Earthquakes, aid, and politics

Imagine being asleep in bed, at home – for human beings, our safest spaces – and being woken by the earth violently shaking. To buildings collapsing around you, to your loved ones disappearing in the dust and rubble.

That was the experience of hundreds of thousands of people across Turkey and northern Syria last week, a region – Syria especially – which has already borne so much: twelve years of war, a collapsing economy, millions displaced multiple times before the earthquake even struck.

These are the catastrophes in which the world’s humanity and compassion are supposed to shine. When help is offered quickly, freely, with no strings attached, no questions asked.

In a special edition of Inside Geneva this week, we learn how compassion and humanity have run up against the obstacles of geopolitics, and how, nevertheless, humanitarian agencies are determined to fulfil their duty to all those in need.

Time pressure

When an earthquake strikes, there is a short window of opportunity, just a few days, to rescue people alive from collapsed buildings. And so international search and rescue teams, with dogs and heavy lifting equipment, arrived quickly in Turkey.

But they did not arrive in northwestern Syria. That region is still in the hands of various rebel groups, some of whom don’t agree with each other, and all of whom oppose the Syrian government. In that region, humanitarian needs were rising, and aid falling, even before the earthquake struck. Over four million people, primarily women and children, depended on help from aid agencies. There were also outbreaks of cholera and measles.

How to get help to these people? If the destruction in Turkey is anything to go by, the needs in Syria will be huge. But access to non-government-controlled areas of Syria has been tricky for well over a year. Aid flowing through Damascus (and there is plenty of it) needs the Syrian government’s permission to move via ‘crossline’ operations to opposition-controlled areas. In the whole of 2022, just ten convoys got through.

Then there is access from Turkey; look at a map and you will see border crossings which would be perfect for getting help, including all-important heavy lifting equipment, quickly into northern Syria.

There were once four humanitarian aid border crossings, but now, after Russia’s objections at the UN Security Council, there is just one; and it, though open again today, was initially closed due to earthquake damage.

Unblocking the aid

This is why so many senior aid officials have been making their way to Syria. The President of the ICRC, Mirjana Spoljaric, stood in the streets of Aleppo and said “impartial humanitarian assistance should never be hindered, nor politicised. We have to get access, we have to be able to reach the affected population”.

As I write this, there appears to be some easing of blockages. Damascus has said it will permit crossline deliveries, and it has said that, for its part, it has no objection to opening two additional borders from Turkey. If that brings the unhindered access which aid agencies want, then good.

But, as we discuss in Inside Geneva, aid – who gets it and where it goes – is often determined by politics. Way back in the war in former Yugoslavia, journalists regularly witnessed UN aid convoys stuck for days on roads, while one armed group or another unpacked and repacked their trucks. Sometimes they would take things they wanted, before then sometimes – but not always – granting permission to drive on to the intended destination.

The same thing happened in Syria, where both the UN and the ICRC tried month after month to reach besieged cities, and were regularly turned away. More recently, UN aid agencies have spent months with no access to Tigray in Ethiopia, while those fighting mull their conditions for allowing lifesaving aid in.

Losing hope

These politics cost lives, certainly in northern Syria. That window of a few days to rescue people under the rubble has closed. In Inside Geneva we talk to small aid agencies, all working in Syria for years, and all supported by the Swiss Solidarity Fund. They are all licensed to work by Damascus, and so, for now, they are operating in government-controlled areas. With the decision to permit crossline aid deliveries, this may change.

Haroutune Selimian is head of the Armenian Evangelical Church in Aleppo, and works with Swiss charity HEKS. He told me that in his city, which so recently suffered terrible conflict, the earthquake has put people “in the dust”. He meant, he told me, “psychological injuries: those who are alive, they are so in a half capacity, in their spirits. The fear factor is the only long-lasting thing. Nobody is willing to go home.”

Home is where most of us feel most safe. Not Syrians in Aleppo. Haroutune and his colleagues have opened their churches, and people are sleeping in them, and in public parks, or their cars. No one wants to go home. After bombs, artillery, and now an earthquake, no one thinks home is safe.

In Damascus, Wael Darwish is country coordinator for Syria for Caritas Switzerland. He too is concerned about the effect of the earthquake on people’s ability to carry on. ‘‘My teams ask me, the people ask me, our partners ask me: why? Why is this happening to us? We just came out of a bitter conflict that’s been taking years. What do they do next? Where do they go next? People have, I would say, sadly, lost hope.”

This week, Swiss Solidarity is continuing to appeal for funds to support the work done by Wael and Haroutune and many others. We can expect a UN appeal soon as well. Money will not rebuild homes overnight, nor heal a shattered spirit immediately. But the basic comfort of feeling safe, warm, and being able to feed your family is a start.