Ghouta

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Satellite image of Damascus and the surrounding area. In the north, the bald jabal Qāsiyūn stands out from the green fields of the plain.
From Jabal Qāsiyūn to the south via Damascus. In the center of the picture is the star-shaped Umayyin Square, where the National Library and the Ministry of Defense are located.

Ghouta ( Arabic غوطة دمشق, DMG Ġūṭat Dimašq  'Damascus Depression ', also Ghouta ) is one of the largest irrigation oases in the Middle East, stretching from the Syrian capital Damascus to the west, south and east. In the north it ends at the steep drop of the vegetation-poor Jabal Qāsiyūn . The oasis is essentially fed by the two rivers Barada and Nahr el-Awadsch , which are used for artificial irrigation of the fields and for the urban drinking water supply.

The Ghouta with tree groves and vegetable fields is divided into a ring from its center to the edges, in the east it merges into the Syrian desert after a treeless zone called Merj with rain-fed crops . Due to the uncontrolled expansion of the city in the suburbs, the Ghouta is pushed back further and further.

In the Bronze Age , the Ghouta was probably a sparsely populated forest and swamp area, from which water for irrigation was directed to the outskirts, where the agricultural settlements were probably located. These had to be defended from the outside by a series of hill fortresses. These included Tell eṣ-Ṣaliḥiyeh in the east and the smaller fortified settlement Deir Khabiye in the south. From the middle of the 1st millennium BC BC began to open up today's center of the Ghouta through irrigation canals. Damascus developed into the capital. In the Middle Ages, nomads used the now uninhabited peripheral areas as pastureland, and in the mid-19th century settlement areas and arable land grew again in the Merj and beyond.

During the Syrian civil war from 2011, Eastern Ghouta was a retreat for various militias, some of them radical Islamists. The region was badly devastated by fighting until 2018 and finally completely captured by the Syrian army in April 2018 .

Syrian civil war

The eastern part of Ghouta was enclosed early in the course of the Syrian civil war that began in 2011 by the Syrian army and militias loyal to the government and was largely dependent on smuggling for supplies. Estimates in 2017 put between 350,000 and 400,000 civilians living in the affected area.

According to the de-escalation zone agreement at the end of 2017, the remaining militias in Eastern Ghouta were the Islamist groups Jaish al-Islam ( Islamic army ), supported by Saudi Arabia , and the Falaq al-Rahman ( Al-Rahman Legion ), originally from Qatar and Turkey based. Both are considered Islamic - conservative . Well that was Committee to Free the Levant , an offshoot of the terrorist organization al-Qaida , mentioned your supporters States had stopped in late 2017 to send assistance to them. In February 2018, the two groups had no means to repel the air strikes and, according to an assessment in The Guardian on February 22, were also too weak in numbers for a ground offensive.

During the period under the “authoritarian but by no means totalitarian” militias, however, elections were also held, whereby the militias were unable to gain control over the local councils of Ghouta. Likewise, the Syrian Civil Code of 1949 was never repealed, which meant that, contrary to the time of the Ba'ath Party, civil society organizations could indeed be formed. So at the beginning an underground, ultimately secular school was built, also because the common denominator in religion could not be found. A women's center was set up in Duma, where women were informed about their rights. A library was also built in Duma, in which mostly women get information. A secular newspaper also existed for a long time.

In August 2013, the chemical warfare agent sarin was used in the Ghouta area.

In autumn 2017, Eastern Ghouta was declared one of four de-escalation zones by the states involved in the civil war, Iran , Russia and Turkey . Initially, the establishment of the zones was agreed in May 2017 and a final agreement was reached in Astana by September 2017 , which was initially to apply for six months. The agreement does not apply to religious extremist groups. The Syrian government and the Islamists were not involved in the agreement and there are no implementation mechanisms. It was controversial whether the intensity of the fighting decreased as a result of the de-escalation zone agreement. The NZZ wrote: "In fact, the Russian and Syrian air forces in the rebel areas never made a distinction between combatants and civilians, but always specifically included the latter in their warfare."

On January 8, 2018, after a long period of calm, mortar attacks by Islamist militias began on the old city of Damascus, with around 100 grenades struck that day and five people killed. The attacks continued and resulted in significant damage to buildings and other deaths.

