UN access to northwest Syria more than a week after the quake: "No wonder they feel abandoned"

The death toll continues to rise as the hours go by. Little more than a week has passed since two earthquakes of 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude - the largest earthquake in history registered a record 9.5 - and their successive aftershocks shook the southeast of Turkey and the northwest of Syria violently, placing hundreds of thousands of people under the rubble whose bodies the international emergency teams that have come to the aid of those affected are trying to rescue against the clock. The tragedy, which found its epicentre in the Turkish province of Gaziantep, has so far left more than 34,000 people dead and tens of thousands injured. 

But the response to the catastrophe has been uneven on both sides of the border. The contrast in casualties has highlighted the dire humanitarian situation in north-western Syria. While those affected in Turkey received the lion's share of foreign aid, the more than 4 million Syrians in and around Idlib governorate were dramatically relegated to the background. The slow pace of international emergency operations continues to impede the rescue of thousands of people. Many of them have ended up losing their lives without being assisted. 

The Syrian cities of Aleppo, Latakia and Hama have also suffered severe material damage and many deaths, but the area hardest hit by the quake has been the northwest of the country, an area controlled by rebel groups opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian Civil Defence, a volunteer organisation known as the White Helmets, which played a crucial life-saving role during the war's bombardment of civilians, has led the rescue effort with the limited means at its disposal. His miracles, finding lives in the rubble, have not been able to prevent the deaths of more than 6,000 people in the country.

Eight days after the massacre, the first UN delegation has managed to cross the Turkish-Syrian border, according to the director of the World Food Programme for Syria, Kenn Crossley, who described the operation as "an assessment mission". The humanitarian convoy made its debut on Tuesday at the Bab al-Salameh crossing, which was opened in the last few hours after Damascus gave the green light. The earthquake had left the Bab Al-Hawa crossing, the only humanitarian corridor that has been available in recent months, in a dire state, with humanitarian aid from Turkey arriving in trickles. 

Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator David Carden and the head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Turkey, Sanjana Quazi, are part of the UN delegation present in northwester Syria. On Tuesday they visited the World Food Programme facilities in the Sarmadah district of Idlib governorate and then held a meeting lasting more than 40 minutes with agency officials stranded at the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing, according to AFP. 

Another 11 truckloads of non-food items such as blankets, jerry cans and mattresses also crossed the Bab al-Salameh crossing on Tuesday, the UN said. "The opening of these crossings, along with facilitating humanitarian access, expediting visa approvals and facilitating travel, will allow more aid to enter more quickly," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who appealed to the international community for $397 million to help the nine million Syrians affected by the quake, five of them in critical condition.

Bashar al-Assad received UN Under-Secretary-General Martin Griffiths in Damascus on Tuesday. The British diplomat was on hand to negotiate with the Syrian leader the opening of new border crossings to clear areas still in rebel hands in order to assist the victims of the earthquake. Al-Assad reluctantly agreed to allow the transit of humanitarian aid through two new border crossings with Turkey, at Bab al-Salameh and al-Rahi. They will be operational for at least the next three months. 

"We understand that other aid organisations not affiliated with the UN have been using these border crossings," acknowledged the UN secretary-general's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. "We have to operate within certain perimeters, that's the nature of the United Nations. Another member of the agency assured the BBC that the new border crossings "are going to make a big difference". 

"It took a full week for the Syrian government, which frequently blocks aid deliveries to its opponents, to finally agree to open two additional border crossings from Turkey to allow more aid into northwest Syria. But for many, this would come too late," charges analyst Dara Conduit of the Middle East Institute. "In the end, politics got in the way of a humanitarian response that could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives".

Unlike al-Assad, Griffiths was self-critical after visiting earthquake-devastated areas, including those under government control. "So far we have failed the people of northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. They are looking for international assistance that has not arrived," he said. Humanitarian needs in the country, especially in the northwester provinces, were already acute before the earthquake. The civil war led to a series of internal displacements affecting millions of people forced to live in subhuman conditions. 

Al-Assad has not regained full control of the country, but the conflict has entered a kind of stalemate. Russia, the key player that altered the script of the war in favour of Damascus, and China argue that humanitarian aid should be put directly into the hands of the government for distribution. However, the Syrian regime has been accused on multiple occasions of stealing donations, manipulating exchange rates to siphon off half of every aid dollar donated, and even withholding childhood polio vaccines from opposition-held territory. No one trusts al-Assad. 

In 2014, the UN Security Council passed a resolution allowing the delivery of humanitarian aid into northwest Syria through four border crossings to assist the millions of people who were falling off the radar of the Damascus-based UN aid programme. Conduit recalls that the body "had to renew the resolution every six to 12 months, but humanitarian assistance was reduced only to the Bab Al-Hawa crossing between Turkey and northwest Syria in 2020 after Russia's veto threat".

Al-Assad used the context to call for the lifting of the sanctions regime affecting Syria, which he accused of obstructing humanitarian aid deliveries. The country has been under the yoke of Western sanctions for more than four decades. The US first designated the regime of his father, Hafez al-Assad, as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979. Sanctions were tightened later, during the invasion of Iraq and especially after the outbreak of civil war in 2011. 

Experts question whether it is the sanctions regime that hinders the flow of humanitarian assistance. Instead, they accuse the Syrian government of blocking such operations. But the US Treasury Department decided to move to impose a 180-day waiver on its sanctions against Syria for transactions "related to earthquake relief efforts" days after the event. The move was interpreted as an attempt to reassure institutions that they would not be penalised for aiding in Syria.