At 4 a.m. on Monday, when the earthquake hit, most of the 4.5 million people living in northwestern Syria were asleep. Thousands of buildings collapsed, burying their residents alive.
The majority of those living in this small corner of Syria had already been displaced from their homes in other parts of the country by the civil war. The northwest is the final stronghold of Syria’s opposition and is the main target of president Bashar al-Assad’s grim campaign to retake full control of the country. Before the earthquake, some two thirds of the area’s basic infrastructure – public housing, water and sanitation, hospitals and medical clinics, roadways and power generation – was already destroyed or damaged. The people living there could not have been more vulnerable. Nearly 2,000 bodies have been found in the five days after the earthquake, but tens of thousands are still missing.
You might have hoped that the international community’s response would be immediate; we have spent billions supporting Syria’s rebel groups, political opposition and civil society in this very area. It took four days, though, for any humanitarian aid to reach northwestern Syria, and what eventually came was six trucks of basic aid that had been loaded for delivery before the earthquake. It was enough for 4,000 people: 0.01 per cent of the population. There was nothing to help with disaster response. No fuel for heavy lifting equipment, and no shelter for those who had lost their homes. The arrival of 14 trucks of assistance today was an improvement, but far from enough.
While there has been a global response to help Turkey, there has been an almost complete abandonment of Syria. The White Helmets are the only rescue workers available, but they’re a volunteer force of 2,500 who are trained to respond to airstrikes (which have, thankfully, stopped in the last few days). In the first three days after the quake, White Helmets staff, many working with their bare hands, rescued a survivor every hour, but by the fourth day few were being found alive. The international community was too late.
Assad’s regime is to blame, too. The day after the earthquake, Syria’s envoy at the UN, Bassam Sabbagh, told reporters that disaster relief could only be delivered to regime-controlled areas. They would determine what was delivered and where. In 2022, 99.6 per cent of the aid that reached Syria’s northwest came through the single border crossing with Turkey, and just 0.4 per cent came through Damascus. Disaster aid does not need to go through the capital. The regime’s demand that it does is an extension of Assad’s decade-long strategy to starve and siege areas of opposition. Sadly, the UN has a track-record of kowtowing to the regime’s demands.
Assad’s government is using the disaster as an excuse to get sanctions relief. According to the regime and its supporters, western sanctions are impeding their efforts to deliver humanitarian aid. Like most claims made by Assad, this is farcical. All sanctions mechanisms have waivers to protect the provision of aid and, more importantly, 91 per cent of the aid that goes through Damascus is funded by the four sanctioning entities: the US, UK, EU and Canada. In the five days after the quake, Assad’s regime received humanitarian aid and disaster assistance – for the territory it controls – from 16 foreign governments, along with the UN and EU. There was no trouble receiving or distributing it. If there is a problem delivering aid to all those in need, it is being caused by Assad, not sanctions.
What’s happening in northwest Syria is a tragedy. Nobody expected the genocidal Assad regime to respond well, but the international community should have done better.
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