Chris Clarke: We must champion the people of Syria and let the light in

A convoy including busses and ambulances, wait at a crossing point at Amiriyah District of Aleppo. Photo / AP

Opinion

Of all the events of 2016, the Syrian conflict has been the darkest.

Leonard Cohen, one of the heroes the world farewelled this year, wrote that "there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in". Maybe that best describes 2016, but if we are honest you had to search pretty hard to find that crack.

The vicious battle for eastern Aleppo brought the brutal conflict before us in a way none of us could ignore.

Our war correspondents this year were the residents of the city, the mothers and fathers, daughters and sons of Syria, who described in chilling detail the terror. Finally this week they bid us farewell by Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, unable to escape from the nightmare of their besieged city.

Again we were faced with a Syrian tragedy that will be etched in our memories.

The shelled out remains of Eastern Aleppo will sit beside the images of Alan Kurdi's tiny body on a beach in Turkey that shook humanity awake to the atrocities of the war in Syria.

The tweeting residents of the besieged city will be remembered with Omran Dagneesh, the 5-year-old boy covered in dust, blood running down his face, sitting, dazed and lost, in an ambulance.

Despite our disgust and our attempts to help, we have been unable to prevent the death, unable to secure even a temporary peace. And as the battle for Aleppowe reached its final stage, the violence was relentless.

The United Nations fears dozens of civilians were killed when soldiers entered their homes.

We have heard of violence against Aleppo's children, a terrifying and chilling new chapter in the Syria crisis. The first images today of civilians finally fleeing the city bring back grainy images of past conflicts in parts of Africa and Europe where still to this day we say "how did we allow this to happen".

As the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, said just this week to the Security Council, "Aleppo will join the ranks of those events in world history that define modern evil, that stain our conscience decades later. Halabja, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and, now, Aleppo."

"Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there nothing that can shame you?" she asked the war's perpetrators.

And this is just one dark corner of a terrible war.

Despite desperate pleas to end the carnage, and endless talks and resolutions, the international community has failed to act.

We have witnessed the destruction of a city, the collapse of the humanitarian ideal, and the failure of the international global architecture. The citizens of Aleppo, the people of Syria, are the victims of all our failure to ask humanity to be and do better.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said the world has collectively failed the people of Syria. He said history would not easily absolve us, that this failure compelled us to do more for the people of Syria.

So where is the crack that will one day let the light in? The only solution is a lasting peace, and it is our responsibility to keep championing for that peace until the last gun is silenced. We are that crack. We must continue our efforts to demand an end to the killing, the international community must know that this savagery, this failure of humanity, this abandonment of our brothers and sisters, cannot continue. We can never give up on the people of Syria, this would be giving up on humanity, abandoning the light.

As New Zealanders, our voice may be small but, as we have seen in history, it can give courage to others to lend their support and thus amplified speak truth to power and ensure that those trapped beneath the rubble do not die in vain.

In 2017, we must continue to champion the people of Syria. Our shared humanity demands it. We can be one of those cracks that ultimately will let the light back in.