Haiyan aid agencies merit support, sympathy - and, with respect, future scrutiny

Residents gather coins and other salvageable materials from the ruins of houses after Haiyan battered Tacloban (Picture: Reuters)

So far, so standard. A horrific humanitarian disaster strikes, aid agencies rush what workers they can in the right direction as hurriedly as possible while appealing for donations, then the British public (and government) generously obliges.

And, next, the odd cynic on the sidelines wonders not only how such money should be spent, but whether. Then, what then?

The wrenching scenes from the Philippines after the onslaught of typhoon Haiyan can hardly help but tug at the heart- as well as the purse-strings.

As ever, the donations pouring in via the Disaster Emergency Committee’s umbrella appeal are heartwarmingly impressive, as is the £10million pledged swiftly by David Cameron’s government plus another £5million matching DEC bids.

Comparisons have been raised, however, with previous catastrophes and what followed – especially in Haiti, following that already-impoverished nation’s 2010 earthquake.

For all the aid offered by so many dedicated agencies out there, easy and obvious criticism followed the cholera outbreak blamed on United Nations staff and the perception  that charities withdrew within privileged compounds once the worst disorder reigned.

Yet without wishing to encourage any complacency or misdirected indulgence, to witness aid work on the ground in some of the world’s worst-off settings is to appreciate the value of any pound donated and spent.

Of course, proper scrutiny should be applied to where and how resources are distributed, perhaps demanding greater transparency from charity accounts and especially over-arching government authorities.

Among the many strengths of Britain’s international charity sector is its breadth, and willingness to work together – for the most part – within such auspices as the DEC or else the Enough Food For Everyone IF campaign.

Yet sceptics may well feel a little bemused by the contrasting – if not quite competing – appeals for funds, and activist interventions, publicised by so many agencies especially over recent days.

At best, one issue appears to involve so many vitally-effective and affecting individuals offering their own insights, from nearby, on such distant miseries – suggesting not so much who to believe, but who to back, if and when more than any other?

Beneficiaries should or could be one of the bigger beasts – no, beauties – of the aid industry, such as Oxfam, the Red Cross, Save The Children or Medecins Sans Frontieres -  or more modestly mid-ranking institutions including Tearfund or Islamic Relief, any or all meriting admiration and support.

Recent experiences on the Lebanese-Syrian border taught – at least, even more than before – that in or around warzones everyone has a tragic and harrowing tale to tell while still welcoming  any support whether food or shelter or ‘merely’ practical advocacy.

There are many helpers there – and yet, with an estimated 6.5million Syrian refugees and 9million in need while aid remains blocked by Assad-ruled regions, any gains still feel insubstantial. And yet life-changing for those fortunate few happily affected while afflicted.

Again - amid the wasteland conditions within which many in the Philippines are now attempting to stagger on - prospects look bleak, pathways seem narrow and challenges appear intense, both short- and long-term.

Yet let’s just - still - hope all and any aid not only manages to get through, but gets properly followed through.

Learning to eye the future: Syrian children attempt to rebuild their lives

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/12/learning-to-eye-the-future-syrian-children-attempt-to-rebuild-their-lives-3970860/

Death continues to stalk Syrian children even as they mourn already-lost friends and neighbours at funeral services.

Majed Al-Saati not only narrowly escaped being gunned down during a neighbourhood massacre, he then saw his best friend shot through the stomach and die at his feet.

What made the scene all the more poignant was that the pair were part of a funeral procession, paying tribute to 15 fellow villagers struck down in a killing spree days earlier.

The death toll rose yet higher just two days later when a brother of Majed's friend was shot dead outside a mosque where relatives were already praying in grief.

Yet Majed appears both sprightly and defiant, with childlike features seeming younger than his 13 years even as he speaks eloquently - at times gravely - about his ordeals growing up.

Among his classmates is fellow 13-year-old Jamilah Maalouf, with her own gruesome memories of seeing her cousin and uncle dead when a neighbouring field hospital was demolished.

Majed and Jamilah are among thousands of traumatised Syrian children who have endured not only personal tragedies, but gruelling and dangerous escapes across the border.

Some 52.5 per cent of the 716,000 registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon are children, with 200,000 of them thought to be outside school.

Even those who are offered an education in their new surroundings often struggle, since Syrian children were taught in Arabic and English back home yet Lebanese schools prefer Arabic and French.

Yet the Save The Children-backed El Baddawi school in Lebanon's second city Tripoli is dominated by Syrian pupils, many appearing to gradually regain some confidence despite their experiences. 

Majed made it across with his mother Ahlam, 38, and six siblings, though only after the family had endured a series of tragedies.

Two of his uncles, and two great-uncles, were abducted by pro-regime fighters, tortured - with one having a leg cut off - before being left to burn to death in a flaming car.

Majed became accustomed to snipers stationed in nearby buildings, taking potshots at people venturing out of their homes - but the worst violence came on a day tanks arrived.

A lieutenant who accused residents of poisoning local water supplies advanced his tank slowly down the street before opening fire on all around him.

Some 15 people died that day, though Majed managed to take shelter in a neighbour's house - and watched as one of his brothers was shoved to the ground just as a bullet whizzed by.

Majed said: 'He hid for two-and-a-half hours under a car - we thought he was dead, but he later said he didn't call out when we were shouting for him because he didn't want to be caught.

'For the next few days he refused to eat or drink, or do anything - and one night he woke up screaming and trying to attack my father.'

The victims' funerals sparked even more violence, when the graveyard was surrounded by more tanks.

Majed said: 'When I turned my back and started walking away, I heard shouting - then I saw the tanks were shooting at the graveyard and people started falling on top of each other.

'Suddenly a bullet came through my friend's back and through his stomach - one second he was talking, then I saw the blood.'

Majed and his father dragged the body to their nearby home but were unable to save him, before having to break the news to the boy's sobbing mother and father.

Their pain was intensified two days later when the victim's older brother was taken out by a sniper while outside the mosque where the family were praying.

Majed said: 'He didn't see the shot - he was hit in the head from behind.'

He was more fortunate, at least, though his family's decision to flee meant several days sleeping in the fields without any cover on their way to the border.

While wishing he could return home, Majed added: 'There's no Syria right now - it's all destroyed. What's happening is so horrific.

'The people there are suffering from a lack of food and basic needs and the army are even cutting down trees and taking away anything that could be used for heating.'

Schoolmate Jamilah has only been attending lessons for a week - but is tentatively starting to reawaken her dream of becoming a teacher.

