Earthquake in Syria has exposed the shameful weaponising of aid

It’s not that any of these things have stopped or gone away, rather just that the world hasn’t been paying attention anymore. At least that was the case up until this past week when the global conscience was marginally jolted and Syria became headlines again after the earthquake that devastated parts of the country along with neighbouring Turkey and other regions.

There is something truly noisome when the likes of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad or indeed Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan use such opportunities for political grandstanding.

Looking at those photographs that emerged of Assad posing in the disaster zone with his wife was frankly stomach-churning. As the Dutch Lebanese journalist Kim Ghattas rightly pointed out in an article a few days ago, this should perhaps come as no surprise.

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Assad after all was quick to exploit the destruction of Aleppo, setting off last summer with his family on a tour in the ruins of what was once a Unesco World Heritage Site before Syrian forces along with their Kremlin allies and mercenaries from the Russian Wagner group and others reduced much of it to rubble.

Let’s not forget that this is a dictator who has brutally overseen the death of more than half a million people and imprisoned thousands in security service torture centres and jails.

Such callous brutality made Assad an international pariah but now the recent earthquake has come as a godsend. True to form while ignoring the real needs of his fellow citizens Assad shamelessly seeks to gain political leverage out of the disaster citing the earthquake’s aftermath as a reason for the West to drop its sanctions on Damascus, suggesting the measures were impeding humanitarian aid.

Opponents of the regime in Damascus say this is a lie, calling attention to waivers for humanitarian purposes that have long been in place. More recently in the aftermath of the quake, the Biden administration gave a guarantee that for 180 days all Syrian transactions on humanitarian grounds that may have been tangled up by sanctions would not be impeded.

That in itself according to some observers – while obviously welcome – is a change of heart driven primarily by the US not wanting to look like the odd man out when faced with a global wave of concern for the devastated communities in Syria and Turkey. But for a long time now before the earthquake, Washington’s approach has been very different.

As Jonathan Cook, writing in the online platform Middle East Eye pointed out recently, by maintaining sanctions “the West has been punishing Syrians for living under a government they did not elect but one the US is determined to bring down at all costs”.

Assad, of course, is acutely aware of this and clearly aims to use the current disaster to his advantage.

Lina Khatib, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, summed it up perfectly the other day.

“Assad is trying to exploit the earthquakes to get out of international isolation ... his regime’s call for the lifting of sanctions is an attempt at de facto normalisation with the international community.”

But before anyone starts thinking that Assad’s regime is the only villain of the piece it’s time to think again. Reports from north-western Syria say locals are furious at both the regime and the United Nations, which critics say has done very little to check Assad’s long-running politicisation of aid access.

Raed al-Saleh, head of the Syria Civil Defence or White Helmets, described the UN’s failure to respond to the latest catastrophe as “shameful”.

“Let me be clear: The White Helmets received no support from the UN during the most critical moments of the rescue operations, and even now we have no promise of assistance to restore our operational capacity and help the recovery and rehabilitation efforts,” al-Saleh wrote in a scathing CNN op-ed.

IN response, Martin Griffiths, the UN undersecretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, regarded by many as one of the more pragmatic UN officials, was left admitting that the UN “have so far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”

So, what then lies at the core of such failings that if handled differently could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives?

As Syria specialist Dara Conduit of the Middle East Institute, rightly observed, the bottom line here is that politics and the weaponisation of aid stood in the way of the humanitarian response. Or put another way a broken UN system was held hostage by a regime, in this instance Assad’s that is indifferent to the plight of its own people.

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It’s a complex situation, one where when certain Syrian regime officials are not siphoning off aid as repeated investigation have shown, then they are blocking access to so-called “humanitarian corridors” insisting that all aid should come through “official channels”.

In all of this geopolitical scheming, the only people that are being hurt in the process are of course ordinary Syrians. Should Assad find a way to rehabilitate himself and his appalling regime within the international community as a result of the earthquake and relief effort it would be a travesty.

Equally the time has long since passed for the UN to get its act together when it comes to navigating the political hurdles involved in getting what’s needed to those that need it most when such disasters strike. The US and the West too must think again about the impact of sanctions and who they stand to hurt most.

It’s all something of a humanitarian and diplomatic minefield but until a more cohesive response is in place the tragedy of what happened in Syria these past days will likely be repeated. Last week’s events once again have shockingly exposed the shameful weaponising of aid and humanitarian relief.