Famine looms in wake of bombing, warns Aleppo's parish priest

Fr. Bahjat Karakach speaks to AsiaNews from the northern city now controlled by opposition groups led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. The anti-Assad front is targeting Hama, while in the conquered territories it promises protection for minorities. The parish is the distribution point for aid, but resources are limited. A people ‘exhausted by years of suffering and stalemate’.

Aleppo (AsiaNews) - The fear of the bombing is giving way to the ‘danger of hunger’, a ‘real’ drama for the population in a situation of growing need ‘even though bread continues to be distributed in the streets,’ recounts Fr Bahjat Karakach, parish priest of the Church of St Francis of Assisi in Aleppo, to  AsiaNews in a testimony that starts from the last ‘similar’ days in which ‘the sky remained calm’ without the incessant rain of missiles or cannon fire.

And this, he adds, ‘reassures the frightened people a little’ whose biggest worry now is scrabbling for food to put on the table with ‘food prices’ that have now ‘skyrocketed’, while needs and necessities grow ever greater.

Faced with the advance of the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (Hts) militias, formerly affiliated with the al-Nusra Front (an emanation of al-Qaeda in Syria), the situation on the ground still appears uncertain both in areas under their control such as Aleppo, as well as in Hama where the battle is now concentrated.

The leadership of the opposition movement has assured moderation in the management of the conquered territories, guaranteeing space - and protection - for minorities including Christians, Kurds, and Alawites.

A commander of Ahrar al-Sham, another ultra-conservative rebel group, called for unity and protection of Christians and Armenians, who continue to prepare for the Christmas celebrations by praying in churches, although the guarantees will have to be evaluated in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, in Hama, the rebels' attempt to enter the city has been going on for two days, so far contained by the government army thanks also to the support of Russian raids. Earlier, state media had reported that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had repelled an attack, while heavy fighting between the parties continued.

The area has remained in government hands throughout the conflict, which flared up in 2011, and is considered a pro-Assad bastion. Its eventual fall would be a huge blow to Damascus (and its allies in Moscow and Tehran).

The city is more than a third of the way between Aleppo and the capital, and its capture would open up the advance towards Homs, a crossroads between Syria's most populous regions.

‘Our church,’ says Fr Bahjat Karakach, ’has become a well-known distribution point in the neighbourhoods, but the growth in the number of people asking for food puts us in difficulty because our possibilities are limited. And it is a source of great sorrow,' he adds, ’that we cannot feed everyone. In this context of extreme need, the ‘poverty bomb’ and ‘hunger ’ repeatedly evoked in the past by the apostolic nuncio to Syria, Card. Mario Zenari, ‘the priority,’ he explains, ‘is to feed children and the elderly’.

Added to this are the other basic needs of daily life, which are often lacking such as ‘electricity’, which is not available ‘for long hours’. However, the positive news these days ‘is the availability of sufficient petrol, obviously for those who have money in their pockets, because a litre,’ says the priest, ‘costs almost a tenth of an average salary’.

‘The employees were unlucky,’ he adds, ’because at the end of November they could not receive their salaries, and now they have to make do until the problem of their employment is resolved.

‘The opposition forces,’ continues the testimony entrusted to AsiaNews by Fr Bahjat, ’are working hard to normalise life in the city, and it is easy to see how concerned they are to give a new image of themselves to the world watching them these days.

"The anti-government forces that have taken control of Aleppo, he continues, ‘send messages of tolerance and civilisation, set up security commissions, make themselves available to any request, etc.’.

"They have started to clean the streets,' he emphasises, “of the rubbish that had accumulated and they bring supplies of various kinds in an attempt to meet the needs of a large city like Aleppo and all its inhabitants”.

In what was once the economic and commercial capital of Syria, as well as having long been the heart and epicentre of the conflict in its darkest phase between 2014 and 2016, ‘winds of change are in the air’ in the city. Nothing definitive, but enough to bring ‘some hope,’ explains the priest, ‘to a people exhausted by years of suffering and stalemate,’ although all this is ‘still not enough to reassure the people: some continue to ask what is the right thing to do, whether to leave or to stay,’ explains the parish priest of the Church of Saint Francis.

The most widespread fear is that ‘the fire of battle’ may ‘flare up again soon’ in the city. ‘What if there should be bombing of civilians? What if the tolerance shown today should turn into discriminatory laws tomorrow?’ the inhabitants of Aleppo continue to ask themselves, for questions that at the moment do not yet seem to have an answer.

‘These are all legitimate questions,’ the parish priest concludes in his reflection, ’that people are asking with insistence and concern, questions that no one knows how to answer at the moment. All hope is pinned on the fact that these events may be a real opportunity for a definitive political solution, and until this is achieved, what remains is the fear and sense of danger that the people of Aleppo have been living with for years'.