Still, she remains haunted by images of carnage the day, five months ago, a neighbouring field hospital in Baba Amr was hit by a rocket.

She said: 'We were sitting in our house when we heard a very big explosion. My dad ran to see what was happening and I followed to the sound of the screaming.

'I knew my uncle and my cousin had been helping doctors at the hospital. 

'As soon as I stepped in, I saw many bodies - we couldn't recognise my cousin and uncle at first because of all the blood, but they were there in pieces.'

Her father swiftly sent her home, where she spent the rest of the day sitting in silence - or occasionally praying - with her brothers and sisters until their parents arrived home.

'My mother was crying and in shock while my father was so upset he wasn't talking to anyone,' she added.

The family moved to her grandfather's house two streets away before making the decision to leave Syria - though her father was arrested before the escape and was unable to join them.

Jamilah added: 'I wish we could be back home with both our parents - that this violence stops. That's what I wish.'

* Some names have been changed to protect the safety of relatives still in Syria.

A dying shame: ‘Too little and too late’ in Syria, Save the Children warns

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/12/a-dying-shame-too-little-and-too-late-in-syria-save-the-children-warns-3960279/

The world should feel ‘ashamed’ for failing to aid the Syrian people in the worst humanitarian crisis for three decades, a leading charity chief has declared.

Global leaders and United Nations chiefs have let down millions of people in Syria and surrounding regions, according to Save The Children UK chief executive Justin Forsyth.

Only Britain can claim some credit for backing a relief response that is still £1.3billion short of UN targets, he added.

He also called for an overhaul of obstacles preventing aid from reaching the most needy.

Mr Forsyth described the Syrian crisis as the worst since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when the world was also guilty of failing to intervene until too late.

Mr Forsyth, who previously worked for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Downing Street, told Metro: ‘After seeing conditions this weekend, I feel even more strongly the world should be really ashamed of its response to Syria.

‘So many families rightly feel neglected, let down and alone.

‘Even though we can provide some aid, they feel the world has done too little and too late.

‘The Rwandan genocide was terrible and worse, but this is the worst humanitarian crisis since then - and it’s on our watch.’

A UN appeal for funding from world governments has now reached just 59 per cent of its £3.2billion target, leaving £1.3billion still to find.

Britain’s international development secretary Justine Greening this weekend announced an extra £52million.

The UK has so far handed over £124million this year, with another £168million promised - and the Foreign Office says the spending will be £400million covering both 2012 and 2013.

Mr Forsyth praised Ms Greening and David Cameron for ensuring Britain - both the government and the public - was ‘an honourable exception’.

Still, aid delivery is hampered because UN-led supplies must go through government-controlled Damascus - meaning large swathes of Syria are out of bounds.

Mr Forsyth wants a UN Security Council resolution demanding unfettered access for humanitarian workers across all parts of the country.

He admitted: ‘We’re struggling against the odds and can feel overwhelmed - there are so many unmet needs.

‘Refugee families are at least receiving some help and not being shelled anymore, but in Syria there are still hundreds and thousands getting no aid while still coming under attack.’

‘Surely even if the world can’t decide what to do about military strikes, they can at least agree to allow aid across all areas, which would make a massive difference?’

Despite sweltering summer heat in the region now, concerns are growing that temperatures are starting to drop ahead of a winter expected to prove lethally freezing in northern Lebanon - where many refugees camp in threadbare tents.

UN programmes offer £17 each month to refugee families who register with them, though some aid workers believe many more are refusing to sign up for fear they will be traced by the Syrian regime.

Save The Children’s efforts include funding schools in Lebanon, so far reaching 7,000 Syrian children whose schools have been destroyed.

Shelter kits have been given to more than 2,000 refugee families, cash-for-work schemes are being set up to provide money as well as purpose, and the charity is also backing two health centres in Bekaa and one in Akkar.

Aid workers are also concerned to help not only Syrian families arriving in the country, but also deprived Lebanese - especially to help ease rising resentment amid the refugee influx.

The new Save The Children appeal aims to raise £150million, to help in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

United Nations appeal target: £3.2billion

Amount of aid so far donated: £1.9billion (59 per cent)

Shortfall: £1.3billion

HIGHEST DONORS

United States: £518million

European Commission: £392million

Kuwait: £205million

United Kingdom: £124million (plus a further £168million announced by ministers)

Germany: £104million

Various (details not yet provided): £101million

Private individuals and organisations: £68million

Canada: £54million

Japan: £52million

Australia: £41million

SPREAD OF SYRIAN REFUGEES

Lebanon: 716,284 (officially registered with United Nations agencies - though unofficial estimates suggest there may be as many as 1.3million)

Jordan: 522,000 (including 120,000 at the Za’atari camp)

Turkey: 440,000

Iraq: 196,000

Egypt: 110,000

Elsewhere in North Africa (including Algeria, Morocco, Libya): 15,000

Estimated population still inside Syrian needing assistance: 6.8million (including 3.1million children)

Estimated number of people forced from their homes inside Syria: 5.1million

Estimated deaths since the start of the Assad crackdown: 100,000+ (including 7,000 children)

Schools destroyed or closed down: 4,000

Syrian civil war as well as refugees spilling into Lebanon

Both civil war and a growing humanitarian crisis are already spreading from Syria into neighbouring Lebanon, provoking a backlash while threatening to engulf the wider Middle East.

Rocket attacks across the border into Lebanese territory are gaining in frequency, as are targeted bomb blasts within key cities such as Beirut and Tripoli.

As tensions heighten between Alawite, Sunni and Shia sects on either side of the Lebanese-Syrian divide, the country ruled by a fragile caretaker government is also troubled by a growing refugee influx.

Some 720,000 Syrian refugees have been registered with United Nations agencies in Lebanon, but credible estimates suggest as many as 1.3million may be spreading across a 4million-population nation.

Many are hesitant to make themselves officially known, for fear they could be traced by vengeful forces from Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime.

While Jordan’s 120,000-strong – and expanding – Za’atari refugee camp has compelled much attention, Lebanon’s Syrian refugee population is scattered much more disparately.

Some making it across the frontier – despite ever-encroaching Syrian military presence on Lebanese land – are paying rising rents for cramped basements or garages.

Many more are pitching makeshift tents in improvised campsites, many in the northern Lebanese region of Akkar or even closer to the border in hinterland Wadi Khaled.

The 40,000-population Wadi Khaled area has become a popular refuge for recuperating Free Syrian Army rebel soldiers – perhaps explaining the increasingly-regular bursts of border-crossing gunfire.

