After the earthquake in Syria: The politicized catastrophe

A week after the earthquake, thousands of people in Syria are still largely on their own. Hardly any help arrives – also because the ruler Assad is using the catastrophe for his purposes.

It’s been exactly a week since everything changed for the seven-year-old Negm from Jindires in northern Syria. “We were sleeping in the house, suddenly a wall fell on my siblings,” he says. “Fortunately nothing happened to my sister and me. We ran into the street, made it outside. Then the ground shook again when we were already on the street.”

The seven-year-old’s home no longer exists. But his family miraculously survived. “We were sleeping when the ground suddenly shook,” reports father Abdallah. “Suddenly the walls collapsed, the buildings. I tried to grab my children, I called to them ‘cover your heads!’ We ran, we were so scared – and didn’t know what to do.”

Idlib cut off from the outside world for days

Within seconds, four- or five-story buildings simply collapsed, Jindires survivors told reporters from the Reuters news agency. Negm and his family now live in a tent on the outskirts of town. At least they have a roof over their heads.

In contrast to many of her compatriots: Emergency aid in Syria has only got off to a slow start. The province of Idlib was even cut off from the outside world for days. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths acknowledged that the people of north-west Syria had been left in the lurch. “There have been no aid shipments across the inner-Syrian border since the earthquake,” says Richard Brennan of the World Health Organization (WHO). “We are planning a transport for the coming days, but we are still negotiating so that it can get through.”

Syria fragmented into spheres of power

Syria has been split into different spheres of power as a result of the long civil war. The northwest is controlled by insurgents – but most of the aid is currently arriving in Aleppo and Damascus, in the regions ruled by ruler Bashar al-Assad. After much back-and-forth, the President agreed to the onward flow of aid to the Northwest as long as a good portion of the aid remained under his dominion.

But there is apparently a dispute with the insurgents about this. The leading extremist group in Idlib, Haiat Tahrir al Sham, a militant Islamist militia with affiliations with al Qaeda, has so far apparently refused extradition permits for the aid convoys.

Critics: Assad uses earthquakes for his purposes

A politicized catastrophe – on both sides. Criticism has also been raised against Assad: The Syrian President reacted too late after the earthquake and requested emergency aid, they say. Observers say the Assad government is using the earthquake for its own interests instead of genuine disaster management. Damascus is calling for the international sanctions against Syria to be permanently lifted and is promoting a diplomatic rehabilitation of the Assad regime. The EU and the USA reject this and emphasize that emergency aid is not affected by the sanctions. The USA suspended all regulations for several months.

“Assad has politicized the sanctions issue,” says Melani Cammett of Harvard University. “He claims that the sanctions are to blame for all the humanitarian problems in Syria.” But that is misleading. Assad is politicizing the catastrophe. “And that’s very likely to happen with the distribution of aid, too,” Cammett said. “Based on our experiences with Assad, I very much doubt that the aid will be distributed fairly according to needs and that the aid deliveries will not be politicized.”

Hundreds of thousands are homeless

There are power games on the backs of the civilians: Even a week after the earthquake, thousands of people in Syria are apparently still largely on their own. In the northwest, aid deliveries have only been able to pass through the Turkish border crossing Bab al Hawa in the direction of Idlib for a few days. And given the magnitude of the misery, far too little aid is coming to Syria overall: “Ten million people in Syria have been affected by the earthquake,” says WHO expert Brennan. “In the Aleppo and Latakia area alone, around 350,000 people are homeless.”

But then – in between all the suffering – there are the little stories that give hope: A few days ago in northern Syria, the helpers were able to free a crying small child from the rubble. Dusty but almost unharmed. The little one had survived, protected by her older sister, who still held the child on her lap in the collapsed house. With her body, the big sister saved the little girl from the falling stones. The sister could only be recovered dead.