Syrian youth still paying price for decade of war
Young Syrians have suffered heavy personal losses in ten years of war but still need to face rebuilding their shattered homeland, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday. A fresh ICRC survey of just one 1,400 Syrian nationals living in Syria or in exile in Lebanon and Germany highlights the expenses for all those aged 18-25 of a war that killed thousands, displaced millions more and destroyed schools and hospitals.
"One of the shocking results of this survey is that people realised that 50% of Syrians had friends or a member of family who was simply killed... One out of six Syrians had among their parents either killed or wounded," Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC's regional director for the center East, told Reuters.
"Rebuilding the united states is on the shoulders and obviously it's quite unfair," he said within an interview at its headquarters. The report coincides with the 10th anniversary of the beginning of protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule that turned into a full-scale civil war.
Assad's military has regained control of almost all of the united states with Russian and Iranian help. Nearly half of young Syrians have lost their income due to the conflict and almost eight in 10 have reported struggling to afford food and other necessities, the report showed. "Women have already been particularly hard hit economically, with almost 30% in Syria reporting no income at all to aid their family," the ICRC said.
A video released by the ICRC with the survey shows 33-year-old Mouna Shawat using crutches to walk on one foot past blocks of bombed out buildings on streets full of rubble in the Syrian city of Aleppo before being fitted with a prosthetic device at its rehabilitation centre. Shawat's lower left leg needed to be amputated in the past after an improvised explosive device blew up as she made her way home.
Shawat, who lives with her two children in Aleppo, recalls with nostalgia her youth prior to the civil war. "We had everything - gas, diesel, services. Now we are cold and hungry, and we need to wait for gas to get warm. Sometimes we must cook over a fire," she said. Discussing her children's anxiety over her lost leg, she said: "Even today, every time it arises they start crying, I make an effort to comfort them."