Tensions are rising not only among Assad loyalists keen to infiltrate neighbouring land, however, but also among Lebanon’s own deprived communities witnessing mass Syrian arrivals – and aid agency input, however limited.

The Lebanese government is now responding by ordering border officials to impose tighter controls on those flocking to flee Assad’s brutal 21-month crackdown.

Officers have been told only to allow across those with not only proper paperwork but also proof they are coming from towns and cities recognised as under-fire – despite the fact many refugees have been desperately shifting from area to area for months.

Canny landlords in regions such as Wadi Khaled have been hurriedly building extensions or new properties to accommodate refugees desperate for shelter – with rents rising all the time in response.

Yet those not fortunate enough to have property to let are suffering knock-on effects, with competition for jobs now more intense – and wages falling.

Newly-arriving Syrians anxious to afford shelter and food are said to be accepting wages of $1 per hour for tasks such as labouring or toiling in the fields – compared to the previous Lebanese average of $4.

Tensions have been exacerbated still more by the bursts of border shelling by Syrian forces and terrorist attacks carried out by brigades from both countries but on Lebanese land.

Shia militant group Hezbollah, which controls southern areas of the Lebanese capital Beirut, has thrown its weight behind the Assad regime – making it both a perpetrator and target of inner-city attacks.

There are even fears that Hezbollah could retaliate against any US-led air-strikes on Syria with attacks on arch enemy Israel – although such action could well provoke an even more fearsome response than the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon.

Two almost-simultaneous mosque bombings on August 23 killed more than 40 people and wounded at least 500 in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli – now home to the deported extremist, ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’ Omar Bakri.

Later that night a sniper stationed 50m from a school in Wadi Khaled opened fire – but the time of day meant no pupils or staff were present or injured.

That day’s attacks came a week after a car bomb in a Shia district of Beirut killed 27 people, with Syrian rebel forces cast under suspicion.

No wonder one anxious aid worker admitted to Metro: ‘There’s no house in Lebanon without a pistol, an M16 or a Kalashnikov. People are scared.’

Save The Children’s Lebanon director Sonia Zambakides said: ‘Lebanon has been very overlooked – it’s very much a crisis in its own right.’

Her charity is keen to direct what resources it has – and amid this week’s newly-launched £150million aid appeal – not only to struggling Syrian refugees but potentially-aggrieved Lebanese communities.

The constant chorus from Syrian refugees in Lebanon has been the desire to be able to go home.

For now, the main benefit of being in Lebanon is its relative safety – though that too looks increasingly uneasy and endangered.

The families divided by Syria's civil war

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/10/the-families-split-by-war-our-latest-dispatch-from-the-syrian-border-3956570/

A teenage boy has fled the Syrian civil war without his kidnapped parents - while another mother and father were forced to abandon a son in their own chaotic escape.

These despairing refugee survivors told their stories after emerging from the Bashar al-Assad-led bloodbath tearing apart families just as it divides a nation.

Two 13-year-old boys are among the latest arrivals in neighbouring Lebanon, a country itself suffering not only from an influx of refugees but also increasingly-frequent outbreaks of violence.

Mahmoud Al-Halabi made it across the border on Sunday last week, but without his parents Ahmed and Manal, abducted and missing presumed dead.

While Mahmoud sleeps in a cramped stone garage in border town Wadi Khaled with 15 relatives including an uncle and a grandfather, fellow 13-year-old Ramy Dawwdi lies in a makeshift tent in Akkar.

Ramy competes for sparse space on begged and borrowed rugs with his parents and four siblings - yet without his elder brother Bilal, 15, somehow lost in an panicked escape from Syrian military forces.

Despite their distress, parents Fadi, 40, and 30-year-old Ruba deemed it too late and dangerous to go back - but are now traumatised by the thought of Bilal's fate.

The two families are among up to 1.3million refugees now seeking shelter in Lebanon, while at least 520,000 do so in Jordan, 440,000 in Turkey and 200,000 in Iraq.

The Assad regime's 21-month crackdown on rebel groups plotting to topple his autocratic reign has so far led to at least 100,000 deaths - with aerial bombardment of villages, towns and cities stll only gaining in ferocity.

The plights of the Al-Halabi and Dawwdi families, as well as thousands more, have attracted pledges of help from charities including Save The Children, who this week launch a major new appeal for donations.

The Dawwdi family's district on the outskirts of Homs was set alight by pro-Assad forces invading from a neighbouring area, demolishing with bombs each property in turn during their rampage.

Mr Dawwdi said: 'We were running because of the shelling and he just got lost - to this day, we have no idea what happened to him.'

Ramy, sitting beneath tarpaulins and even scraps of billboard adverts draped over wooden poles, told Metro: 'Because of the chaos when the bombing started, everyone was running in different directions.

'In the end, when we finally felt at a safe distance, about 20 people gathered together and we realised he was missing - we couldn't find him anywhere.'

He could only bow his head in sombre silence when asked how he felt about his missing brother.

Mrs Dawwdi said all her children remained traumatised by the experience, adding: 'Any noise at all can scare them these days. My little girl always wakes up in the night shouting because of her nightmares.'

Similarly sombre was Mahmoud, who described witnessing the slaughter of a family of five just days before his parents went missing - and on the same stretch of road.

He said: 'They went off one day to work in the fields - they went but they didn't come back.

'No one's heard anything of them. This happens a lot.'

Just ten days earlier Mahmoud and his parents had been walking along the same road when they saw a couple and their three children abducted by an armed gang - and later found the bodies stabbed to death and dumped in shallow graves.

He and other family members finally managed to flee the besieged city of Qusair, despite coming under intensive artillery fire while part of a 500-strong group of escapees.

Mahmoud's uncle Fadi Al-Rifaee is also now looking after another six nephews and nieces, whose father was arrested and mother abducted.

He said: 'Before all this, our children were going to school and keeping active.

'Now all they can think about are knives, weapons, killing and death.'

