the Russians, were one \nstreet away. Reluctantly, he and his team accepted last-minute deal \nbrokered by Turkey and Russia to permit them to leave, and so to live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\n know how normal life choices shrank to survival in rebel-held East \nAleppo because Waad al-Kateab, a young journalist who became Hamza\u2019s \nwife, was there with her camera. She gave birth in besieged Aleppo and \nthe film is for her daughter, Sama. So she will be able to understand \nwhy her parents made the choices they did. And so that we too can \nunderstand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hospitals are protected under international \nhumanitarian law. Yet, the Syrian regime targets anywhere that people \nmay congregate. We see the dust clouds arising from bombing throughout \nthe city. Rudimentary hospitals are created underground where they may \nnot be detected. People are safer from the bombs there, but not from the\n chlorine gas which is heavier than air and seeps into the cellars where\n they operate in cramped space with limited medical supplies. They are \nshort of water. There are weevils in their meager stock of rice. We hear\n the airstrikes getting nearer and nearer. The power fails and someone \nholding a switched-on camera stumbles down dark stairways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For \nWaad, filming is a poignant way to remember friends and colleagues who \nwere to become casualties of the war. Filming is a way of remembering \nsome of the thousands of patients, the tragedy of those who died and the\n joy when some survived against all the odds. Filming was a reason for \nstaying and providing evidence of the regime\u2019s atrocities. Filming will \ngive Sama a memory of the city where she was born. How moving to see her\n innocent face as her father cradles her while the bombs fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hamza\n was not the only Syrian doctor to stay on in Aleppo. And British \nvascular surgeon David Nott, who has worked in a dozen of the world\u2019s \nmost unpleasant conflict zones, kept returning there. His love for the \npeople he worked with impelled him to take huge risks to negotiate a \ncease-fire so those still alive could escape when East Aleppo fell in \nDecember 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t just doctors who lay their lives on the \nline to help others in Syria. When the civil war put paid to Alaa \nAljaleel\u2019s electrical business he used his van as an ambulance, rescuing\n god\u2019s creatures. Not just humans. Alaa loves cats. When homes, schools \nand playgrounds are reduced to rubble, Alaa\u2019s cat sanctuary is a respite\n from horror where children can play. In an inhumane world they learn to\n care for the cats, and Alaa has found funding for food, for a \nkindergarten and clinics, and community development projects. So his \ncats give life and hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aeham Ahmad also put his life at risk to \nraise the morale of his besieged community. He\u2019s from the Palestinian \nrefugee district of Yarmouk near Damascus. Son of a blind violinist, he \nwas a music student when his future was destroyed by the uprising. He \ntook his piano out into the rubble of the streets and played. But the \nregime believes that raising the morale of innocent and apolitical \npeople is tantamount to being a terrorist. When a child in the group \nsinging around his piano was killed by a sniper, Aeham had to accept \nthat he was a danger not just to himself but to his family and friends, \nso he made the dangerous journey to Europe. He now makes music for his \nfellow countrymen from his home in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The regime targets anyone who may bear witness. Journalist Marie Colvin felt so committed to the people she knew in Homs that, against all advice, she went back. She was killed in a cellar by a nail bomb. The regime had tracked her satellite phone signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of us is bombing hospitals. And one of us is treating the victims of the bombing.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Which of us\n could do what Hamza and the other people who stayed on in Aleppo, \nrisking their lives to help their fellow citizens, have done? We can\u2019t \nknow for certain unless we find ourselves having to make the choices \nthey faced. There will be other conflicts, where the worst and the best \nof humanity will be on display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSama, will you remember Aleppo?\u201d \nasks her mother. Sama will have her mother\u2019s film, as we do, to help us \ncomprehend the horrors of living in a besieged city in the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n