Elise Ann Allen | CRUX | Rome – As Syria’s civil war stretches further into its ninth year with no clear end in sight, those working to alleviate the country’s crippling humanitarian crisis have criticized the international community for using refugees as pawns in political games, saying it lacks the will to pacify the situation.
Speaking to Crux, Giampaolo Silvestri, secretary general of the AVSI foundation, which sponsors development projects in needy areas throughout the world, said, “there is absolutely an instrumentalization of the poor people who live in Syria.”
As conflict rages on, people are being forgotten, he said.
“On one hand there’s American disinterest, but on the other there’s also general European disinterest, and this leaves the door open to games from Turkey, Iran, [and] Russia.”
“By now they are playing games confronting and fighting one another,” he said, adding that in his view, “there is no real will” in the international community to cease fighting and begin rebuilding pacified areas. If such will existed, he said, “the reconstruction would have (already) begun.”
As Syria’s bloody civil war nears the decade mark, forces loyal to Assad have largely retaken the country with the exception of the northwestern province of Idlib, and government forces are presently pounding the area ferociously, backed by Russian and Iranian support.