A major offensive began in February 2018 and in the first week of February alone, activists reported 169 deaths from air and artillery attacks on Eastern Ghouta. From February 19, 2018, Russian and Syrian fighter planes flew the most violent air strikes to date on Eastern Ghouta. The UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Panos Moumtzis, spoke of hundreds of civilians killed in the past few weeks. Fifteen civilians died and twenty were injured on February 20, 2018 when residential districts of the neighboring capital Damascus from Eastern Ghouta were fired with rockets and mortars .

The Unicef published an empty statement and announced on February 20, "You have no more words to describe the suffering of the children and your own indignation". UN - General Secretary António Guterres called the events in Ghouta in February 2018 "Hell on Earth". One of the resolution the Security Council demanded on 24 February 2018 a 30-day ceasefire with immediate effect for East ghouta. The terrorist organizations Islamic State (IS) and the Al-Nusra Front were excluded. Compulsory enforcement measures were not agreed.

According to assessments of February 2018, it was clear for both the Russian government and the Syrian government that the “Islamic Army” was dealing with “terrorists” who were excluded from the ceasefire. Russia of its own accord proposed a five-hour daily ceasefire.

The country director of the World Food Program Jakob Kern estimated at the beginning of March 2018 that a real supply of Ghouta would require a ceasefire of one month. Any ceasefire under 48 hours is worthless for humanitarian aid anyway due to the complexity of front line crossings.

On March 4, 2018, the government's armed forces had estimated that around 25% of the boiler was under their control. According to press reports, a commander of the Syrian army estimated that one only had to overcome a few kilometers to split the remaining part of the eastern Ghouta basin into two parts. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the majority of the medical material has been removed by the Syrian authorities from an aid convoy with 46 truckloads full of supplies for Eastern Ghouta . Funds for wound care, surgical instruments, insulin and dialysis machines , which the WHO had earmarked for those trapped , were confiscated.

On March 10, the Syrian state television reported the withdrawal of fighters and their families from Eastern Ghouta. The Islamist militia Jaish al-Islam also stated that a first group of jihadists from al-Qaeda-affiliated Tahrir al-Sham should be evacuated to Idlib province. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), around 1200 civilians were killed during the offensive in the period from the end of February to mid-March 2018 . The advancing troops are said to have used chlorine or another poison gas again - an investigation, which would also be necessary for the consequences threatened by France, could not be foreseen in the short term. The Russian Defense Ministry accused the insurgents of shooting at a convoy with 300 families. There have been several incidents in the past where rebels shot at civilians trying to escape from them.

The districts of Jobar, Ein Tamar and Zamalka were the most severely damaged after the fighting subsided in spring 2018. At the end of March 2018, for example, based on the analysis of aerial photographs from December 2017, the United Nations estimated that in Jobar alone, which is closest to Damascus, 93% of the buildings were destroyed or damaged by the fighting. In Ein Tamar it was 71% and in Zamalka 59% of the buildings. Almost two thirds of the pre-war population had fled these parts of the city.

On March 26, 115,000 people had already left Eastern Ghouta. Only the Islamists of the Jaish al-Islam group remained in the Duma , in the north-east of Ghutas, and refused to give up. In addition to them, the United Nations suspects about 70,000 civilians in Duma.

On April 1, SOHR activists reported that the fighters of Jaish al-Islam had now also agreed to an evacuation to northern Syria. Syrian state media later confirmed the report and announced that they wanted to bring the fighters to Jarabulus .

Air strikes against targets in Duma resumed ten days after the air strikes ended. Apparently, some fighters in the Islamist group had decided not to withdraw. On April 7, 2018, according to unconfirmed reports, there was a chemical weapons attack on the Duma district . On April 12, Russian authorities finally announced that the Duma was under government control. The last 1,500 Islamist fighters had therefore been transported away.

The Syrian army's offensive finally ended on April 14 with the Syrian army taking the entire region.

When the Islamists were expelled from Ghouta in April 2018, the attacks on the old city of Damascus ended. In the words of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem II Karim , this means a decisive improvement in the situation for the people in Damascus, including the Christians living there .

