Press Release
Colonial Policies Threaten a Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Syrian Regions
(Translated)

“Five million people are affected by the ongoing water crisis” in north and northeast Syria, the United Nations said Tuesday, October 5, and called for a “multi-sectoral response” worth $251 million to help 3.4 million of the most affected people over the next six months. Only $51 million has been received so far.

People in the northern parts of Syria are unable to reliably access safe and sufficient water due to low water levels, destroyed water and sanitation infrastructures, and the already low operational capacity of water plants. This is in addition to the health impact of poor water quality, which often brings waterborne diseases and other health problems to the camps, such as diarrhea, hepatitis, impetigo, scabies and many others. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has also warned that limited access to clean water in northern Syria is exacerbating the spread of diseases and seriously hampers the hygiene essential measures related to the high incidence of COVID-19 infections.

The water shortage crisis is not new, but it is recurring throughout the Syrian crisis because it is the result of the colonial policy to tame the people to accept a fait accompli. They only talk about the logistical and climatic reasons, as if it were an emergency event. They attribute its occurrence to nature, the climate and the lack of rainfall while reluctantly mentioning the weakness of the infrastructure, and without talking about corruption and the conspiracy of the puppet rulers and agents to humiliate the people and subjugate them using all means and methods. For example, Kurdish-led authorities and some Syrian civil society organizations have accused Turkish-backed forces of intermittently cutting off the water supply from Alouk water station after taking control of it in late 2019 as part of a military operation in northern Syria. According to Save the Children, the Alouk station has rarely pumped water at full capacity this year. It did not pump any water for 89 days, and pumped below half its capacity for 142 days.

They present this crisis as if they are talking about a country that has not been exhausted by the criminal war machine that wiped out humans, trees and stones, and still continues without mercy and compassion for its children, elderly and women. It is Syria that has been failed by the Muslim rulers; and the Kafir West has conspired against it with all its inhumane institutions that do not cease paying lip service to equality, women’s rights, human rights, freedoms and other glossy phrases that have not benefited the people of Syria with anything but the elimination of all elements of life in them.

It is a fabricated crisis like other politicized crises, an inhumane crisis run by all the blood dripping ominous hands, on top of which is this criminal Baathist regime that does not care to address the water issue, as it is absolutely clear that it does not consider it an issue. With the technology available in the current era and the billions collected by relief organizations, it will not be difficult to create and finance a sustainable source of water, instead of the continued suffering of millions of innocent people. This is in addition to the occurrence of droughts that hit the agricultural lands in this region, which is historically the food basket of the country, with the inability to cultivate half of the 1.5 million hectares of land, and where more than 70% of the population of northeastern Syria depends for their livelihood on the agricultural sector.

Like other problems and crises that Muslims struggle with in various Muslim countries, the water shortage crisis and ending the suffering of innocent people will not be resolved unless it is considered within the real care of people’s affairs implemented by a righteous imam and ruler, those qualities that we do not find in our current agent rulers. The ruler in the Islamic system takes care of people's affairs according to a divine system based on justice and the preservation of the humanity of each member of its citizens.

O commercial organizations, it is not the abundance of money nor the politicized international reports that change the state of the country and the people, but rather by the system that manages and administers people’s affairs, so we do not hear about water scarcity or its depletion, which leads to a high number of deaths, nor the drought of agricultural lands, which leads to a humanitarian disaster.

The only way out from this colonial policy is by an ideological state, the second Khilafah Rashidah (rightly guided Caliphate) State that will soon exist, with the permission of Allah. Islam made water a public property that people should benefit from, as the Prophet (saw) said:

«النَّاسُ شُرَكَاءُ فِي ثَلَاثٍ: فِي الْمَاءِ وَالْكَلَأِ وَالنَّار»

“People are partners in three: water, pasture lands and fire.”

Women’s Section
in The Central Media Office
of Hizb ut Tahrir