Stamford, U.S.A. – AmeriCares is rushing a delivery of emergency medical aid for families fleeing the violence in Syria. An air shipment containing antibiotics, wound care supplies, pain relievers and other critically needed medical aid is expected to arrive in Jordanthis week where it will be delivered to a partner organization providing medical care for 30,000 Syrian refugees who have fled for safety.

The shipment also contains medicines for refugees who have diabetes, respiratory problems and other chronic health conditions. Nearly 40,000 Syrian refugees are currently registered in Jordan, although the actual refugee population is believed to be as high as 150,000. The refugee crisis has intensified in recent days with the mass exodus from Aleppo, a city that once housed a population of 2.5 million people, due to the escalation in fighting between the Syrian government and rebels.

“With tens of thousands of people flooding densely populated urban areas and tent camps in Jordan, the aid organizations on the ground are struggling to meet the demand for primary care services,” said AmeriCares Director of Emergency Response Garrett Ingoglia. “This emergency aid shipment is meeting an urgent request for the most basic medical supplies. Refugees are particularly susceptible to disease and face increased health risks because disease can spread rapidly in crowded living conditions.”

AmeriCares, through its Medical Outreach Program, also supplied medical aid to an Indiana physician who recently traveled to Turkey to aid Syrian refugees injured in the conflict. Dr. Ammar Ghanem, a Syrian-born intensive care unit doctor from Fort Wayne, spent three weeks working in Turkey in the spring and early summer providing medical care to Syrian refugees and patients with gunshot wounds and traumatic brain injuries crossing the borders. He used medications and supplies donated by AmeriCares to help stop bleeding in some patients, as well as to suture wounds and treat infections.

AmeriCares has been delivering critically needed medicines and relief supplies to the Middle East for more than 25 years in response to civil conflict as well as humanitarian crises.

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Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has confirmed his defection from Al Assad’s government and that he is in Jordan, thus refuting the Syrian media which has suggested that he was dismissed by Al Assad.

“I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime, and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution,” Hijab said in a statement read by his spokesman, Muhammed el-Etri, according to Al Jazeera. “I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution.”

Hijab, former Minister of Agriculture, was elected prime minister in June after the parliamentary elections. Syrian authorities said this was a decisive step towards the path of democracy, while the opposition denounced it as a fraud.

Apparently, the now former Syrian prime minister has left the country along with at least two ministers and three military officers.

Hijab is thus added to the growing list of defectors, becoming the highest-ranking official to defect from Bashar Al-Assad’s government since the beginning of the uprising. It all started with the Oil Deputy Minister Abdo Houssameddine, who announced on March 8 his desertion and became the first government men to join the opposition.

Diplomats such as the Syrian ambassador in Iraq, his counterpart in the United Arab Emirates, and four deputies have also crossed the border to join the revolution since civil war started.

Hundreds of soldiers, including senior military personnel have also turned their back on Assad’s regime.

According to The Guardian, “Hijab’s defection had been planned for more than two months” but the actual implementation of the plan had be “delayed on many occasions.” Haaretz Israeli newspaper reports that “Hijab had started to plan how he would defect from the first day that he was appointed as prime minister.”

Omar Ghalawanji, a local government minister, has been appointed to take on Hijab’s office at the moment, official Syrian television announced.

The United States believes that the defection of Syria’s prime minister shows that President Assad grip on power is loosening: “This is the latest indication that Assad has lost control of Syria and that the momentum is with the opposition forces and the Syrian people,” says Tommy Vietor, the National Security Council spokesman.

“It’s clear that these defections are reaching the highest levels of the Syrian government and demonstrate that the Syrian people believe Assad’s days are numbered,” Vietor continued.

The news on Hijab’s defection was released just hours after a bomb ripped through the state TV building in the capital Damascus.

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The conflict in Syria rages on as the Battle of Aleppo enters its third week on August 2. Since March of 2011, when the first anti-government protests began in Syria, around 200,000 have been made refugees and around 20,000 people have been killed.

Aleppo, a commercial hub in Syria and the city with the largest population, is one of the most active combat locations in Syria. It is a key location since the winning of Aleppo for the rebels could mean the end of the Assad regime. BBC’s Jim Muir wrote, “The longer the situation remains unresolved, the stronger the rebels’ grip may become, as they pursue their goal of establishing a ‘liberated area’ in Aleppo and neighboring Idlib province to use as a springboard against the regime’s last stronghold, Damascus.”

Many rebels have taken hold of several districts within the city of Aleppo and Assad has sent tanks, helicopter gunships, and war planes to attack it.

On August 2 the rebel Tawheed Brigade left Tal Rifaat to give aid to the rebels in Aleppo. Also early in the morning of August 2 the rebels attacked Menagh army base with a stolen tank. Menagh is from where Assad has been launching several of his artillery and air strike attacks on Aleppo. The rebels pulled out after a short time with one rebel fighter claiming, “We hit the airport using a tank that we captured from the Assad army. We attacked the airport a few times but we have decided to retreat at this time.” However, several reports claim that the retreat may have been due to the war planes that attacked the rebels.

In Aleppo, rebels put a video online that showed them executing several prisoners; the act is being called a war crime by several organizations. The rebels also claim to have taken three police stations within the city in the last week. Also last month, Assad’s forces managed to drive most of the rebels out of Damascus and began to push an offensive on Aleppo.

Tensions between the two sides have also risen from the government activity in Damascus and the rebel activity in Aleppo. Assad, who has been in power since the death of his father in 2001, launched two attacks in Damascus on Thursday in which soldiers went door to door asking people to show their papers. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) claimed “the bodies of 43 people were recovered. Some of them had been summarily executed.”

