The US will provide $85 million (around €79 million) for urgently needed humanitarian aid after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. To ensure that earthquake aid is also possible for sanctioned Syria, the US Treasury Department allowed all relevant transactions for a period of 180 days.
This easing will not reverse the longstanding structural challenges and brutal tactics of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, said Wally Adeyemo, the deputy finance minister. But she can ensure that sanctions do not hinder the life-saving aid that is now needed.
Earthquake: Helpers don’t give up
After the earthquake catastrophe in Turkey and Syria, people continue to hope for miracles. The searchers don’t want to give up and hope that they can still find more buried people.
hope and fear
This gives hope that medicines and essential goods will get into the country more easily, said Andreas Kapp, Chairman of the Neighbors in Need Foundation and General Secretary for International Programs of Caritas Austria, on Friday during a visit to Aleppo. In addition, the help is visibly starting, emergency shelters have been set up, food distributed. But people’s fear and uncertainty are still great. They stayed outside in the cold winter weather.
The UN Security Council is also considering easing the international blockade of the civil war country. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told MSNBC TV that a resolution “that would open one or two more border crossings” is being considered.
Council members Switzerland and Brazil would be responsible for drafting it. However, Swiss Ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl said a meeting of the Council and a briefing from UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths would have to be awaited to finalize details.
Isolated Idlib province
War has been raging in Syria since 2011, more than 350,000 people have died according to international estimates, and around 5.6 million Syrians have fled to other countries, according to the UN. Assad is accused of crimes against humanity, such as the use of chemical weapons. Offers of help to a government that “gasses” and “slaughters” its own people would be “rather paradoxical, if not counterproductive,” said US State Department spokesman Ned Price.
Assad’s regime currently controls a good two-thirds of the country. Almost 3,400 people died in the quake – about half of them in Assad’s dominion around the economic metropolis Aleppo, the other half in the isolated province of Idlib in the north-west, which is partly ruled by jihadists associated with al-Qaeda and is a refuge for them people from all over Syria who want to get away from Assad.
Currently there is only one open border crossing between Turkey and the Syrian rebel areas, Bab al-Hawa. The government approved “the delivery of humanitarian aid to all parts of the Syrian Arab Republic,” it said in a statement on Friday. The distribution of the aid should be overseen by the Syrian Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross, it said.
Efforts to open borders
The prerequisite, however, is that the relief supplies do not fall into the hands of “terrorists”, Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad had previously said. However, Assad refers to all opponents as “terrorists”. On Friday, UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk called for “an immediate ceasefire” in Syria and “full respect for human rights and the obligations of international humanitarian law so that aid can reach everyone”.
The Turkish government is now trying to open the border posts controlled by the Syrian government. The crossings have been closed for years due to tensions between the two countries. “We are always dependent on cooperation with the authorities during an operation,” said a spokesman for the aid organization @fire. It worked well in Turkey, but things are different in Syria. “Unfortunately, helping with an earthquake is always very political.”
Aid as a means of power
Aid supplies that come into the country via the capital Damascus are distributed by Assad’s men. There have been several reports that the government is enriching itself and selling goods to its own people. The distribution of relief supplies is also said to have bypassed areas that Assad regards as hostile.
The Syrian regime took the earthquake as an opportunity to once again criticize Western sanctions. These would make humanitarian aid more difficult. The sanctions made the situation worse after the quake, Mekdad said. The Syrian Red Crescent said that because of the sanctions, Syria did not have enough fuel to send aid convoys to the quake area.
However, experts doubt that lifting the sanctions would have a direct impact on the urgently needed emergency aid. Around 4.5 million people live in the northwest. According to the UN, 90 percent of the population there were already dependent on humanitarian aid before the earthquake disaster. In the entire quake area, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is preparing for the fact that a total of 5.4 million people need help with accommodation, said UNHCR representative in Damascus, Sivanka Dhanapala.
Assad visits Aleppo
Assad presented himself publicly for the first time since the catastrophe on Friday. He and his wife Asma visited mountains of rubble in Aleppo on Friday and visited victims of the earthquake at a clinic. The Syrian Presidency released photos showing the two at the bedside of the injured.
However, Syria is not completely cut off from international aid: Oman launched an airlift with relief supplies on Wednesday, but does not want to send rescue teams into the country. The United Arab Emirates pledged $50 million in aid and want to set up a field hospital. India also sent relief supplies by plane. The Syrian leadership has also been assured of support from Iran, Russia and China – direct or indirect supporters of ruler Assad for a long time.
Savior: No help arrived in the northwest
Finally, the UN Organization for Migration (IOM) reported the arrival of two aid convoys from Turkey in Idlib. However, the head of the White Helmets, Raid al-Saleh, said that these were aid deliveries that had been planned before the earthquake. Instead of vital equipment for the rescue teams, detergents, among other things, had arrived. The UN emergency aid office OCHA asked several times about the need, but sent nothing.
The White Helmets are a private civil defense organization of volunteers and paid aid teams in Syria that has been active in Syria’s civil war in non-government-controlled parts since 2013. It is not to be confused with the Syrian state civil protection forces.
7,000 helpers from 61 countries in Turkey
In Turkey, further aid from abroad rolled in on Friday. According to the Foreign Ministry in Ankara, more than 7,000 helpers from 61 countries are in Turkey. Rescue workers – also from Austria – worked around the clock in a race against time to find possible survivors in the mountains of rubble. Several people could still be saved on Friday, including a ten-day-old baby.
“We will continue until we are sure that there are no survivors left,” a reporter from Turkey’s state television channel TRT World quoted a spokesman for the emergency services as saying. The rescue work is made more difficult by the icy weather, which also threatens the survivors, who have to hold out in makeshift shelters or even outdoors. The death toll has since risen to over 19,300. More than 77,000 people were injured, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Including the victims in Syria, more than 22,700 people lost their lives.
