There is an African proverb: When elephants fight, it's the mice that get trampled.
And so it goes in Syria where about 20 per cent of the people haven't got enough money to buy food.
Syria is having trouble persuading suppliers to respond to
its tenders for food.
Nobody has been willing to accept President Bashar a-Assad’s
offer to pay via bank accounts in other countries that have been frozen as part
of sanctions against his brutal regime.
He withdrew tenders for wheat two weeks ago and now it has
withdrawn a tender for sugar. Another tender for sugar in July also failed.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
says about 20 per cent of the population is short of money to buy food and
farmers are short of fertilizer and seed to plant their next crop.
Syria tendered for 200,000 tonnes of soft wheat, but said
the two traders who offered to supply it failed to meet specifications.
Syria needs to import about two million tonnes of wheat this
year because the harvest hit a 30-year low of 1.5 million tonnes, about half of
normal. The country is in the third year of a civil war that has claimed more
than 100,000 victims.
The elephants are warring against each other, and it's women, children and the elderly who are being trampled.
A Syrian official said the country had a 12-month supply of
stockpiled food, so is in no immediate need. He said the country will try
another tender.
On the other hand, the tender for sugar said it’s an “extreme
urgency.”
Which reminds me of another proverb: In wars, the first casualty is the truth.
