Syrian Refugee Escalates Sharply---The United Nations reported that 11,000 Syrians fled to neighboring countries on Friday, the vast majority clambering for safety over the Turkish border, in one of the largest single-day torrents of refugees since the Syrian conflict began. It came as mayhem and deprivations were worsening inside the country, its president more determined than ever to stay and his fractious enemies still politically paralyzed United Nations refugee agency officials said 9,000 of the fleeing Syrians, many of them drenched from a cold rain, went to Turkey.
The flow alarmed Turkish officials and led their prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to vent bitterly at the five permanent members of the Security Council for what he called their failure to respond decisively to the crisis after nearly 20 months.
“The world cannot be left to what the five permanent members have to say,” Mr. Erdogan told a conference in Indonesia. “If we leave it to the five permanent members, humanity will continue to bleed.”
Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations refugee agency official coordinating the response, told reporters in Geneva, where the agency is based, that the latest surge included 1,000 Syrians who reached Lebanon and 1,000 who reached Jordan, bringing the number of registered refugees to more than 408,000 in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Agency officials said a few weeks ago they had anticipated that more than 700,000 Syrian refugees would be living in these countries by year’s end, straining their resources just as the cold Middle East winter intensifies.
The agency’s figures do not include Syrians who have fled without registering, a number believed to be in the tens of thousands in Jordan alone.
Turkish officials said more than half the Syrians who fled into Turkey on Friday had been seeking to escape combat between insurgents and loyalist forces near Ras al-Ain, a northeast border town where fighting has raged for days.
The arrivals who crossed the Turkish border at Reyhanli in Hatay Province included 26 Syrian Army defectors, with 2 generals and 11 colonels among them, the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency of Turkey reported.
The increased exodus coincided with new signs of defiance by Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in an interview with Russia Today, a government-run news service. In portions of the interview that were first released Thursday, Mr. Assad said that he intended to remain in Syria and warned that any foreign invasion would be a costly catastrophe. Russia has been a steady defender of Mr. Assad.
In the complete version released Friday, Mr. Assad denied that Syria was consumed in a civil war and insisted that his forces could “finish everything” within weeks if foreign suppliers stopped sending weapons to the insurgents, whom he universally categorizes as terrorists.
Mr. Assad also denied that Syrian forces had shelled targets in Turkey and accused Mr. Erdogan — a former friend and now one of Mr. Assad’s biggest critics — of coveting Syrian territory. “He personally thinks that he is the new sultan of the Ottomans and he can control the region as it was during the Ottoman Empire under a new umbrella,” Mr. Assad said.
The surge in refugees occurred as agencies of the United Nations and other groups met donor governments in Geneva to report on the crisis and seek greater financial support for the emergency fund for Syrian refugees, which has received only one-third of its intended goal of $488 million.
“There is more violence, more humanitarian suffering, more displacement and more losses,” said Radhouane Nouicer, the refugee agency’s coordinator based in Damascus.
The United Nations has also estimated that more than 2.5 million people inside Syria need humanitarian assistance, including 1.2 million displaced by the conflict. John Ging, the director of operations for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that four million Syrians may need help in the country by early next year. “It’s just getting a lot worse very rapidly for the ordinary people,” Mr. Ging said.
The United States will provide $34 million in additional aid to Syrians affected by conflict, bringing the total provided by the United States to more than $165 million, the American diplomatic mission in Geneva said in an announcement distributed at the donor meeting.
Groups that track the violence reported widespread attacks, including the government use of warplanes, in Damascus suburbs and other areas on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with contacts inside Syria, said at least 120 people had been killed nationwide.
In Doha, Qatar, the Syrian National Council, an opposition group in exile, elected a new president, George Sabra, a veteran leftist dissident and Christian and an outspoken critic of Mr. Assad who had spent more than eight years in prison for his activism. But it was unclear whether Mr. Sabra’s new role would help or hinder efforts to create a more unified opposition front at a convention of Syrian opposition groups under way in Doha.
Earlier this week Mr. Sabra criticized an attempt to subsume the Syrian National Council into a larger umbrella group, an idea that has been advanced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton has been increasingly exasperated with the council’s dysfunction and irrelevance because its members are all exiles with little feel for the combat raging in their home country.
Many council members have suggested that the formation of a larger umbrella organization would diminish their role without any guarantees of further international funding and other support for the uprising, which currently gets nonlethal aid from the United States. On Thursday and Friday, representatives of the Syrian National Council did not even attend the convention.
“They have a problem that is paralyzing them,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, an opposition activist and former confidant of Mr. Assad.
The council’s vote for a new president and new executive committee caused its own problems, with at least one organization and various independent members quitting over the outcome. Those leaving the council said that the election process had been meant to introduce reforms that added diversity to the group, but that instead it had reinforced the control of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.
