Syria is once again in desperate need of international attention and humanitarian assistance after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked it and neighboring Turkey, killing more than 36,000 and leaving thousands injured so far.
Delivering aid as quickly as possible means getting it directly across the Syrian border via Turkey, but also cross-border aid, which is aid transferred inside Syria across conflict lines.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has announced the opening of two additional border crossings at Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra’ee from Turkey to northwest Syria to allow for the distribution of humanitarian aid. Russia had reduced the number of border crossings in northwestern Syria to a single crossing at Bab al-Hawa, hampering the initial response to the disaster.
Assad sealed the deal with UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Martin Griffiths and avoided having to bring a controversial vote before the UN Security Council.
“We are focused on getting as much aid as quickly as possible through the means at our disposal through cross-border and cross-border mechanisms. The cross-border mechanism is always challenging because it requires us to coordinate between the Syrian government and those who control rebel-held territory,” Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN secretary-general, told Fox News Digital.
In reaction to the criticism, he added that “The United Nations cannot break through a checkpoint and can only operate within clear parameters of international law, such as the United Nations Charter,” Dujarric added.
This is the first time Assad has granted cross-border aid to rebel-held territory since the start of the civil war.
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“Those in dire need of assistance will finally get some relief from Assad’s long-delayed decision. It is crucial that actors on the ground facilitate rather than interfere with the efforts of UN agencies and their international partners to save lives,” Louis Charbonneau, the UN director of Human Rights Watch, told Fox News.
“This crisis highlights the inadequacy of the cross-border aid mechanism and the need for fundamental changes so that such deadly delays do not happen again in northwest Syria or elsewhere.” added Charbonneau.
People remove furniture and appliances from a collapsed building after a devastating earthquake rocked Syria and Turkey in the city of Jinderis, Syria, February 7, 2023.
The UN says Security Council approval is needed for more cross-border aid, but Charbonneau said this is not a legal prerequisite for delivering aid and the UN’s cross-border mechanism is woefully inadequate for the scale of the humanitarian crisis in the northwest Syria.
“I think our point is that the long and drawn out discussions in the Security Council or Russia’s alliance with the Syrian government and its use of its veto over and over, those should never have been the deciding factors for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid should be provided on an as-needed basis,” said Charbonneau.
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If further delays occur, many observers of human rights and international law believe that the United Nations must find alternatives to the current method of providing aid to those in need.
So far, the United States is working with the United Nations and other allies and humanitarian partners on the ground in Syria to provide resources to the Syrian people.
The State Department has made clear that US aid will be delivered to people in need without engaging directly with the Assad regime. US government officials expect Assad to immediately allow international aid to flow through all border crossings and allow humanitarian personnel access to those who need it.
Rescuers search for survivors in Gaziantep, Turkey. (Greg Palkot/Fox News)
Although the United States and the international community provide aid under the auspices of the United Nations, aid flowing into government territory risks being compromised by the Assad regime.
Assad is already using the disaster to his advantage and is calling for an end to sanctions. The Syrian government, with backing from Moscow, insists that all aid must go through the Assad government, but this is problematic given Assad’s past manipulation of aid.
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“The Syrian government has perfected the politicization and weaponization of humanitarian aid during the civil war — in some cases it’s far more effective than a military offensive,” Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic, told Fox News Digital. and International Studies.
Hall noted an instance in 2016 when the Syrian government attacked a Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy it had authorized to deliver aid to Aleppo.
Aid agencies and human rights groups have called on the United Nations to prevent Assad from using humanitarian aid to bolster his political position. Throughout the Syrian civil war, Assad diverted humanitarian aid to reward loyal cronies in pro-government territory and punish disloyal ones in rebel-held territory. US and Western leaders fear that earthquake assistance could be weaponized by Assad for his own political purposes.
What initially began as peaceful protests against the rule of Bashar al-Assad have escalated into a decades-long civil war. (AP / Hassan Ammar / Files)
To complicate matters further, Northern Syria is one of the last parts of Syria to remain outside government control. Northwestern Syria, which includes the Governorate of Idlib, is mostly controlled by the jihadist group Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a terrorist group designated by the United States and the United Nations and formally affiliated with al Qaeda. Other competing groups operate in the region, creating a confusing and sometimes dangerous landscape for aid workers. The Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dominate northeastern Syria, while other parts of northern Syria are controlled by Turkish-backed rebels. These groups have been uncooperative in helping deliver aid.
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“I think what’s important to understand is that the fault lines of this conflict have been greatly exposed by this earthquake and efforts to get civilian assistance in different parts of the country,” Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser for Syria at the Institute of United States of Peace, he told Fox News Digital.
The Treasury Department announced that any US sanctions against Syria would not hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid. The United States increased sanctions against Syria under the Obama administration in 2011 after Assad’s brutal crackdown on peaceful protests during the Arab Spring uprisings. The 2011 sanctions included a reduction in humanitarian aid, while the latest exemption for disaster relief will last for six months.
Russia’s air campaign in Syria has helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, on the left, regain control of his country during the Syrian civil war. At right is Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AP / Alexei Druzhinin / RIA-Novosti / Kremlin Pool / File)
Observers say governments in the United States and Europe must accept Assad’s position as sovereign government in Syria is a bitter diplomatic pill to swallow. Much of the international community still considers Assad a pariah.
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But a catastrophic earthquake highlights the difficulty between calling for Assad’s ouster more than a decade ago and the political reality that Assad has regained near-total control of his country.
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President Barack Obama famously asked Assad to “step aside” in 2011 during the height of the civil war. Despite all the clamor from the international community for him to leave, Assad has tightened his grip on power and continued to fight his way to remaining president to this day.
