The Daily - A Crisis Within a Crisis in Syria

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Syria and Turkey last week, it killed thousands and created a crisis within a crisis.International aid began pouring into Turkey, but northwestern Syria, which was also hard-hit, received only a trickle. It was a bitter blow for Syrians, whose lives had already been uprooted by years of civil war, mass displacement and death.Today, we hear from some Syrians and look at why it is so difficult for the world to help them.Guest: Raja Abdulrahim, a correspondent in Jerusalem for The New York Times who traveled to northwestern Syria after the earthquake.Background reading: Little international aid has come to hard-hit northwestern Syria. Residents there said they felt abandoned by the world, and rescue workers said they felt “helpless.”Syrians have experienced relentless death and destruction during more than a decade of civil war, but some say the earthquake was worse than anything else they had endured.War, territorial divisions and acrimonious relations between President Bashar al-Assad and many Western nations have complicated aid efforts. Here’s what to know.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Hello. Hi, this is Sabrina calling. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you well, Sabrina. Say your name for me. What is your name? Giyath Alsheikh Ibrahim. I'm a professor at the University Department of English. From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. After the earthquake happened, a huge number of people came to the city of Idlib.

The situation is really catastrophic. After the massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria, international aid began pouring into Turkey. But Syria got only a trickle. What do people need? They need everything. They need everything. The people in my building where I live actually organized ourselves. We started to collect things from our houses, from our apartments, like the covers, pillows, shoes, food. It was a bitter blow for Syrians, who've been living through a devastating civil war for more than a decade.

We can't understand why we are forgotten and ignored like this. Why? What have we done to this world? Aren't we human beings here in the northern regions of Syria? Today, my colleague Raja Abdurrahim on why it is so hard for the world to help Syrians and what the earthquake could mean for their country's future. It's Thursday, February 16th. It's Thursday, February 16th. So, Raja, the earthquake in Turkey and Syria happened last week.

The death toll has been really dramatically rising. As of Wednesday afternoon, I just checked, we're at more than 40,000 dead, which is just an astounding number. You've been on the ground in both countries. Tell me about your reporting. So I came into Turkey about a week ago and have spent several days in southern Turkey in some of the hardest hit areas. But my main focus for coming here was to go to Syria because the situation there was already quite dire from a humanitarian standpoint. It was already quite dire from a humanitarian standpoint. One of the main areas that the earthquake struck had millions of already displaced people.

Many were living in tent camps. There was a cholera outbreak. So the earthquake hitting the areas that it hit in Syria made it a crisis within a crisis or a disaster within a disaster, as some people have said. But Syria has been a very difficult place for us to get access to for a very long time. And on Sunday, I was finally able to get in for a brief trip. This is Atarib. They pulled out bodies of people from here. When we crossed in, we immediately went to the town of Atarib,

which is one of the hardest hit places in Syria. They're seeing whatever they can salvage, now that the bodies have come out. I expected still to see this frantic rescue and recovery effort in progress, but instead that was mostly over. Most of the people we spoke to had said that they didn't expect to find any survivors, and even the bodies, they expected not be able to find many left. These people are saying that they're trying to find papers.

Half the building is gone. From site after site, we went to people, residents, family members were digging through the rubble but they weren't looking for their loved ones they were looking for things like identity papers, property deeds documents, anything that they could salvage even clothes

because many people ran out of their homes during the earthquake in their pajamas in their slippers and so they've been left with nothing. What did people need, Raja? What were they saying that they needed? They need moving equipment like excavators. They need tools that can help them move the rubble. They need vehicles. And also they need fuel.

Syria was already experiencing a major fuel crisis. And in the early days after the earthquake, the rescuers were very worried that the lack of fuel would hamper the rescue effort because they wouldn't have the fuel needed to power those machines and that equipment. I also spoke with the health minister who told me about just some of the shortages that hospitals have been dealing with. One hospital doesn't have needles. Many hospitals don't have blood bags. There's no shortage of people willing to donate blood in that area, but there aren't the bags to collect the blood. So it's very clear that the need is very great.

But at the same time, not a lot of aid is getting in. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that for more than the past decade, Syria has been in a conflict. Right. Syria has been in a civil war for some time now. How exactly has the conflict affected how aid gets in? Has the conflict affected how aid gets in? So it's a complicated question and an equally complicated answer. And to understand that, it helps to go back to 2011 when the conflict first began. It was the time of the Arab Spring uprisings, mass pro-democracy movements and revolutions across the Middle East. Protests in Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan. In Syria, the Arab Spring ignites the discontent that's been brewing for years against the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad.

In Syria, many people were inspired by that and began writing anti-government graffiti and eventually taking to the streets and calling for the fall of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The level of anger and passion here is absolutely palpable. We're just a few miles from the center of Damascus. This is a crowd here of perhaps several thousand people. They've taken over this whole area. They've put rocks in the road to prevent the police coming in here. Immediately, the government of Assad responded very brutally. The regime started using industrial-scale warfare,

with civilians increasingly targeted. There were shootings at the protests. There were mass arrests, and people disappeared into the notorious Syrian prison system where torture is rife. Images of dead children now fanning protests across Syria. The most shocking video shows the tortured remains of a 13-year-old boy. From there, it just got bloodier and more brutal. A poison gas attack on a Syrian village on April 11th. Assad deployed not only guns and tanks against his people,

eventually he would use chemical weapons in 2013. Infants gasped for breath behind oxygen masks at this makeshift hospital. Other men suffocating and foaming at the mouth, appearing to have ingested a toxic chemical. And also used very destructive barrel bombs from helicopters and rockets from airplanes. And the infrastructure, like roads and buildings, they were collapsing because they were constantly under attack.

