Donor countries have pledged billions of dollars for Syria on the first day of an international fundraising conference in London, but the goodwill has been overshadowed by a brutal ongoing Syrian government offensive, backed by Russian air power, north of Aleppo.
Syria’s opposition cited the intensive air campaign in Aleppo among their reasons for calling a halt to critical peace talks in Geneva yesterday.
And on Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu warned that the bombing was driving a new exodus of refugees from Aleppo towards the Turkish border.
“Let’s be clear, Syrians are fleeing because they are being bombed by the regime and their supporters,” he told those gathered at the “Supporting Syria and the Region” conference in London, which aims to raise about $9 billion to address the crisis caused by the five-year war.
An air raid on rebel-held neighborhoods in Aleppo, believed to have been carried out by Russian aircraft, killed at least 21 people Thursday, according the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group.
That came on the back of an announcement by Syrian state media Wednesday that government forces had broken a 3½ year rebel siege of a pair of pro-regime Shiite villages north of Aleppo, and severed a key rebel supply route linking Aleppo to the Turkish border.
As tensions between Turkey and Russia continue to simmer over Syria — particularly since Turkey’s downing of a Russian military aircraft in November — a Russian military spokesman claimed Thursday that it suspected Turkey was preparing a major military incursion into Syria, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
“We have a serious basis to suspect intensive preparation by Turkey to a military invasion into the territory of the north of the Syrian Arab Republic,” the agency reported Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, as saying.
Russia is one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest backers, while Turkey supports Syria’s rebels.
Jordan: ‘We have reached our limit’
Seventy countries and international organizations have gathered for the London conference.
It aims to raise $7.7 billion requested by the U.N. for Syria, and about $1.3 billion requested by countries in the region — Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey — which are shouldering the brunt of the humanitarian burden caused by crisis, housing about 4.6 million refugees.
“Today one of every five people living in our kingdom is a Syrian refugee. It is as if the UK had absorbed the entire population of Belgium,” Jordan’s King Abdullah told attendees.
“We have reached our limit. Our country will continue to do what we can do to help those in need, but it cannot be at the expense of our own people’s welfare.”
According to the U.N., nearly 9 in 10 of the 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan live below the poverty line.
The UK pledged an extra $1.76 billion to the crisis, raising its total commitment to $3.35 billion.
In a statement announcing the pledge, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the funds could “provide the sense of hope needed to stop people thinking they have no option but to risk their lives on a dangerous journey to Europe.”
Conference co-hosts Germany and Norway promised $2.57 billion and $1.17 billion respectively, while the European Union pledged $2.2 billion, the U.S. $891 million in new assistance and the United Arab Emirates $137 million.
But as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry observed at the conference: “The challenge is not to just write checks.”
“To stop the flow of refugees,” he said, “we have to end the war.”
Peace talks temporarily suspended
Efforts to that end ground to a temporary halt Wednesday, when U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura announced “a pause” in discussions in Geneva, saying they should restart February 25.
The talks, aimed at creating a nationwide ceasefire in Syria, broke up amid opposition anger over the brutal Russian air campaign over Aleppo province.
The U.S., France and Turkey have criticized the airstrikes, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov vowed Wednesday to continue the strikes “until we truly win over terrorist groups.”
Kerry said that he had spoken with Lavrov Thursday, saying both parties “agreed that we need to discuss how to implement the ceasefire.”
Russian airstrikes have killed nearly 1,400 Syrian civilians since they began in September, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said last week.
The Russian intervention in the Syrian conflict has decisively helped the Assad regime, which had suffered major setbacks before Moscow entered the fray in September.
Elsewhere in Syria, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that food and relief aid had been delivered to more than 12,000 people in the besieged rebel-held town of Moadamiyeh, near Damascus, Wednesday.
The ICRC said in a statement that more aid was needed in the town of 50,000, and it hoped to deliver more in coming days.