Syrian Doctors in Ukraine: “We’ve seen it all in Aleppo”

Few surgeons are as experienced in treating war wounded as doctors from Syria. A team visited the contested regions in Ukraine. Targeted attacks on clinics are part of Russia’s strategy, says the director.

Monzer Yazji has been traveling in the war zone with his Syrian medical team for a week. They were in Kyiv, then in the east of the country and then in Lutsk, a city in north-western Ukraine. A few days ago there was Russian rocket fire there too.

He’s a little tired and hasn’t slept much, he says. For a week, the Syrian doctors in the contested regions took stock of what kind of emergency structures need to be set up, what medical material is needed. In the coming weeks they want to take care of the war wounded in Ukraine.

“Hospitals were the first targets”

They know that and they can do it too. There are probably only a few surgeons in the world who have as much experience in treating war injuries as doctors from Syria. “We are in Ukraine to share with the people what happened to us,” says Yazji. “We are here to share our experiences.”

Yazji, who now lives in the USA, is one of the heads of the international aid organization UOSSM. It was formed in 2012 during the Syrian civil war as an association of medical professionals who cared for the seriously injured in emergency hospitals in eastern Aleppo, Hama or Homs. Yazji was one of the doctors at the time. The hospitals, the medical centers were the first targets in Syria, he explains.

“I have seen direct shelling of hospitals several times in Aleppo. And now the same thing is happening here in Ukraine.” It is, says Yazji, as if history were repeating itself. “They shoot at power plants, water reservoirs, schools, hospitals.”

Putin praised accumulated experience

Civil infrastructure is attacked to demoralize people. That’s how it was in Syria, that’s how it is now in Ukraine. In September 2015, Russia intervened with its air force in Syria to save the neck and power of the beleaguered dictator Bashar al-Assad. Speaking to officers in June 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the “invaluable experience” that the Russian military was gaining in Syria.

Now, almost five years later, he is implementing them: shelling, encircling, besieging cities, then offering so-called humanitarian corridors in order to finally depopulate and take over the area. Today it is Mariupol on the Black Sea, then it was Aleppo and Ghouta. “All promises to protect civilians were broken at the time, says surgeon Yazji.

25 poison gas attacks documented

During the Syrian civil war, the Russian military also learned how to avoid costly street fighting in besieged cities: with chlorine gas or the chemical warfare agent sarin. The “Independent International Commission of Inquiry into Syria” set up by the UN Human Rights Council documented at least 25 poison gas attacks between 2013 and the end of 2017 that were proven to have been carried out by the Syrian military.

President Assad’s regime repeatedly ignored the “red line” drawn by then-US President Obama in 2012: Washington said that the use of chemical weapons would immediately result in a US military strike. One of the “priceless experiences” of the Syrian war is that you don’t necessarily have to take such threatening gestures seriously.

Most recently, on April 7, 2018, Duma northeast of Damascus was fired upon with a chemical weapon, at least 42 people died in the poison gas. As usual, Assad and Putin then unanimously claimed that it was insurgent militias, not the army. “If that were to happen again in Ukraine, it would be a disaster,” says Yazji.