Overlooked in the press coverage of the Syrian crisis: 4.3 million children

John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS — The powerful polar vortex causing the “big freeze” in parts of the USA has confronted tens of millions of Americans with record cold winter temperatures.

While waiting for the bus in the icy New York winds we were all complaining; then I reflected on a report I picked up earlier at the UN dealing with the widening humanitarian crisis in Syria and how the vortex of conflict in that Middle Eastern land has engulfed a generation of children in the most horrible conditions in a civil war without mercy.

The report “No Lost Generation” calls for nearly a billion dollars in education funding to provide millions of children affected by the spreading crisis in Syria and the refugee spillover into neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

A Syrian woman with children in Aleppo on Dec. 15.  /CNN/AFP/ Getty
A Syrian woman with children in Aleppo on Dec. 15. /CNN/AFP/ Getty

The document states, “In Syria the crisis has pushed the capacity of basic social services to breaking point, with a devastating impact on 4.3 million children. More than two million children are out of school or at risk of dropping out.”

“The future for these children is slipping away, but there is still a chance to save them” states Antonio Guterres the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He adds urgently “The world must answer to this crisis with immediate, massive international support.”

The numbers are staggering but belie the individual young lives which are being shattered by the ongoing conflict which will soon be entering its fourth year. The regional implications are stunning.

In neighboring Lebanon there are over a million children refugees, 80 percent of whom are out of school. In Turkey the number of 300,000 child refugees is expected to double by the end of 2014. The Kingdom of Jordan has handled the challenge in a better way for the there are “double shifts” in the local schools but the numbers are taking their toll. The UN recommends at least $169 million in funding for Jordanian education aid and a further $322 for Lebanon, and $83 million for Turkey.

The “No Lost Generation” initiative aims to provide remedial education and psychosocial support for refugee children. As UNHCR’s Guterres stresses, “Without this urgent investments, millions of Syrian children may never recover from so much loss and fear….the future of the nation is at stake.”

Given the pressing need for an elusive political solution, parties to the conflict will meet in Switzerland in late January in a bid to stop the fighting. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called the conference a “unique opportunity” for ending the violence which has taken more than 100,000 lives and displaced eight million people inside Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights cites the figure of 130,000 killed.

Given the length of the fighting and the numbers killed, many diplomats concede there is an almost a numbness in dealing with the escalating death toll. That’s why an international peace conference, supported by the United States and Russia is so needed. Broadly stated Russia and Iran back the Syrian regime, the U.S., France and Turkey support a gaggle of widely fractured opposition groups.

Ominously there’s a growing Al Qaida presence with thousands of foreign fighters ranging from Algeria, Chechnya, Libya and many Muslim West Europeans from France, Britain and Germany and even many Americans who have been attracted by rebel factions who spout a radical Islamic and a jihadi worldview.

The U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army is targeted by the fundamentalists, exposing deep splits in the broad-based anti-Assad alliance.

Foreign fighters, perhaps numbering over 10,000 are attracted to Al Qaida-affiliated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic Stare in Iraq and the Levant.

Beyond their role in the Syrian conflict, Western government fear what may become of such radicalized fighters with both purpose and military training when they return home to Europe?

There are no angels in this conflict. What started as a legitimate rebellion against the long entrenched Assad family dictatorship in 2011 has morphed into a complicated miasma between and all shades of Islamic fundamentalists, Muslim Sunni/Shiia rifts, and foreign powers including Russia, Turkey and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Given Syria’s complicated ethnic mosaic and entrenched sectarian divides, the conflict goes well beyond what Western media often superficially portray as a morality play between the dictator and the rebels.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for WorldTribune.com. He is the author of Transatlantic Divide ; USA/Euroland Rift (University Press, 2010).

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