Monday’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria heightens the challenge for humanitarian organizations and Western countries to help the Syrian population, especially in the rebel area of Idlib in the northwest.
As of Monday, the international community mobilized for Turkey, delivering emergency aid without delay. Countries such as France, Germany and the United States have also promised to rescue Syrian victims without immediately triggering relief.
“Syria remains a gray area from a legal and diplomatic point of view”, observes Marc Schakal, head of the Syria program at Médecins Sans Frontières, urging to send aid “as soon as possible”.
He fears that local and international NGOs will be overwhelmed in a country ravaged by twelve years of civil war, which opposes rebels, some of whom are exploited by foreign powers, jihadists, Kurdish forces and the army of the government of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Iran and Russia.
Aid is all the more crucial as “the situation of the population was already dramatic”, adds Professor Raphaël Pitti, an official of the French NGO Mehad, particularly worried about the province of Idlib.
One of the major problems is access to this last major rebel and jihadist stronghold, which is home to 4.8 million people, he said.
Access points
Almost all humanitarian aid is sent there from Turkey through Bab al-Hawa, the only crossing point, guaranteed by a resolution of the United Nations Security Council.
Delivering aid from Damascus-controlled Syrian territory is diplomatically tricky. This also assumes that the regime agrees to transmit it to the populations of the rebel zone and that the belligerents agree on its distribution.
The Bab al-Hawa crossing, contested by Damascus and Moscow who denounce a violation of Syrian sovereignty, has been maintained for another six months, until next July. Under pressure from Russia and China, the other three crossing points were removed.
But Bab al-Hawa was affected by the earthquake that struck both countries, the UN said on Tuesday.
For the time being, experts doubt the possibility that the old crossing points can be reopened.
The Damascus regime, under international sanctions since the start of the war in Syria in 2011, has urged the international community to come to its aid, against a backdrop of a constant increase in the human toll: more than 1,600 dead. And more than 3400 in Turkey, according to provisional data.
The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations assured the UN on Monday that this aid would go “to all Syrians throughout the territory”. On condition, however, that it is sent from inside Syria under the control of the regime.
Standardization
“Access from Syria exists, they can be coordinated with the government and we will be ready to do so,” said Bassam Sabbagh, implicitly rejecting the possibility of sending aid through cross-border points.
In Paris, as in Berlin, the authorities kick in touch.
Germany intends to use the “usual channels” of NGOs.
France could, for its part, prove to be less present than “in other crises” insofar as it is “embarrassed at the corners” to go to a country where it does not recognize the legitimacy of the regime, believes Emmanuel Dupuy, the president of the Prospective and Security Institute.
Raphaël Pitti believes that the areas under the authority of Damascus will most likely receive international aid. “As it has always been done for ten years”.
But the professor fears that the population of Idlib in particular, “which has 2.8 million refugees”, will be left behind.
The Catholic community of Sant’Egidio, headquartered in Rome, called on Tuesday to “suspend sanctions so that aid can reach the people exhausted by the war and the earthquake as soon as possible”. The Syrian Red Crescent too.
Western countries have withdrawn their diplomats from Damascus and have imposed sanctions on Bashar al-Assad’s regime since the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011.
Syria’s membership of the Arab League had also been suspended. But the United Arab Emirates has sought in recent years to bring this isolated regime back into Arab rule, reopening its embassy in Damascus in 2018 and welcoming the Syrian president to Abu Dhabi last year.
They pledged about $13.6 million in aid to Syria on Monday, which is expected to reach its population more immediately.
And Emmanuel Dupuy sees in it “a kind of normalization at the level of the Arab League”.
Syria could, for its part, claim “a return to favor for the fact that it is a victim” of this earthquake, he said.
“It is imperative that everyone considers this situation […] for what it is, a humanitarian crisis where lives are at stake,” said the spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jens Laerke, from Geneva. “Please don’t politicize it.”