Syria
6 July 2012

Since our last update of 13 May 2012, there have been new developments at ICARDA. These are being misrepresented in the media and resulting in widespread misinformation. The facts of ICARDA’s current situation are as follows:

On 2 July 2012, we decided that our headquarters and principal research station at Tel Hadya, 30km outside Aleppo, is no longer secure. Armed gangs have intruded for several nights and stolen vehicles, some farm machinery, equipment and computers. Fortunately, our e-mail and financial systems and our data bases have already been transferred to the cloud and are fully accessible. All buildings and laboratories are safe, including the gene bank. All our gene bank accessions have already been safety duplicated,

In light of these events, and in the interests of the safety of our staff, we have reduced our activities at Tel Hadya to a minimum and re-located our staff and all valuable scientific and professional equipment and data to our premises in Aleppo. We are currently establishing our offices and laboratories there.

On 3 July, the Government of Syria provided military protection around Tel Hadya, and we shall monitor the situation. Fortunately, the cropping season was completed and we had already harvested more than 95% of the field experimentation and the seed increases.

Most of our expatriate staff has already relocated to ICARDA regional offices and they continue to implement their research programs and projects. A few key principal scientists and senior management remain in Aleppo and will relocate soon depending on the security situation.

The last few days have been most critical and we would like to commend the Center’s senior management and our dedicated local staff for the huge undertaking in moving so much of our valuable assets from Tel Hadya to the city.

Thank you for your support.
Henri Carsalade, Chair, ICARDA Board of Trustees
Mahmoud Solh, Director General, ICARDA

Website: http://www.icarda.org

Published: July 6, 2012