“The council has been one color, which defies logic,” said Rima Fleihan, a member in exile of the Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad group that has sought to document casualties. “The institution has failed to deliver what it promised in terms of fixing its internal problems.”
The flow alarmed Turkish officials and led their prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to vent bitterly at the five permanent members of the Security Council for what he called their failure to respond decisively to the crisis after nearly 20 months.
“The world cannot be left to what the five permanent members have to say,” Mr. Erdogan told a conference in Indonesia. “If we leave it to the five permanent members, humanity will continue to bleed.”
Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations refugee agency official coordinating the response, told reporters in Geneva, where the agency is based, that the latest surge included 1,000 Syrians who reached Lebanon and 1,000 who reached Jordan, bringing the number of registered refugees to more than 408,000 in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Agency officials said a few weeks ago they had anticipated that more than 700,000 Syrian refugees would be living in these countries by year’s end, straining their resources just as the cold Middle East winter intensifies.
The agency’s figures do not include Syrians who have fled without registering, a number believed to be in the tens of thousands in Jordan alone.
Turkish officials said more than half the Syrians who fled into Turkey on Friday had been seeking to escape combat between insurgents and loyalist forces near Ras al-Ain, a northeast border town where fighting has raged for days.
The arrivals who crossed the Turkish border at Reyhanli in Hatay Province included 26 Syrian Army defectors, with 2 generals and 11 colonels among them, the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency of Turkey reported.
The increased exodus coincided with new signs of defiance by Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in an interview with Russia Today, a government-run news service. In portions of the interview that were first released Thursday, Mr. Assad said that he intended to remain in Syria and warned that any foreign invasion would be a costly catastrophe. Russia has been a steady defender of Mr. Assad.
In the complete version released Friday, Mr. Assad denied that Syria was consumed in a civil war and insisted that his forces could “finish everything” within weeks if foreign suppliers stopped sending weapons to the insurgents, whom he universally categorizes as terrorists.
Mr. Assad also denied that Syrian forces had shelled targets in Turkey and accused Mr. Erdogan — a former friend and now one of Mr. Assad’s biggest critics — of coveting Syrian territory. “He personally thinks that he is the new sultan of the Ottomans and he can control the region as it was during the Ottoman Empire under a new umbrella,” Mr. Assad said.
The surge in refugees occurred as agencies of the United Nations and other groups met donor governments in Geneva to report on the crisis and seek greater financial support for the emergency fund for Syrian refugees, which has received only one-third of its intended goal of $488 million.
“There is more violence, more humanitarian suffering, more displacement and more losses,” said Radhouane Nouicer, the refugee agency’s coordinator based in Damascus.
The United Nations has also estimated that more than 2.5 million people inside Syria need humanitarian assistance, including 1.2 million displaced by the conflict. John Ging, the director of operations for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in an interview with Al Jazeera that four million Syrians may need help in the country by early next year. “It’s just getting a lot worse very rapidly for the ordinary people,” Mr. Ging said.
The United States will provide $34 million in additional aid to Syrians affected by conflict, bringing the total provided by the United States to more than $165 million, the American diplomatic mission in Geneva said in an announcement distributed at the donor meeting.
Groups that track the violence reported widespread attacks, including the government use of warplanes, in Damascus suburbs and other areas on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with contacts inside Syria, said at least 120 people had been killed nationwide.
In Doha, Qatar, the Syrian National Council, an opposition group in exile, elected a new president, George Sabra, a veteran leftist dissident and Christian and an outspoken critic of Mr. Assad who had spent more than eight years in prison for his activism. But it was unclear whether Mr. Sabra’s new role would help or hinder efforts to create a more unified opposition front at a convention of Syrian opposition groups under way in Doha.
Earlier this week Mr. Sabra criticized an attempt to subsume the Syrian National Council into a larger umbrella group, an idea that has been advanced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton has been increasingly exasperated with the council’s dysfunction and irrelevance because its members are all exiles with little feel for the combat raging in their home country.
Many council members have suggested that the formation of a larger umbrella organization would diminish their role without any guarantees of further international funding and other support for the uprising, which currently gets nonlethal aid from the United States. On Thursday and Friday, representatives of the Syrian National Council did not even attend the convention.
“They have a problem that is paralyzing them,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, an opposition activist and former confidant of Mr. Assad.
The council’s vote for a new president and new executive committee caused its own problems, with at least one organization and various independent members quitting over the outcome. Those leaving the council said that the election process had been meant to introduce reforms that added diversity to the group, but that instead it had reinforced the control of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies.
“The council has been one color, which defies logic,” said Rima Fleihan, a member in exile of the Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad group that has sought to document casualties. “The institution has failed to deliver what it promised in terms of fixing its internal problems.”