In the last month Assad’s top four advisers, including his own brother-in-law, were killed in a bombing. Since then, Assad has been in hiding and has only issued pre-recorded statements.

On Wednesday, August 1 the mobile phone connections were cut for the city of Aleppo leading many to believe that the government would launch an attack. In fact, on Thursday the government forces attacked the Salaheddine district in Aleppo, although most were repelled by the rebels.

The problems worsen even further for the citizens of Aleppo since the city is beginning to run out of food. The World Food Program issued a statement claiming, “The humanitarian situation is deteriorating in Aleppo and food needs are growing rapidly.”

The world’s response

Many believe that outside governments should be helping the rebels although since Russia and China are in favor of keeping Assad in power, there has been little consensus. The Security Council has created three separate resolutions that have been vetoed by Russia and China as too extreme because it would cause a regime change led by an outside power, violating sovereignty.

The UN General Assembly will be voting on a resolution written by Saudi Arabia shortly that would support the Syrian rebels.

President Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, July 30 to “coordinate efforts to accelerate a political transition in Syria.” Although Obama will not send direct military assistance, he does seem to want to support the rebels. The Treasury Department has recently decided that it will give a license to the Syrian Support Group that will aid the rebels financially.

Jordan, a bordering country to Syria, has been helping Syrian refugees enter their country. However, in recent days Syrian soldiers shot at Jordanian troops that were helping the refugees to cross the border.

On August 2, the UN-Arab League joint special peace envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, has announced that he will not renew his contract when it ends in August, effectively quitting his job. He claims that the Syrian people “desperately need action” but he believes that the UN Security Council is “finger pointing and name calling.”

Annan is the author of the six point peace plan that was introduced a few months ago. It called for an end to all military conflict, peaceful political negotiations, and more freedom of expression for the Syrian people. Unfortunately, neither the rebels nor the Syrian government upheld all sides of the plan and the situation quickly deteriorated.

Annan has blamed both sides in the Syrian conflict for the lack of peace but has also said that the problems were “compounded by the disunity of the international community.” He went on to state, “Syria can still be saved from the worst calamity – if the international community can show the courage and leadership necessary to compromise on their partial interests for the sake of the Syrian people – for the men, women, and children who have already suffered far too much.”

Currently it is unknown who will fill Annan’s position at the end of August, but most assuredly few are willing to take it.

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Two wars are being waged in Syria. There is the physical fighting going on between the rebels and government troops but there is also a media war going on in which the results of the physical battles are being hidden or changed to misrepresent facts. One young activist, Yahya Abdulrahman, a physics student at Aleppo University claimed, “The regime is fighting the people in two ways. One is with the army. The other is with the media. There are parts of the Free Syrian Army that are fighting the regime. But there are other parts fighting the regime’s hackers.””

Smart phones have been key in the Syrian uprising – just like in the Arab Spring revolutions – because, according to the Christian Science Monitor, it is a way for the people to undermine the state media (which is controlled by Assad) and get supporters within Syria and in the rest of the world. So far the Syrian government has banned access to YouTube and Facebook, but several of the youth have found ways around these government firewalls.

Having smart phones and access to computers and internet allow the rebels to communicate with friends and family as well as talk to soldiers who want to defect to the rebel army.

Many Syrian rebels have risked their lives while fighting the media war. According to the Guardian hundreds of video activists have joined the revolution through videography; most are male, young, and technologically capable individuals. Abdulrahman, one of these activists, admits that filming is just as dangerous as fighting with a gun: “If the army sees anyone with a camera they try and kill him first.”

However, the video aspect of the revolution is just as important as the actual physical fighting. Assad controls Syria’s television stations which claim that the Free Syrian Army (the rebels) is a group of “terrorists” and “al-Qaida” while also broadcasting pro-regime propaganda. Abu Mhio, a rebel media activist claims, “When we will be free, [Syrian TV] will be dead.”

If Assad controls all of the media in the country he can prevent the successes of the rebels from being reported which lowers their support and prevents more people from getting involved. In order to ensure that the world and the Syrian people actually know what is going on in Syria they must record it for themselves, even if it is emotionally tolling and life-threatening.

Abdulrahman was arrested once for video-recording a protest on his campus. After being beaten and made to sign a piece of paper claiming he was an informant, he was released and continued filming for the rebels. He has also filmed the dead in the streets to show the toll of the fighting. “I filmed one of the children killed last week. We hadn’t eaten all day because of Ramadan. But afterwards I couldn’t touch any food.”

In previous years rebels have not had such technological access to aid them in their cause. Hafez al-Assad, the current ruler’s father, ruled Syria from 1970 and was responsible for destroying the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in the city of Hama in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people. One rebel fighter explained to the Christian Science Monitor, “His father destroyed Hama in a few days, but there was no TV there and no internet to show the world. But today we have the internet, we photograph and film and have Al Jazeera, so people know. They can see what is happening.”

Few journalists have been allowed within Syria in the recent months of fighting, but those that have, have received threats. One Guardian journalist received a death threat via a tweet from a member of the regime stating, “I pray every night that you die.”

Those journalists that are allowed in the country are also not provided a lot of access. Another journalist, Alex Thomson, tweeted “Syrian government is losing the PR war” when they refused to let him interview or record the Syrian military.

Ultimately, winning the media war will be just as important as winning the physical war for both sides. The rebels have succeeded in many ways but they must take Aleppo in order to really start making changes. According to Burhan Ghalioun, a member of the Syrian National Council currently in Paris, if the rebels take Aleppo “there will be nothing more that will stand in the way of the Free Syrain Army. Hama, Homs, to the outskirts of Damascus have in large part been liberated.”

Image Courtesy of  Omar Chatriwala

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