UN Secretary General António Guterres called on the international community to raise funds for the victims of the earthquake in Syria. Many of those who fled the war were left homeless once more. At the same time, unprecedented efforts are being made to deliver humanitarian cargo to Syria, but many political barriers and disagreements have to be overcome along the way. Some do not want to forget the grievances once morest Damascus, while others, on the contrary, are ready to step over politics amid the catastrophe. So, on Tuesday, the first Saudi aircraft in 11 years arrived in Syria. The humanitarian aid was delivered to Aleppo.
On Tuesday, the first UN delegation following the Turkish earthquake visited areas in northwestern Syria that were in the disaster zone. The UN mission is an evaluation one. It included Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator David Carden and Sanjana Kwazi, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Turkey. And here they had to answer sharp questions: why people living in the territory not controlled by Damascus were left to their fate following the earthquake. “I don’t want to sit here and make excuses,” Ms Kwazi told reporters, but at the same time admitted that international organizations have not done enough to help the Syrians. A few days before, she wrote on her Twitter: “The situation in northwest Syria was terrible even before the earthquake. Now it’s indescribable. People are stuck in rubble. Hospitals are full.”
Many of those who now live in northwest Syria are refugees from other parts of the country. They have already left their homes once to escape the war, but have never been able to return, living all these years in poverty and under the threat of constant bombing by the Syrian authorities or the Turkish military. Now these people were once once more left without a roof over their heads and once more buried their loved ones. A huge number of Syrian refugees died in Turkey. There are no official statistics, but according to The Middle East Eye sources, regarding a quarter of the dead in the Turkish province of Hatay alone are Syrian refugees. According to the latest information, regarding 40 thousand people became victims of the earthquake. Most of them are in Turkey. There are no accurate statistics on Syria that would cover both the territories controlled by Damascus and the pro-Turkish opposition, as well as the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group (HTS, banned in the Russian Federation). According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on February 12, at least 5.7 thousand people were killed in Syria, more than 10 thousand were injured. At the same time, it is emphasized that the death toll may increase following the rubble is cleared. The UN notes that the earthquake affected ten Syrian provinces, the most affected of them are Aleppo and Idlib.
Now the priority task of the international community is to prevent those who survived from dying of cold and hunger. “A week following the devastating earthquakes, millions of people across the region are struggling to survive, homeless and in freezing temperatures. We are doing our best to change this. But much more is needed,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Tuesday.
Mr. Guterres called for raising $397 million for humanitarian aid to Syria. The amount is calculated over a period of three months.
According to the Secretary General, the UN is preparing a similar appeal to raise funds for Turkey. However, the situation in Syria looks critical. And before the earthquake, 15.3 million people in this country needed humanitarian assistance. Many of them were on the verge of survival. At the same time, medicine was in a catastrophic situation, hospitals lacked and still lack medicines and equipment. There is not enough equipment to clear the rubble, there is no gasoline and other types of fuel. The earthquake only aggravated the situation throughout the country, but people in the border areas, which are beyond the control of the Syrian authorities, were in a real trap.
UN aid began to flow into areas in northwestern Syria only on Thursday, a few days following the earthquake. Prior to this, the Bab el-Hawa checkpoint, the only one on the border with Turkey, through which, according to UN Security Council resolutions, humanitarian cargo can be sent to these areas, was closed due to roads littered with an earthquake. Since that moment, dozens of UN vehicles with humanitarian cargo entered Syrian territory from Turkey, as well as convoys organized by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but this is clearly not enough. The whole week following the earthquake, the international community actually spent in disputes: how to deliver goods to Syria?
The discussion regarding the delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria has been going on for many years. Damascus and Moscow insist that it must go through official authorities. That is, all cargo must first reach Damascus and then go through the lines of contact between the parties to the conflict (cross-lines) to those in need in territories not controlled by the Syrian authorities. At the same time, Western countries insist on sending humanitarian supplies around Damascus – through the external borders of Syria. As a result of the compromise reached by Russia and Western countries in the UN Security Council, in recent years, cross-border assistance has been carried out only through one Bab al-Hawa checkpoint, which leads from Turkey to the Syrian province of Idlib. At the same time, Moscow emphasized that this is temporary and the work of the mechanism of cross-border humanitarian assistance should be curtailed. However, the earthquake made its own adjustments.
On Monday evening, UN Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to the opening of two additional checkpoints on the border with Turkey – Bab es Salam and Er Rai – for a period of three months. The first humanitarian convoys passed through Bab es Salaam on Tuesday. At the same time, representatives of Western countries demanded that the decisions to open the checkpoint be recorded in a UN Security Council resolution. However, the delegations of the Russian Federation and Syria emphasized that this is not necessary, since Damascus itself allowed the transport of goods. “There is a big difference between the mechanism of cross-border assistance, which violates the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria, and the sovereign decision of Syria,” said First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Dmitry Polyansky. In turn, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Western countries, led by the United States, of trying, under the pretext of an earthquake, “to forcefully push through a new document with the expansion of the cross-border mechanism in Syria.”
While they are arguing in high offices, Kommersant’s sources in international structures working in Syria note Damascus’ unprecedented willingness to cooperate.
Evidence of this was the agreement to open border checkpoints, as well as the readiness to send humanitarian aid to Idlib through cross lines. However, the HTS and other groups refused to accept the shipment through Damascus. This is also confirmed by the UN. A negative reaction to UN cooperation with Damascus was also followed by the White Helmets, an organization that is engaged in rescue work in territories not controlled by Damascus. And this is happening at a time when people can’t wait for help.
Meanwhile, despite political differences, the first plane from Saudi Arabia in 11 years landed in Syria on Tuesday. Riyadh and Damascus severed diplomatic relations in 2012 following the start of the civil war in Syria. There is still no official high-level dialogue, but Riyadh nevertheless sent humanitarian aid to the Syrian Red Cross in Aleppo.
