'We are just here to help in some way', says Dr Jacques Bérès, 71, pressed into action within hours of arriving in Homs area
Martin Chulov
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 February 2012
"When Dr Jacques Bérès crossed into Syria by truck last week, his hulking suitcase full of surgical kit was perched against an awkward cargo – two dozen rocket launchers.
The retired French surgeon – who has volunteered his services in nearly every major global conflict since Vietnam in 1968 – said he rarely had to share transport with gunrunners on his mercy missions. But nothing about this war in Syria seems to be going to script....
In the three days that the 71-year-old orthopaedic surgeon Bérès has been near Homs, he has been at the centre of an escalating uprising. Hours after arriving on Thursday he helped to save the life of a gunshot victim and gave first aid to five seriously wounded opposition fighters.....
Abu Mahmoud is a recent defector; he waited for almost 10 months before fleeing and was party to some of the most prominent operations of the regime crackdown, in Idlib, Deraa and Homs. But the time it took him to defect is not being held against him in his home town, where he is now one of the Free Syrian Army's local leaders.
"Every officer like him had three people from Assad's army watching him," said the lead physician at the clinic, Dr Qassem. "He couldn't run. If he did, he would have been killed.".....
Frontline medics have been killed and wounded in Homs and their facilities and dispensaries have been hit by mortars and rockets. So, too, has a hospital. The opposition-held sectors of the city have been battered into submission by the eight-day barrage.
Few people are making it out of the satellite towns and villages that spill north to Hama, or south towards Lebanon. "We still can't get there," said one medical worker. We want to go very much, but the roads are not safe."
So, too, does Bérès. "The symbolism is very strong," he said of the presence of foreign doctors in a war zone. "People here are happy to meet a surgeon from a well-developed country who just wants to be with them. "It seems to be a war here, yes. But I don't know if it's a continuation of the (Arab) spring, or a religious war between the Alawite and the Sunni people."
For Bérès, some 44 years in the field, including 10 trips to the war zones of Lebanon, Gaza, the Balkans, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan and Iraq, interspersed with time at Paris hospitals, have chipped away at the ideals he first brought to the profession. "Humanity is not drifting away, but it's not improving," he said.
As he prepared to move on into Homs itself, which could for him be perhaps his last stop on a long road of humanitarian help, he delivered a prediction that seemed to echo around this place, in the hinterland of civil war. "I am not optimistic about Syria," he said gravely. "It is a very difficult situation.""
Martin Chulov
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 February 2012
"When Dr Jacques Bérès crossed into Syria by truck last week, his hulking suitcase full of surgical kit was perched against an awkward cargo – two dozen rocket launchers.
The retired French surgeon – who has volunteered his services in nearly every major global conflict since Vietnam in 1968 – said he rarely had to share transport with gunrunners on his mercy missions. But nothing about this war in Syria seems to be going to script....
In the three days that the 71-year-old orthopaedic surgeon Bérès has been near Homs, he has been at the centre of an escalating uprising. Hours after arriving on Thursday he helped to save the life of a gunshot victim and gave first aid to five seriously wounded opposition fighters.....
Abu Mahmoud is a recent defector; he waited for almost 10 months before fleeing and was party to some of the most prominent operations of the regime crackdown, in Idlib, Deraa and Homs. But the time it took him to defect is not being held against him in his home town, where he is now one of the Free Syrian Army's local leaders.
"Every officer like him had three people from Assad's army watching him," said the lead physician at the clinic, Dr Qassem. "He couldn't run. If he did, he would have been killed.".....
Frontline medics have been killed and wounded in Homs and their facilities and dispensaries have been hit by mortars and rockets. So, too, has a hospital. The opposition-held sectors of the city have been battered into submission by the eight-day barrage.
Few people are making it out of the satellite towns and villages that spill north to Hama, or south towards Lebanon. "We still can't get there," said one medical worker. We want to go very much, but the roads are not safe."
So, too, does Bérès. "The symbolism is very strong," he said of the presence of foreign doctors in a war zone. "People here are happy to meet a surgeon from a well-developed country who just wants to be with them. "It seems to be a war here, yes. But I don't know if it's a continuation of the (Arab) spring, or a religious war between the Alawite and the Sunni people."
For Bérès, some 44 years in the field, including 10 trips to the war zones of Lebanon, Gaza, the Balkans, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan and Iraq, interspersed with time at Paris hospitals, have chipped away at the ideals he first brought to the profession. "Humanity is not drifting away, but it's not improving," he said.
As he prepared to move on into Homs itself, which could for him be perhaps his last stop on a long road of humanitarian help, he delivered a prediction that seemed to echo around this place, in the hinterland of civil war. "I am not optimistic about Syria," he said gravely. "It is a very difficult situation.""
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