Syria’s Earthquake Victims Are Trapped by Assad

When civilians in northern Syria went to bed on Feb. 5, they did so while military conflict was in a state of relative calm. Little did they know that the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in almost 100 years would strike while they slept. After 12 years of brutal conflict in which the Syrian regime has used almost every weapon available against its own population, the level of destruction meted out by the earthquake upon Syria’s northwest has no close comparison. Areas now controlled by the regime have been hit hard by the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks as well. Just a day later, the death toll in Syria stands at over 2,000 and continues to rise. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people remain under rubble.

When it comes specifically to opposition-controlled northwestern Syria, a natural disaster like this could not have hit a more vulnerable population. Before the earthquake, the region represented one of the world’s most acute humanitarian crises. More than 4.5 million civilians live there, in a pocket of territory that represents no more than 4 percent of Syria—and nearly 3 million of them are displaced. At least 65 percent of basic infrastructure lay destroyed or heavily damaged, and 90 percent of the population is dependent on humanitarian aid, which comes through just one border crossing via Turkey, in Bab al-Hawa.

That cross-border aid effort is a mammoth operation, coordinated by the United Nations. There used to be three crossings utilized for cross-border aid in northern Syria, but Russia has forced two of them shut by using its veto power at the U.N. Security Council. In recent years, Russia has threatened to close Bab al-Hawa altogether, triggering warnings from U.N. aid bodies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that such a move would spark a humanitarian catastrophe. Since the earthquake, the crossing has been forced shut. The only main road connecting it to Turkey’s interior was heavily damaged and U.N. aid infrastructure was crippled. Aid workers have been suffering the same fate as millions of others living in the disaster-hit region.

This is truly a nightmare scenario—a catastrophic natural disaster strikes one of the world’s most vulnerable populations, leaving thousands of leveled buildings and thousands of casualties amid bitter winter weather, and not a single route is open for aid.

Time is of the essence. Syrians in the northwest are dying by the minute, trapped under rubble. Thousands more are now homeless, with nowhere to go and no shelter to seek. The international community has pledged substantial assistance to Turkey, and rightly so—but as per usual, Syrians appear to be an afterthought. U.S. President Joe Biden has said U.S.-supported Syrian NGOs are responding on the ground, but that is simply not enough. The main NGO in question, the heroic White Helmets, has approximately 3,000 volunteer staff working amid a population of 4.5 million. They were established and are funded to respond to periodic airstrikes, not an apocalyptic earthquake.

Alternative border crossings exist at Bab al-Salameh and al-Yarubiyah through which aid could be provided. Our partners in the fight against the Islamic State, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have pledged to facilitate an aid response from the northeast, where the United States has 900 troops on the ground. We can do a great deal to help those most in need, but only if we truly want to. Waiting for the existing U.N. cross-border mechanism to recover and implement a response guarantees the loss of many more lives. It is a highly complex arrangement with extensive bureaucracy; it is risk-averse and susceptible to regime pressures. Ultimately, its own logistical struggles in the wake of the earthquake make it ill-suited to front a rapid response. A more unilateral effort, led by the United States and like-minded allies and facilitated by Turkey, is the only option—if we choose to take it.

Beyond the opposition northwest, regime-held areas of Aleppo, Hama, and the Mediterranean coast require an urgent aid response, too—and as the world’s leading donors to the Syrian aid response, U.S. and European funds will play a central role in the U.N.’s ability to assist from Damascus. The governments of Iraq, Algeria, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have also provided additional emergency assistance. An offer of aid from Israel was rebuffed on Feb. 6.

Prior to the earthquake, regime-controlled areas of Syria were suffering the consequences of a debilitating economic collapse—precipitated by the regime’s scorched earth-style pursuit of survival and accelerated by the spillover effects of Lebanon’s 2019 liquidity crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and Iran’s own economic decline. Faced by rising internal pressures and civilian discontent, this earthquake has pushed the regime into a corner. It has issued a global call for help. Its ambassador at the United Nations, Bassam al-Sabbagh, told reporters on Feb. 6 that all assistance offered to Syria would be welcomed, but it could only pass through Damascus—suggesting a de facto veto on any cross-border relief into opposition areas.

The international community must remain committed to its long-standing policy of supporting cross-line and cross-border aid to assist all those in need. Temporarily expanding assistance channeled through Damascus should be considered, but only if clearance is provided to do the same into the northwest. The regime has a consistent, decadelong track record of manipulating, diverting, stealing, and spoiling humanitarian aid. The regime also earns enormous sums by forcing manipulated exchange rates on the U.N., thereby stealing half of every aid dollar sent to Syria. We cannot feed these problems, even within such emergency circumstances.

As responsible actors, we supply aid in line with the humanitarian imperative—that action should be taken to prevent or ameliorate human suffering arising out of disaster or conflict. Nothing should override this principle. If we fail to stick to the strict conditions already in place for aid provision through Damascus, we risk unintentionally paving a path toward the regime’s normalization. There is little trust in providing humanitarian exceptions to the regime, and rightfully so. In earlier years of the crisis, the international community agreed to provide the regime’s Russian allies with the coordinates of every hospital in northwestern Syria, in order to shield them from military actions. That information swiftly became targeting intelligence, with almost every hospital on the list destroyed in prevision strikes.

On balance, the regime is more likely to shoot itself in its own foot and rebuff possible offers of assistance from the West, but the United States and like-minded allies must not lose sight of the broader context within which this tragedy has occurred. If supplementary assistance is accepted, strict measures should be put in place to condition that aid on it reaching pre-agreed recipient communities via U.N.-vetted implementers. Even that is highly imperfect, with nearly a quarter of U.N. procurement funds being channeled through sanctioned entities, but the U.N. appears to have accepted this as a necessary evil.

Finally, if the Syrian regime turns its back on foreign offers or enforces impossible conditions upon them, we should be clear-eyed about the severe consequences that will result from this crisis. Prior to the earthquake, Syria was staring into an abyss of economic collapse, humanitarian suffering, and intractable political, ethnic, and sectarian instability. The root cause of all of this—the regime—shows no sign of openness to compromise. In 2022, illegal migration of Syrians into Europe rocketed by 100 percent. With the effects of this earthquake as cataclysmic as they are, those numbers will markedly rise once spring arrives. For too many years, the international community has chosen to take half-measures when it comes to Syria policy, to ignore its root causes, or to ignore it altogether. That must now end.