Syria: So many questions, so few - if any - solutions

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/08/syria-so-many-questions-but-no-answers-3954934/

‘If you dare give those to Bashar al-Assad, I swear I’ll find you and beat you up.’
They’re growing up quickly these days in Syria and surroundings - both the adults ageing faster than they should, and the children looking somehow much younger than their years. And traumatic ordeals.
The threat above came not from a Kalashnikov-toting militant but a knee-high three- or four-year-old, taking umbrage at an aid worker taking time out to take a few photos.
Such is the suspicion. Such is the desperate aggression. Such is the politicisation - however simplistic, if authentic - of everyone, anyone, embroiled.
Another line sticking in the memory from a memorably intense few days in Lebanon and on the Syrian was delivered not in anger, but despair, by a local guide and activist: ‘So many questions - no answer.’
Not to the posers of how to stop Assad’s remorseless bloodshed; whether much-mooted and - here - much-wanted air-strikes would help; whether Hezbollah might attack Israel and thus provoke vengeful destruction on Lebanon; which extremists might emerge; and could any future Syrian regime prove acceptable let alone desirable?
Certainly a sense of helpless despair could easily envelop, whether looking on from the outside or exploring not only Syria but those surrounding countries facing humanitarian crises of their own.
Lebanon is the nation now taking the heaviest influx of Syrian refugees, almost 720,000 officially registered with the United Nations - yet with almost as many again thought to be concealed, whether supporting themselves or fearing betrayal back home.
And still they keep coming, whether pouring into Jordan’s 120,000-strong-and-expanding Za’atari camp or spreading more disparately in basements, garages or in ragged campsites across Lebanon.
The only comfort such starving, soon-shivering refugees can feel is to have escaped Syria, an achievement that may be denied many more as Lebanese border officials are ordered to turn sterner with new applicants.
Those crossing over are no longer being shelled - for the most part anyway.
And yet the war is already spilling into Lebanon as well, with increasingly-frequent bursts from across the border and bomb blasts in major cities especially tense Shia/Alawite battleground Tripoli.
‘There’s no house in Lebanon without a pistol, M16 or Kalashnikov,’ revealed another warning testifying to the nation’s ‘tinderbox’ nature.
Meanwhile, more than one arriving refugee pointed out, ‘Everone in Syria has been affected somehow’ - made clear by the gruesome tales of terror, murder and kidnap slipping from every interviewees’ lips. Often delivered in jarringly matter-of-fact fashion.
Take, as momentous and yet also mere examples, three 13-year-olds.
Majed, who saw his best friend shot down while attending a funeral for 15 victims of a massacre both had barely survived.
Mahmoud, forced to flee from Syria without both his parents following their abduction - and presumed murders - on the same stretch of road where he found a family of five’s tortured bodies.
And Ramy, whose family managed to flee as their village came under fire - only to somehow only later realise elder brother Bilal was lost along the chaotic way.
All harrowing ordeals, among so many, to long-haunt here at least.
Widespread Syrian anger at the word’s lack of action - and only, two-and-a-half years on, much talk yet still prevarication - is understandable, however more divisive the benefits of military strikes might be.
Much of recent discussions back in the West, however, have suggested military strikes as the be-all-and-end-all as far as intervention goes.
All the while £1.9billion - or 40 per cent - of UN-targeted donations go begging, while what aid has been delivered to the region too frequently gets blocked or swallowed up by Assad-regime dominions.
Save The Children are among the organisations not only striving against immense odds to get what help they can to some of those millions in agonising need - yet also imploring UN members to unite at least on not only boosting aid but expanding access.
Foreign policy has been described as the art of choosing the least-worst option of all bad ones available. Few examples might prove so defining as Syria right now.
And yet some small solutions should prove easier than others, at least improving the lives of many more than the few.

Syrian refugee families: "Why has the west abandoned our children?"

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/08/syria-why-has-the-west-abandoned-our-little-children-3954944/

Families bombed out of their homes in Syria have accused Britain and the West of abandoning them to Bashar al-Assad.

Mourning mothers and fathers attempting to shelter traumatised children say the UK and allies should share the blame for Syria's unrelenting bloodshed and spreading humanitarian crisis.

Speaking in hideouts or tattered tents across the Syrian border in Lebanon, fleeing casualties urged Metro readers to help ease suffering as a new Save The Children appeal launches.

But they also demanded pressure on world leaders to speed up intervention, as US Congress voting on possible military strikes look likely to drag on into next week.

Syrians speaking to Metro expressed disbelief not only that US president Barack Obama would delay military strikes, but would do so having suggested in advance military action was likely.

US and UK talk of airstrikes to come not only raised hopes among Syrian refugees, but also allowed the Syrian ruling Assad regime to relocate key military bases and supplies.

Those close to Syrian opposition groups now fear any eventual strikes may well miss their chemical weapons targets - while leaving even more vulnerable residents still stuck in the capital Damascus.

Among those furious at the West is 33-year-old labourer Adham Al-Hamwi, who set up camp  last week in a tent on the outskirts of the northern Lebanese town Akkar.

He, his 27-year-old wife Nour and their six children have been constantly on the move in recent months, forced out of their home in Homs before taking temporary shelter in Hama and then Damascus.

Now jobless and penniless yet safe in Lebanon, he cast most blame on Assad as 'behind the whole war', while also accusing Iranian forces fighting inside Syria.

But he added: 'There must be airstrikes - the rest of the world must stop Assad.

'Obama says he's ready for the strikes, so why are they waiting?'

David Cameron had wanted Britain to be part of military action, but has now ruled out any involvement after losing a vote in Parliament.

Mr Al-Hamwi urged the prime minister and British politicians to think again, saying: 'If they were in our shoes, and experienced what we have, they would want to strike Assad.

'Just let them try to imagine our lives - they must then decide to hit Assad, and not with limited strikes but with mass destruction like he is doing.'

'What have these children done, to deserve to be left abandoned like this?'

Parents of Syrian children at Save The Children-backed El Bedawwi school in Lebanon's second city Tripoli were also full of scorn for Western prevarication.

Ebtisam Sabbagh, a 38-year-old widow and mother-of-four from Homs, said: 'For two and a half years, all anyone's done is talk and talk, without taking any action - it's unbelievable.

'I'm almost at the point where I want to pick up a gun and go back and fight, if no one else will.

'We've lost our homes, we've lost our country, we've lost everything - we're left as nothing right now.'

Rama Hallab, 32, who covered her three injured children in their bombed Baba Amr home for three days before escaping, added: 'It does feel like the rest of the world doesn't care about us.'

Syrian opposition activists, unwilling to be identified, suggested the disparate groups and brigades opposing Assad were now more united than at any time previously in the 21-month uprising.

They believe Mr Obama's promises of airstrikes have encouraged greater teamwork - and detailed preparations to pummel the heart of the Assad empire in one 'death or glory' push as soon as US rockets fall.

But they tempered any optimism with fears for the future even if the ruling regime is toppled, with extremist groups - including al-Qaeda militants - among those most organised and likely to jostle for supremacy in any post-Assad Syria.

The Save The Children appeal aims to raise £150million to help 1.5million victims of the Syrian crisis.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has received just 40 per cent of its own appeal target - leaving a £1.9billion shortfall.

