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| The male and female teachers with their pupils in the cave (see video below) |
Caves in Syria have evolved.
Instead of being a natural
underground space large enough for a human to enter, one such cave has turned into
a crammed and naturally partitioned underground classroom for children aged six
to nine.
If you don’t believe me, take a close look at the pictures above
and watch the video below.
The pictures and video were filmed in the hills of the Jabal
al-Zawiya area, some 40 kilometers southwest of the provincial capital Idlib.
President Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces killed about 200 people
in those same hills on 19 and 20 December 2011, most of them army defectors
trying to flee to Turkey from their base in Kan Safra.
For several months now, Assad’s regime has been using
helicopters and warplanes to drop cluster bombs and barrels of TNT
indiscriminately on homes, hospitals, pharmacies, schools, historic markets,
museums, mosques, cars, bakeries and fuel queues in countless cities, towns and
villages.
The human cost of Assad’s war on “terrorist gangs” since March
last year has also been staggering: more than 30,000 deaths, about
half-a-million refugees, and 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs).
To safely educate the few remaining school-age children in Idlib
province from Assad’s carpet-bombing, volunteer teachers took to the hills of
Jabal al-Zawiya, where they are now organizing classes for them in caves.
Here is what the video camera recorded (in Arabic) in one of the
caves:
The teacher
asks:
Who can fill in the blank? 4 + 2 = ----?
Teacher
after looking at raised hands:
Basheer, come forward.
Basheer
gives the right answer:
Six.
Teacher:
Bravo, excellent. Give him (Basheer) a clap.
Interviewer
asks teacher:
What drove you to hold classes in caves?
Teacher:
The reason? The violent and endless air bombardments
and the campaign against the village of Kan Safra (in Jabal al-Zawiya). They
(Assad warplanes) drop TNT barrels on homes, people and the streets. That’s why
we are forced to hold classes in caverns and caves.
Interviewer:
What problems are you facing in such field schools?
Teacher:
A picture is better than words. What can I say, I
don’t know. There’s no light in here. Primitive equipment is lacking. There’s
too much suffering at this level… But we’ve covered some ground. We are now
holding classes for four primary grades in various caves. On average, we give
one class lesson a day to each grade. Next to us here, for instance, a female
colleague is giving a lesson to another grade. There are also classes being
held in caves elsewhere.
Interviewer:
In numbers, how many schoolchildren are you able to hold?
Teacher:
Attendance is good, but numbers? It varies. Most
children have taken refuge in Turkey or other governorates. We’re teaching the
remaining children in caves.
Interviewer:
What
equipment are you lacking?
Teacher:
Of course, the shortfall is huge. We’ve received some
help and were able to tidy the cave and get some stationery and a blackboard.
We sought some benches because the pupils are finding it a bit difficult like
this.
Interviewer
asks a pupil:
Tell me, why are you attending class in this cave?
Pupil:
Because they bombed our school.
Interviewer:
What would you want the regime to do?
Pupil:
We look forward to Bashar’s exit so we can return to
our school.
Interviewer
asks a second pupil:
What do you ask of the regime?
Second
pupil:
To leave us alone because it is killing us... It’s
not allowing us to go to school. We’re now studying in caves.
Interviewer:
And what do you wish to study when you grow up?
Second
pupil:
I wish to become a doctor.
Western media would hasten to parrot, as they have been doing
since mid-March 2011, “The authenticity of the
video footage could not be independently confirmed.” But let me say for a change, “I can confirm the authenticity of the footage.”
I will leave it for Western and Russian
media to continue counting the number of “bearded and turbaned jihadists,
Muslim extremists, Salafists and Chechens” taking over Syria.
