Turkey Threatens Retaliation If Russia Breaks Ceasefire
GORANI: Sunday marks the ninth anniversary of the Syrian war. Earlier today, Turkey threatened major retaliation in the Idlib Province if Russia breaks last week ceasefire pointing out small violations by Syria already. But people on the ground are suffering the real cost of any failed ceasefire, certainly, not the people making the decisions. Just a warning that some viewers may find what you are about to watch disturbing.</s>DR. MUFADDAL HAMADEH, PRESIDENT, SYRIAN AMERICAN MEDICAL SOCIETY: 9 years old, he's got several shrapnel wounds going on in his head that's down to this brain, that's here. He's got another shrapnel wound in his face and one of his forearm. Earlier today, he was targeted with an airstrike along with his family. His brother, his mother, and his cousin had died.</s>GORANI: Well, Dr. Mufaddal Hamadeh is the President of the Syrian American Medical Society. And that was his voice that we were hearing in that video. And how is that boy doing now?</s>HAMADEH: He's doing well. As a matter of fact, he was doing well when I was there. I wasn't too much worried about him. But I was taken aback of how numb he was, as I was talking to him. I was also surprised to see how numb everyone else around him was.</s>GORANI: Yes.</s>HAMADEH: I talked to his brother who's two or three years older than him, he explained to me that they lost five of their siblings that day. And the way he talked to me, the -- his body language and I can see the numbness and the loss of pain. And then it occurred to me that this is a normal way of life in Idlib now. His loss and suffering and death is an everyday event.</s>GORANI: How -- you're from Idlib, how long had it been since you'd been able to visit?</s>HAMADEH: It's been about 10 years since I visited Idlib. I was happy to see my cousins as I also was able to see my cousin who had breast cancer and then she needed my help. She developed her metastasis, and she had a cord compression and eventually she was able to transfer to the Damascus. It took her two days to get to Damascus so she can reach some radiation therapy, which is the only -- the only -- the only place in Syria that had radiations therapy right now is in Damascus.</s>GORANI: You're a doctor and you see tragedy and death much more than ordinary people do. You're used to seeing sick people and people who need medical attention, but this is very personal.</s>HAMADEH: It is and, you know, I'm an oncologist. So I do deal with these tough situations every day. But usually when I deal with this situation on a -- on a daily basis, there is a sense of hope. And there is a sense of options that you can provide those patients and we spend a lot of -- a whole lot of money on treating incurable cancer. But a lot of times when you see cancer cases that are curable in refugee camps in Idlib and you can't provide them any care, that is when it's -- that becomes really painful and frustrating. We did create a cancer center in the city of Idlib and I get the chance to visit it. I was extremely happy to see that it's treating some cases that are really curable. And one of the first patients I saw there is a 29-year- old with three kids and who has Hodgkin's disease, a very curable disease, and I was very happy to see that with that -- that we created that center in order to treat patients like her. And without it, she probably wouldn't have had a chance to be treated with the therapy.</s>GORANI: I want to revisit one thing you said at the beginning, which is that people, including children, and this breaks my heart. I think more than anything else, when people tell me that the children have stopped crying, they've stopped reacting, they've stopped complaining, they've just become these numb kind of just shells trying to cope trying to cope through the tragedy.</s>HAMADEH: Yes. And that's the only way you can cope -- when you shut down, totally, you become numb. I don't know how psychologically down the line, this is going to come back to haunt them. We have a whole lost generation of children in Syria that went through hell. And they have seen, you know, some imaginable pain and suffering throughout their lives. And another Other than that, some of them are just placed in refugee camps or they're subject to spot, you know, domestic violence and sexual abuse. There is a lot of work that we have ahead of us down the line. And I was -- you know, what really breaks my heart. This probably could have all been prevented.</s>GORANI: Sure.</s>HAMADEH: Right?</s>GORANI: I think all of it. I think all of us who observed the Syrian tragedy unfold, at the beginning, thought there was a chance to avoid the worst-case scenario and yet every step of the way, it became worse than we thought. But -- and you and I are both Syrian. You know, I've never lived in Syria, but my parents are originally from Aleppo. You're from Idlib. You lived most of your life, you were telling me, in the United States. I can hear from your accent and you work there. But when you look at it from afar, what does it do to you emotionally to see your country in the state that it's in?</s>HAMADEH: Well, believe it or not, I did -- I identify as a Syrian-American, I'm more American than Syrian. But as a physician, as a humanitarian, it doesn't matter whether you're Syrian or not. This breaks your heart, as a doctor, as a physician, as a father. I can't just sit idle and do nothing. This is the biggest key and other Holocaust such as being committed right in front of our eyes. And we vowed many years ago that never to let this happen again. And in Syria, we have no excuse. We can see it happening right in front of us. Two clicks on your iPhone, you can see the massacres right live in front of you happening right every day. Yet, we never learned from the Holocaust. We never learned from</s>GORANI: Dr. Mufaddal Hamadeh, the president of the Syrian American Medical Society. Thank you very much for joining us in London. And I hope next time we speak, it will be to talk about something more uplifting than the tragedy that's unfolding there. Still to come tonight, CNN is working with young people around the world to fight against modern-day slavery. We'll join some of them to mark Freedom Day just head on CNN.