"Strange days indeed - most peculiar, mama..."

We may not quite all be Thatcherites now but the ‘iron lady’ so incessantly described this past week as ‘divisive’ managed yesterday to unite friend and foe in posing together for pictures at least.
Rival groups gathering in Paternoster Square bearing placards variously declaring ‘Our greatest PM’ and ‘Our thoughts are with the victims of Thatcherism’ stood side by side, each trying to Photobomb the other.
Curious onlookers captured snaps, just as many did throughout the day - whether peering across the procession route at Baroness Thatcher’s coffin or the St Paul’s steps for any famous faces.

The hoisting high of so many cameraphones and iPads called to mind the Kinks’ ‘People Take Pictures Of Each Other’ - say, ‘just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to prove that it really existed’. 
One of those jostling amid the squeezed middle of the pack outside St Paul’s wondered: ‘So who d’you think’s won: those coming to pay their respects, or the nutters?'
While less-than-PC about those others dubbed ‘protesters’ - and a few gave rather more scathing labels - he left out all there not necessarily as Thatcher admirers or enemies, but simply keen on an occasion.
Workers glad to take a few hours out of the office mingled with miners sacked in Lady Thatcher’s 1980s heyday as well as businessmen and women crediting her for their better fortunes.
Her coffin initially set off from the Palace of Westminster, outside which some enthusiastic fans had been camping since the previous evening to ensure a good view for her send-off.
Crowds were rather sparser along Whitehall and The Strand, with almost as many police officers apparent - and their main role seemed to be less about security than directing people to the nearest still-open road crossings.
An incongruous sight and sound on a traffic island opposite Trafalgar Square was an Irish jig danced by kilt-wearing, defrocked Catholic priest Neil Horan.
The eccentric cleric who previously disrupted the 2004 Olympics marathon carried a banner bearing the message: ‘Margaret Thatcher was courageous and patriotic - but she was flawed, like all politicians.’
Margaret Pearce, 74 and from Shepherds Bush in west London, was more strident, saying: ‘I’m here to pay my respects to a great lady.
‘She was the most marvellous prime minister - and she was a woman who wasn’t afraid of any man.
‘The people protesting are disgusting. They’re mainly youngsters who weren’t when she was in power and the cost is only so high because of what they’re threatening.’
Two young women there less from anger or acclaim were secretaries April Robinson, 24, and 27-year-old Charlotte Bury - prompted by curiosity and convenience, thanks to an office around the corner.
Ms Bury, from South Kensington in west London, said: ‘We were a bit too young to really be aware, but she seemed to do some good.’
Ms Robinson, from nearby Tottenham Court Road, added: ‘She was a big part of history so I wanted to check out the atmosphere. But I’m a bit shocked how un-busy it is.’
Space on pavements proved trickier to seize towards St Clement Danes, however, especially as the coffin approached for handover into a military-led gun carriage.
‘Is that it?’ - ‘Yes, that’s it’ was one rather nonplussed exchange, as the coffin approached to the soundtrack of non-Big Ben bing-bongs from the RAF chapel.
After Westminster’s Great Bell was silenced in Lady Thatcher’s honour, her cortege also managed to remain out of earshot from St Clement Danes’ custom of chiming ‘Oranges And Lemons’ on the hour.
But despite a rousing rendition of ‘Jerusalem’ as she passed, this section of the journey did strike some notes of discord.
There were angry exchanges outside the Royal Courts of Justice as ex-miners unfurled a flag declaring ‘Rest In Shame’.
A workman wearing a high-visibility jacket as he wandered past described the scene to someone on his mobile phone, adding: ‘I hope they die.’
Smartly-dressed old gent Brian Glynn, also making his way along, provoked protests by telling one flag-bearer: ‘Shame on you, you piece of s***.’
The 69-year-old office equipment company manager had travelled to London from the Isle of Man to honour the woman he first voted for back in 1979.
He said: ‘Those protesters should be deeply ashamed. Apart from everything else, she was an elderly lady and she deserves to be honoured.
‘This is a free country - but I too exercised that right and told them what I thought, and 99 per cent of the people standing around would’ve agreed.’
Paul Birch, 45 and from Manchester, said: ‘She did a lot of things, some good and some bad - but it looks like a few here just want an excuse to kick off.’
Among those beneath the ‘Rest In Shame’ flag was 53-year-old Stephen Tugman, who both went on strike and was sacked while a miner in Scotland in the 1980s.
He travelled down from Bathgate in West Lothian yesterday, saying: ‘This is the woman who ended the family allowances for miners and now we’re paying £10million for her funeral. It’s offensive to the working classes.’
Sue Losh, 52 and from Liverpool, said: ‘The communities she wrecked have never been the same since.’
Other pockets of dissent could be found along Fleet Street - eagerly pressed upon by the Press - as they called out ‘Shame’ and turned their backs, while others craned their necks, on the passing carriage.
A half-hearted attempt at a chorus of ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ faltered, though the wannabe song-starter merely grinned when told: ‘You’d faint at seeing a bar of soap.’
But all raised were voices rather than fists, while the only items thrown on to the road were flowers instead of milk or other missiles.
Some demonstrators’ fears that those not pre-arrested could be ‘kettled’ by police appeared to prove unfounded.
Why, one helpful officer even had to correct himself when telling a lost-looking protester: ‘The main aggressive, sorry, “anti” group is down that way.’
There were indeed many chanting angry slogans in the streets and squares around St Paul’s - plus solitary preachers promoting religious fervor, alleged miscarriages of justice and or threatened local hospitals.
Most spectators, however, had at least more nuanced views - uniting in applause for the military personnel marching by while pointing and cooing towards familiar politicians and TV presenters.
That anti-’nutters’ onlooker may have wanted a final scorecard - perhaps in keeping with Lady Thatcher’s own winning spirit.
Yet in the disparate hubbub as crowds quickly drifted away, respects or grudges duly paid, the atmosphere in both city and City felt neither sombre nor seething - merely returning to business as usual.