See also

literature

  • Eugen Wirth : Syria, a geographic study of the country. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1971, pp. 403–406.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kareem Shaheen: Syrian children flee after kindergarten is bombed in besieged Ghouta. The Guardian, October 30, 2017
  2. ↑ Fights outside Damascus - A civil rights activist reports from the besieged Duma , NZZ , February 8, 2018
  3. ↑ a b c The Syrian Nightmare Continues , NZZ, March 2, 2018
  4. ↑ Martin Chulov: Ghouta's desperate Civilians say they've been abandoned to Their fate. In: The Guardian. February 22, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b East Ghouta: The Dream of Self-Determination - in the Middle of Hell , NZZ, March 13, 2018
  6. ^ Report on the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of ​​Damascus on August 21, 2013. (PDF; 3.4 MB). Report of the United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic , accessed February 9, 2018.
  7. ↑ Final de-escalation zones agreed on in Astana. aljazeera.com from September 15, 2017
  8. ↑ Kersten Knipp: Syria: Art of diplomacy in demand. Deutsche Welle, October 30, 2017, accessed on February 22, 2018 : "Religious extremist groups are also excluded from the protection zone agreement"
  9. ^ Maryam Saleh, Murtaza Hussain, Rajaai Bourhan: Assad Agreed to Local Cease-Fires in Syria - But War Crimes Worsen in Eastern Ghouta. The Intercept, December 17, 2017
  10. ^ The Dormition of Our Lady Melkite Cathedral and Bishopric, Haret Al-Zeitoun district. Aid to the Church in Need, ACN International. (With pictures of the damage in 2018). Christians of Syria, ACN Syria, accessed April 28, 2020.
  11. ^ "The Christians of Damascus feel abandoned" Ostkirchen.info Portal, March 2, 2018.
  12. ^ Adam Taylor: As violence escalates in Syria, video footage shows civilian devastation. In: The Washington Post. February 9, 2018.
  13. ↑ Christoph Sydow: Syria: Hell on the edge of Damascus , Spiegel Online, February 10, 2018
  14. ↑ Christoph Sydow: People trapped in Eastern Ghouta - "Nobody will hear you". In: Der Spiegel Online, February 20, 2018.
  15. ↑ a b c The fighting at Damascus escalates. In: NZZ. 20th February 2018.
  16. ↑ Polina Ivanova: Russia says Syrian ceasefire monitoring center hit in shelling: TASS. Thomson Reuters, February 21, 2018, accessed on February 22, 2018 (English): "Residential areas, Damascus hotels, as well as Russia's Center for Syrian Reconciliation, were hit in a massive bombardment by illegally armed groups from Eastern Ghouta"
  17. ↑ Hell on Earth: Russia's cynical game in Syria deserves nothing but contempt. In: NZZ. February 23, 2018.
  18. ↑ UN Security Council votes for a ceasefire in Syria. In: The time. February 24, 2018.
  19. ↑ Struggle for Influence in Syria: The Interests of Foreign Powers. FOCUS Magazin Verlag GmbH, February 28, 2018, accessed on February 28, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Jakob Kern and the starvation of the children in Syria. In: Echo of Time . 1st March 2018.
  21. ^ "Army conquers outskirts of Eastern Ghuta" Die Zeit online from March 4, 2018
  22. ^ Samuel Osborne: Eastern Ghouta: Assad forces strip trauma kits and surgical supplies from aid convoy meant for desperate civilians. The Independent of March 5, 2018
  23. ↑ Rebels begin withdrawing from Eastern Ghouta . Wiener Zeitung of March 10, 2018
  24. ↑ Dozens of dead in fighting in Eastern Ghouta and Afrin. In: world. Axel Springer SE, March 14, 2018, accessed on March 21, 2018 : “ According to the observatory, more than 1200 civilians have been killed since the offensive by Syrian government troops on Eastern Ghouta began around three weeks ago. The UK-based observatory claims its barely verifiable information is obtained from local activists. "
  25. ↑ Attacks make the helpers desperate , NZZ, March 9, 2018
  26. ^ "Eastern Ghouta Syria: The neighborhoods below the bombs" BBC of March 29, 2018
  27. ↑ Dominic Johnson: "East Ghouta falls - with one exception" TAZ of March 26, 2018
  28. ^ "Syria war: Troops mass around last rebel town in Eastern Ghouta" of March 28, 2018
  29. ^ "Syrie: un accord pour évacuer les rebelles de leur dernière enclave dans la Ghouta" Le Monde from April 1, 2018
  30. ^ "State media report the start of the rebels' withdrawal from the Duma" Der Standard from April 2, 2018
  31. ↑ AP: "Russia says Syrian government now in control of rebel town" New York Post of April 12, 2018
  32. ↑ Virtual map of East Ghouta battle: September 2015-Present
  33. ↑ Ulrich W. Sahm: “No alternative to Assad in Syria”. Israel Network, September 30, 2019.