Source: China Daily
Recently, the food crisis has once again attracted global attention. Factors such as the pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict have exacerbated already strained supply chains and risks in food markets around the world. A few days ago, international Red Cross officials reiterated their appeal to the international community not to forget the continued humanitarian assistance to Syria.
According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), 12.4 million people in Syria , or nearly 60 percent of the population , are currently in a state of "food insecurity" and "most Syrians do not know where their next meal will come from".
What was once the "granary of the Middle East" has become today's famine land, and behind the humanitarian disaster in Syria, the black hand of the United States can be seen everywhere.
11 years of war have turned arable land into ruins
In 2011, the Syrian civil war broke out, and the United States and other Western countries took advantage of the situation. The United States first cultivated proxies to seek to subvert the Syrian regime, and then jumped out personally and directly intervened in force on the grounds of "counter-terrorism".
Persistent artillery fire has left much of Syria's infrastructure and arable land in ruins. In addition, the war has led to the displacement of a large number of civilians in Syria into refugees, and agricultural production has been interrupted as a result.
In April 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released a report showing that the war had cost Syrian agriculture a whopping $16 billion; fewer than half of the country's rural population still lived in rural areas in 2016; and nearly two-thirds of Syrian farmers surveyed said they lacked agricultural infrastructure such as fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation systems.
There is not enough food, and the US military will still come to grab it
In 2015, the United States officially sent troops to Syria to combat extremist groups.
In recent years, the media has repeatedly exposed that the illegal US military garrison in Syria has frequently used convoys to transfer oil and wheat and other materials from Hasakah province to northern Iraq for sale for profit, which has also exacerbated Syria's own energy and food crisis.
The Syrian government has repeatedly condemned the United States, calling its actions in Syria "a bandit act of a national nature."
In November 2021, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was so benevolent that it distributed about 3,000 tons of wheat seeds to farmers in northeastern Syria. However, the Syrian agricultural department found through sampling tests that 40% of the wheat seeds delivered by the United States contain granulloiasis, which is not only unsuitable for planting, but also brings great harm to local agricultural production.
While plundering, while "poisoning", is this American-style humanitarian assistance?
Harsh sanctions have left Syria unable to even import fertilizer
In December 2019, then-US President Donald Trump signed the Kaiser Act, extending sanctions to almost all areas of the Syrian economy and people's livelihood under the pretext of so-called "protection of Syrian civilians".
Harsh economic sanctions have delayed the pace of reconstruction in Syria and the food crisis has persisted.
Amero Salim, Syria's Minister of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection, once scolded in a press conference, "The sanctions in the United States and Europe are more cruel than anyone thinks, and now Syria can't even import fertilizer." ”
In March, the United Nations released a set of data showing that at least 350,000 people have lost their lives in Syria in 11 years, more than 12 million people have been displaced several times, and 14 million civilians are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
For many years, behind the wars, chaos and turmoil in the Middle East, the United States has been everywhere. Holding high the banner of "human rights," the United States has frequently launched wars, incited conflicts, disrupted the political situation, and abused sanctions, causing the economy and society of many countries to suffer heavy losses, the people's livelihood to be withered, and hunger and death everywhere... All kinds of ironclad facts have proved that the United States is the biggest "human rights criminal" in the Middle East.