Thatcher found Finchley perfect fit as MP and PM, deeming it 'one of us' enough

Growing up in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher appeared inescapable and inevitable – growing up in the 1980s in Finchley, even more so.
Way back when, in callow childhood days even before forming the righteous – if juvenile – opinions of youth, the fact she was Britain’s first female prime minister meant little.
More significantly, she was not only prime minister – but, well, the prime minister.
Most often, that formidable personality came not only via TV screens – on BBC1 at Six or Nine O’Clock, on BBC2 otherwise – but often in front of pale blue walls. 
(Just imagine the CGI effects modern-day movie directors might apply.)
Then that Spitting Image monster loomed even more terrifying than Terrahawks, and only more convincing for competing with June Whitfield’s rather more anaemic impression on Radio 2’s Huddliners.
This North London boy never had the pleasure – sorry, disgrace – of being told off at school for pelting snowballs at the visiting prime ministerial limousine, a younger brother indulging instead.
Little time went by, though, without wandering through Finchley and noticing rings of steel suddenly surrounding a school or church hall no other MP could even dream of needing.
Yet ‘only’ seven years after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation as prime minister – and five after her succession in Finchley by prim, personality-free, researcher-pursuing Hartley Booth – somehow the constituency just about turned red.
Not only did Finchley fall in the most unlikely – and indicative – of gains for Tony Blair’s New Labour that was admittedly in thrall to Thatcher, but to an old-leftie lecturer in Dr Rudi Vis, who turned up to the count with no victory speech planned.
The Thatcher shadow still loomed, even if she no longer made local engagements with the assiduity of 1959 onwards and regularity even when loftier calls of state demanded.
Grantham may dominate the eulogies, Orgreave – and many similar others - the excoriations, but this stolid and respectable, stealthily aspirational North London suburb feels a suitable fit too.
Why, the current incumbent MP Mike Freer, returning the constituency to true blue after 13 years of the late Dr Vis, previously led Barnet council with a privatising – and, among local authorities, pioneering - zeal of a very Eighties flavour.
The so-called ‘easyCouncil’ approach seeks to shred social services and libraries to barely minimal efforts – and cost – so long as council tax increases remain low or even non-existent.
Mrs Thatcher may have found, in Finchley and far beyond, electoral prospects boosted by playing on patriotism, homeliness and alleged rectitude - yet also self-interest and greed.
For all the shrill hysteria of those who opposed, she did prove equally and expansively popular as well, perhaps thanks to many motives ambitious even if others might be more ambiguous.
Now this ‘Thatcher’s child’ suspects she would waste little time worrying about all those offending her admirers by celebrating her demise.
After all, one of her most striking and telling inquiries tended to concern whether anyone she met could be classed as ‘one of us’.
(And if not - ah, who cares...?)

"Harry was a champion in some eyes..."

Jol to Redknapp?: "I've been there, my friend..."

The last time Tottenham Hotspur fired a manager as England prepared to face Sweden in a European Championship tie, few mourned Christian Gross’s departure.
In fact, many Spurs supporters would have happily paid his air fare home to Switzerland in September 1998, let alone reimbursed the Travelcard that brought him to White Hart Lane nine months earlier.
Yet the departure of Harry Redknapp – an apparent shock to the viewing world, a long time coming to many White Hart Lane watchers – promises to be much more divisive.
To some, ‘Arry is the saviour of White Hart Lane, the man who famously dragged the careworn team from ‘two points from eight games’ to the Champions League quarter-finals within two-and-a-half years.
Not only has he secured three consecutive top-five finishes at White Hart Lane for the first time since 1964, he has done so encouraging the free-flowing, devil-may-care football for which Spurs were once-upon-a-time renowned.
To others, he is a self-serving rentaquote to whom every Tottenham upturn is his responsibility alone and every slide someone else’s fault.
A shoulder-shrugging short-termist, whose fabled man-management only goes so far as an over-worked, under-rotated squad – and to blame for two late-season slumps in a row.
To some, of course, the truth lies somewhere in between – perhaps appropriate when discussing a man who can directly contradict his own pronouncement one day with another audience-pleaser the next.
Redknapp would have been few Spurs’ fans pick as manager for many years before he finally got the late-night call one Saturday in October 2008 – too associated with West Ham, too mouthy, too common.
Yet such was the plight of the club at the time, an appointment allegedly long pushed upon chairman Daniel Levy by director Paul Kemsley was finally made feasible.
Juande Ramos’s reign at Tottenham has gone down alongside those of Gross, Aston Villa’s Josef Venglos and Wimbledon’s Egil Olsen as among the most laughably inept of overseas manager-spells in England.
All could, though, claim expert witnesses claiming certain mitigating circumstances and Ramos did lift with Spurs their only cup since 1999 – deliriously seeing off Arsenal and Chelsea as closing acts.
But all the pre-season milk of human kindness towards his side in summer 2008 quickly curdled as his tactical experiments failed to gel and his linguistic skills developed even less well.
Redknapp thus provided a refreshing return to basics, giving a central role to newly-signed playmaker Luka Modric as Arsenal were pegged back from 4-2 to 4-4 and Liverpool – yes, back then, Liverpool – were given their first defeat of the season.
Ramos’s two-points-from-eight-games are well-remembered – partly due to Redknapp’s regular reminders.
Yet less often recalled is the run of games in December 2008 and January 2009 when eight matches yielded six points, threatening to drag Spurs back into the relegation battle.
More worrying – and uncharacteristic – were the hidebound defensive line-ups Redknapp sent out, barely registering a shot on goal per game in away defeats to the likes of Newcastle United and Wigan Athletic.
At least, on reflection, a lesson was learnt. Often excitingly so.
The same period did see Spurs reach a second successive League Cup final, unluckily losing to Manchester United on penalties, but only after surviving a fright – and defensive horror-show – in the semi-finals against second-tier Burnley.
That kind of one-off meltdown would become an occasional yet recurring habit, such as a 4-0 FA Cup battering at Fulham, a Champions League-endangering 3-2 defeat at Switzerland’s Young Boys, and five-goal poundings last season by Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea.
On each of those occasions – and the surreal 4-3 defeat at Internazionale in October 2010 – Redknapp’s starting line-ups seemed to bear out his reputation for tactical negligence.
Yet almost as often, his ability to rethink his strategy mid-match could prove as astute as any more cerebral-seeming manager – such as the introduction of Jermain Defoe that helped turn a 2-0 deficit at Arsenal into a 3-2 victory: Spurs’ first away to their arch rivals in 17 years.
John Lennon once said of Paul McCartney that he was a very good lyricist who just didn't believe he was – perhaps similar could be said of Redknapp as a tactician.
Yet while his strategic thinking may sometimes be under-rated, his man-management talents can be esteemed too much the other way.
While his Spurs signings as a whole have proved underwhelming – Peter Crouch, Wilson Palacios and Robbie Keane among those sold at a loss – the star players have been those inherited such as Luka Modric and Gareth Bale. Redknapp has evidently found how to get the very best from those players, through both canny positioning and positive handling.
Yet Bale and Modric visibly tired as last season dragged on, while out-of-favour men either got offloaded – like Roman Pavlyuchenko – or loaned out like Vedran Corluka and Steven Pienaar, leaving those that remained either overworked or unfulfilled.
Blame for Spurs’ misdirected January transfer window could well be levelled at the board as well as Redknapp.
At a time when Tottenham were being – over-optimistically – talked up by some as authentic title contenders, to bring in only veteran free transfers Louis Saha and Ryan Nelsen seemed almost insulting.
Perhaps, understandably, chairman Daniel Levy felt unwilling to spend lavishly here and now for a manager presumed to be off to the England job within months – and hardly making a secret about his own ambitions.
Now Levy, having evidently tired of Redknapp’s talkative nature and hesitant about handing a lengthy contract extension after that dispiriting close to the season, faces a daunting task.
After almost four years of stability, Tottenham are now plunged back into the sort of uncertainty that had become quite a constant until Redknapp’s reign.
Leading contenders to replace Redknapp, such as Everton’s David Moyes or Wigan Athletic’s Roberto Martinez, can hardly be assured of enthusiastic backing from fans – and improving upon last season’s fourth place will be challenging.
As will, more imminently, holding on to the likes of Modric, Bale and even Schalke target, the talismanic Rafael van der Vaart, after Chelsea’s Champions League triumph consigned Spurs, blamelessly, to the Europa instead of Champions League.
Levy has become accustomed to being seen as, let’s say, kooky by the media and fellow Premier League figures – Sir Alex Ferguson once described him, eyebrows audibly raised, as ‘a little different’.
And he has been ruthless before, disscarding jocular and popular manager Martin Jol, authentic Spurs legend Glenn Hoddle - and George Graham, whose exit was grieved even less than Gross’s yet whose apparent offence was to give an interview rather less outspoken than many of Redknapp’s.
Whoever Spurs appoint, whatever next season brings, ‘Arry’s axing could split supporters for a long time to come.
At least there are that win at Arsenal, the nights against Inter and the other mighty Milan, and the many rapturous afternoons or evenings enjoyed at a club now back towards the right end of the table.
Even, perhaps a peak, the sight of one ideal David Bentley delivery: the bucket of cold water joyously tipped over Redknapp the night Champions League qualification was achieved in May 2010.
Little could he know then how his chairman’s blood could run colder.

