Syria is once again in desperate need of international attention and humanitarian assistance after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked it and neighboring Turkey, which has so far killed more than 36,000 people and injured thousands more.
Delivering aid as quickly as possible means sending aid directly across the Syrian border through Turkey, but also cross-border aid, which is aid transferred within Syria across conflict lines.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad announced the opening of two additional border crossings at Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra’ee from Turkey into northwestern 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 worked out the deal with the UN Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, Martin Griffiths, and avoided having to submit a contentious vote to the UN Security Council.
“We are focused on getting as much help as quickly as possible through the means that are available to us through cross-border and cross-border mechanisms. The cross-border mechanism is always a challenge because it requires coordination between the Syrian government and those who control territory controlled by the rebels,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary general, told Fox News Digital.
Reacting to the criticism, he added that “the UN cannot break into a checkpoint and can only operate within clear parameters of international law, such as the UN charter,” Dujarric added.
This is the first time Assad has allowed cross-border aid into rebel-held territory since the civil war began.
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“Those who desperately need assistance will finally get some relief because of Assad’s long-delayed decision. It is crucial that actors on the ground facilitate, rather than interfere, the efforts of UN agencies and their international partners to save lives. Louis Charbonneau, UN director at 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 these deadly delays are not repeated in northwestern Syria or elsewhere.” Charbonneau added.
People remove furniture and appliances from a collapsed building after a devastating earthquake struck Syria and Turkey in the city of Jinderis, Syria, on February 7, 2023.
The UN claims that Security Council approval is needed for more cross-border aid, but Charbonneau said this is not a legal requirement to deliver aid and that the UN cross-border mechanism is woefully inadequate for the scale of the humanitarian crisis in the northwestern Syria.
“I think our point is that the long, drawn-out discussions in the Security Council or Russia’s alliance with the Syrian government and its use of its veto over and over again were never intended to be things that were decisive factors for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid is supposed to be delivered based on need,” Charbonneau said.
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If there are further delays, many observers of human rights and international law think the UN must find alternatives to the current method of providing aid to those in need.
So far, the US is working with the UN and other humanitarian allies and partners on the ground in Syria to deliver resources to the Syrian people.
The State Department made it clear that US aid will be delivered to people in need without directly engaging the Assad regime. US government officials hope Assad will immediately allow international aid to flow through all border crossings and allow humanitarian personnel access to those in need.
Rescuers search for survivors in Gaziantep, Turkey. (Greg Palkot/Fox News)
Although the US and the international community provide aid under UN auspices, aid entering government territory risks being compromised by the Assad regime.
Assad is already using the disaster to his advantage, calling for an end to sanctions. The Syrian government, supported by Moscow, insists that all aid must flow 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 use of weapons of humanitarian aid during the civil war; in some cases, it is much more effective than a military offensive,” Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox News Digital.
Hall pointed to a case 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 UN 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. American and Western leaders are concerned that Assad could use the earthquake assistance as a weapon for his own political ends.
What initially began as peaceful protests against Bashar al-Assad’s government turned into a decades-long civil war. (AP/Hassan Ammar/File)
To further complicate matters, northern Syria is one of the last parts of Syria that remains outside of government control. Northwestern Syria, which includes the Idlib governorate, is controlled primarily by the Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadist group, a US- and UN-designated terrorist group formally affiliated with al Qaeda. Other competing groups operate in the region, creating a confusing and sometimes dangerous scene for aid workers. The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dominate northeastern Syria, while other parts of northern Syria are controlled by Turkish-backed rebels. These groups have been less than cooperative 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 the efforts to provide assistance to civilians in different parts of the country,” said Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser on Syria at the Institute for United States of America. Peace, she told Fox News Digital.
The Treasury Department announced that all US sanctions against Syria would not get in the way of providing humanitarian aid. The United States tightened 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 provided for an exception for humanitarian aid, while the latest exemption for disaster relief will last for six months.
Russia’s air campaign in Syria helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, left, regain control of his country during the Syrian civil war. On the right is Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AP/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA-Novosti/Kremlin Pool/File)
Observers say that the US and European governments having to accept Assad’s position as the 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 removal more than a decade ago and the political realities that Assad has regained near-total control of his country.
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President Barack Obama famously called on Assad to “step aside” in 2011 during the height of the civil war. Despite all the cries from the international community for him to go, Assad tightened his grip on power and continued to suppress his path to the remainder of the presidency to this day.