Carry on Kampuchea...

(Having previously dumped - sorry, pasted - despatches from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe on here, I somehow forgot a couple from Cambodia. Following the recent sentencing of Khmer Rouge guard "Duch", and because, well well, just because, here are a few thoughts from Cambodia, from last November)



THE PRETTY waitresses may appear eager to please, pouring cocktails and politely applauding Western tourists’ slurred karaoke crooning or drinking game exploits.
But Thailand’s superficially-glitzy nightlife is shot through with sexual slavery, abuse and violence - and, increasingly, lethal disease.
Thai capital Bangkok is shadowed by Poipet - the shabby, sleazy Cambodian frontier district racked by Aids after becoming a feeder town for Thailand’s sex trade.
And it is not just the exploited and trafficked local women at risk - Western tourists themselves are both to blame and in danger, as dark warnings from HIV-positive victims make clear.
Every morning at 7am, as soon as a tinny recording of the national anthem ends and a shrill whistle blows, the border opens for the day.

Thousands of people will take that as the cue to start pouring through these dusty, seedy streets either side of a faux-grand arch proclaiming ‘Kingdom Of Cambodia’.
Some of them are Western backpackers passing through, and a few more are Thais making the most of the nine new casinos operating here – enjoying a trip away from a country where gambling is forbidden.
But many others are poverty-stricken Cambodians heading into Thailand for the day to make a dollar or two hauling carts or working in the paddy fields.
Most will return home by the time the border shuts again at 8pm.
But there are those making their way to work in Thailand who may never come home again – or if they do, will only do so traumatised by their sex abuse ordeal and infected with HIV.
Tempted over by silver-tongued traffickers promising sought-after work – many of them women themselves – Cambodian victims will quickly find themselves enslaved in brothels and sordid bars instead.
You Ra is one of those victims, now one of the estimated 84,000 adults living with HIV in a country where death from the disease is more likely than in most nations.
Until recently the country had the fastest-rising HIV infection rate in the world, reaching 3.3 per cent, and though this figure has fallen to 0.8 per cent it is still the second worst in Asia.
Poipet’s infection rate is estimated to be at least ten times the national average.

These days You Ra, despite her frailty, drags a cart packed with cheap food and drink across into Thailand and back again each day.
But the 32-year-old was once one of those entrapped by the sex trade, enduring three years in a Thai bar – notionally as a waitress, but in fact as a prostitute forced to sleep with up to ten men each night.
Often these were drunken Western tourists, crudely demanding sex for up to 1,000 baht (£18) a time – and turning violent if their unsubtle advances were resisted.
You Ra herself never saw any of that money, which was paid directly to her employer - instead told she should count herself lucky to receive three bowls of rice each day.
‘The owner would say he paid a very expensive price for me, about 100,000 baht (£1,800), and I didn’t have the right to anything,’ she recalled.
She had been a widowed mother-of-three, unable to find a job, when first approached by a woman promising employment sewing trousers, across the border from Poipet.
You Ra was accompanied by her self-proclaimed saviour, plus five other women, as she was hustled across the border and travelled on through Thailand for 16 hours straight.
Eventually she was deposited in a large bar in the city of Chonburi, where the owner instantly ordered the women into shorter skirts and skimpier tops – and made it clear what their new duties would be.
In fact, he himself provided the most brutal of initiations by raping You Ra, something he would repeat regularly during her time there – beating her up if she ever tried to resist.
Breaking down in tears, she told Metro: ‘We didn’t want to go along with this, but the owner would beat us morning and night. We said we had to force ourselves to do whatever the customers wanted.
‘During the day we could rest and sleep, but at night we had to serve the men who came. I had to sleep with between five and ten people every night.
‘Many of them were Thai people, but some were Cambodians who had crossed the border for work, and others were from Myanmar.
‘There were also customers from the West, lighter-skinned men, who could behave very badly when they got drunk.
‘Some could be more gentle, but others would get very violent – especially if they felt they weren’t satisfied enough, and they would start to attack.’
Ferocious dogs posted around the building’s perimeters not only kept any troublesome customers from escaping if they refused to pay.
They also helped frustrate any hopes You Ra had of fleeing, leaving her feeling: ‘Every long day, I thought I would die there – I thought there was no way out, for the rest of my life.’
Surprise salvation came, however, when a nearby property set fire and she used the confusion to escape and run away.
But even once she had eventually made it home and remarried, more heartache awaited.
Signs of sickness and fever in her fifth son, 18-month-old Chai Chorvant, prompted her to take him to hospital for a blood test revealing he was HIV-positive.
You Ra was swiftly diagnosed with the disease as well, along with her new husband Chai Dam, 31 – all three now victims of some sordid encounter with one of those abusive clients.
She said: ‘I’m very angry that I don’t know how to do them harm or repay them for what they’ve done to me,’ she said.
‘Now I’m always warning women to be careful, no matter how desperate they may feel.
‘And Westerners should realise bars like that, HIV is there already – tourists should keep well away if they don’t want to be infected too.
‘Working in that bar was like being in Hell for me. Now HIV has made my life another Hell – I face a death sentence every day.’

***


HAN Sry had only been lying prone in Poipet’s spartan, solitary Aids healthcare unit for a day.
But already she – and her 12-year-old daughter, on 24-hour bedside vigil – feared death was on its way.
Already widowed by Aids, the 40-year-old was one of seven patients in the ill-equipped 15-bed unit at Poipet’s main health centre.
More often than not, according to senior doctors here, all 15 beds are occupied – forcing further arrivals to sleep on the hard concrete floors.
Speaking hoarsely to Metro through a translator, Han Sry said: ‘I was very weak when I was taken ill and was very happy to be brought here to hospital.
‘But I’m worried now – worried about the future for my children, my 17-year-old son and my 12-year-old daughter.
‘My husband is already dead. I’m scared of dying too, because I think about what the destiny will be for my children after I’m gone.’
Her daughter Srey Mao added: ‘I’m frightened. My mother has got HIV and I’m worried about her dying.
‘I’ve spent all the time with her since she came to the hospital.
‘I wish above all that she maybe could get better – but I’m not sure she ever will.’
The Aids patients, many now in the final stages of their life, are housed in a crumbling concrete block with peeling surfaces, no glass in the windows and only a couple of taps on the walls for sanitation.
The word ‘hospital’ is actually little more than a convenient label for Poipet 1 Healthcare Centre, where staff can perform no operations and crucial equipment is frequently denied them by government.
The nearest main hospital is two hours’ drive away in the city of Siem Reap.
The healthcare centre’s director Soun Sophal dutifully files reports pleading for extra staff, shower and toilet facilities for Aids patients, and a new ward segregating HIV and tuberculosis beds.
But so far he has received little help from the country’s ministry of health, winning only outright refusals – or no reply at all.
This is despite his 23 staff, at the 150-bed centre, diagnosing an average of 15 new HIV-positive cases every month.
He believes they have carried out 10,000 HIV tests since opening seven years ago.
Though firm figures are not available, his estimates suggest 1,260 positive results in that time – an infection rate of 12.6 per cent, well above the national average of 0.9 per cent.

***

KHEN Vein is still shaken by how her husband went off to fight as a child soldier for Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, the barbaric army that would murder her two sisters.
Yet while she survived Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields’ nightmare of the Seventies, the 21st century has provided a fatal legacy of her own.
And again her husband Chau-ut Thet can be implicated – not for the loss of those sisters, but the deadly disease now poisoning both his wife and his son.
Chau-ut, a child soldier at the not so tender age of 11, is now himself dead – killed by Aids aged just 44.
His adulterous affairs while looking for work in Cambodia’s major cities left not only him HIV-positive.
He also then passed on the infection to his wife Khen Vein when returning to their rural home village of Toulsalla, about 50km outside the capital Phnom Penh.
That sad inheritance is also borne by their nine-year-old son Thet Sokchan.

Many who lived through the Pol Pot era can be shy about recalling the four-year period in which 1.7million Cambodians died through torture, execution, disease and starvation.
But some are prepared to delve into those bleak memories, whether prompted by curious visitors – or the ongoing trial of notorious prison camp commander Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch.
Revelations at his genocide trial, now approaching its end, include descriptions of how inmates were routinely beaten, received electric shocks, had their toenails torn out and were waterboarded.
When the invading forces came to call on Khen Vein’s village, her sisters were among those taken hostage, bound and gagged and hustled away to be slaughtered elsewhere.
Khen Vein, now 50, recalled: ‘My two sisters were murdered by Pol Pot’s forces because they were too educated.
‘Some of the troops did start questioning me as well, but I did my best to seem as ignorant as possible – I pretended I hadn’t learnt anything at all, and they let me go.’
Her husband was 16 when they married – and already a veteran of several years’ Khmer Rouge training, deep in the Cambodian mountains.
But she admitted: ‘I didn’t understand very much at the time – I was just afraid.
‘My husband and I didn’t talk much about the killings that were going on – just more about his basic duties and the things he’d have to fix.
‘Life was so difficult. I couldn’t go to school – there was nothing to eat. We had to walk the longest distances just to find any scraps of food.
‘At least now I can get dressed in peace. I have food to eat. My children can go to school and enjoy their education.’
Yet Thet Sokchan’s school days have been blighted by taunts and snubs from fellow pupils, aware of his HIV status.
In villages such as Toulsalla and Roka, in the province of Kandal, charities such as Tearfund-aided World Relief put on drama, puppetry and music classes to educate all ages about health risks – and health myths too, to erode prejudice.
But Khen Vein told how neighbours would bar their children from playing anywhere near her home.
And Thet Sokchan himself said: ‘The kids there would curse my mother. I didn’t scold them back – I would only cry to myself instead.’
His philandering father died in hospital in September 2005, with Thet Sokchan recalling: ‘I remember my father holding me to his leg when he was very sick and had to go to the hospital. After that, he didn’t come back.’
At least the anti-retroviral drugs he takes without fail at 6am and 6pm each day have stabilised his condition.
Yet while an estimated 60 per cent of Cambodia’s 84,000 HIV patients now have access to ARV drugs, some corrupt medics are exploiting government provisions by introducing charges – especially in areas where aid agencies have stepped back.
Even fees of $1 or $2 can be prohibitive in some of the poorest regions.
Thet Sokchan not only receives his, however, but was also given an alarm clock by World Relief to remind him when to take them.
But Khen Vein feels sickly more often, losing all strength and regularly falling dizzy.
‘That makes me worry all the more about my children,’ she fretted.
‘There are three of the five I’m still very responsible for, especially the youngest.
‘If I die, who will take care of my child?’
‘I’m afraid about that too,’ Thet Sokchan quietly, solemnly added.