Hospitals were directly hit by airstrikes and barrel bombs regularly. And as a result, doctors were fleeing the country. And millions of other Syrians were also fleeing, many of them being displaced inside the country in desperate need of the most basic things like food, water, and shelter. water, and shelter. So Syria really was becoming a broken country at that point in a lot of ways. But despite everything that was happening, Assad kept hanging on to power, right? Yes. Assad never gave up power. Assad was clear from the beginning that the government was fighting to the end. Very early on in the conflict, we would see graffiti that said, Assad or we burn the country. And very much that ended up playing out. So while all this is happening, the international community is responding to Assad's brutal actions with

sanctions after sanctions. And these include trade and financial sanctions, cutting off Syria from the U.S. banking system, and as a result, this creating a country with tremendous need. Okay, so you have this humanitarian crisis that the war has caused, but you also have a leader of the country who's cut off by the West and under sanctions. So if you're a country that sanctioned Assad but still wants to help Syrians, how do you do that? How do you get aid into the country?

So countries like the U.S., like many European countries, even with the sanctions, they've continued to send aid, but they send it through the United Nations. The United Nations operates in Damascus, in government-held territory, and has been operating there since the beginning of the conflict. The problem becomes, though, that because the United Nations operates there under the sovereignty of Syria, in order to make aid deliveries within the country, it needs the permission of the Syrian government. So it has to ask Assad, can we come in? Can we go here? Can we go there? Can we deliver this aid?

It's up to him. Correct. Yes. So what's happened is that the UN will want to deliver aid to an area where opposition anti-government rebels control the territory. And the UN would request to go there and deliver aid. Because people were hungry, the UN wanted to deliver aid into those areas. People were starving. And what often happened is that the Syrian government would either refuse that request, not respond to that request, or if it did approve the request, oftentimes on its way to these areas, the convoy would be stopped at checkpoints and basic items would be removed. The Syrian government was surrounding these areas militarily.

Nothing was allowed to go in and people were not allowed to go out. And it was under this policy... A siege. A siege. It was basically this policy of surrender or starve. It was a weaponization of aid. And who exactly is Assad weaponizing aid

against? So at the time, Assad was fighting against a patchwork of rebel groups. Many of them were part of the original armed uprising against the regime seeking to oust Assad. They were fighting over territory and essentially carving up the entire map of Syria. So while the regime controlled certain areas, these rebel groups also controlled other areas. Okay, so there's this weaponization of aid by Assad. He's keeping it from getting to people who live in areas controlled by his enemies. But I guess I'm wondering, why can't the UN send aid directly to those areas? Like, why have to deal with Assad at all? Syria is a sovereign country, and the United Nations recognizes that sovereignty

and recognizes that the Syrian government, the Assad government, controls that sovereignty. So for that reason, the UN can't just cross borders into Syria without the government's permission. Okay, so this is a puzzle, right? I mean, how do you effectively send aid to a country when you don't trust its leader to distribute that aid to his enemies, to everyone? It was a big problem. And in 2014, they found a way around it. A rare sight inside the United Nations Security Council chamber.

The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously. Unanimous support for a draft resolution on getting humanitarian aid inside Syria. And they passed a resolution that allowed for cross-border aid. The draft resolution received 15 votes in favor. So basically what that means is that the UN would now be able to send aid into areas that were not under the control of the Syrian government across the border from neighboring countries. In other words, the UN gave themselves an exception. This resolution should not have been necessary. Humanitarian assistance is not something to be negotiated.

It is something to be allowed by virtue of international law. Because the need was so great, they decided they would not respect Syrian government sovereignty in these specific areas. And that included a route into northern Syria from Turkey. That route turned out to be a lifeline for the north. out to be a lifeline for the North. So essentially, the UN gave itself a kind of workaround in order to get aid into opposition-controlled areas in Syria without the approval of the Assad regime. So what did that workaround look like? So what you had was that many aid groups,

both UN and other aid groups, basing themselves in southern Turkey as a way to send desperately needed aid across the border into northern Syria. So using the infrastructure of the south of the country, the highways, the border crossings, all of that, right? Everything, everything. They've established their offices there. They have their warehouses there. They buy materials there, which is very important as well. And over time, this route became a crucial supply route. It was not without its challenges, for sure, but it was a lifeline. And then the earthquake struck. And this critical gateway suddenly was hit with collapsed buildings and thousands killed. And this was something very new for Syrians, because Syrians in northern Syria for many, many years have relied on Turkey for aid to come through.

And that staging area for humanitarian relief, it became its own disaster zone. We'll be right back. So, Raja, for years, the way that the UN has been getting aid into northwest Syria was through this workaround on the Turkish border. But the earthquake has just decimated that area. Tell me what that looks like and the problems it's created. So I spent several days in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, where a lot of aid groups had offices or used to go through in order to deliver aid to Syria. And it's a place of wholesale destruction. The buildings that have not collapsed are all cracked, have a lot of damage so that nobody lives in them.

So the aid workers, the people who were running this lifeline into Syria, they are now affected. They have relatives under the rubble. Some of them have lost their lives. Their homes are destroyed. They themselves are in need of aid. And a lot of the aid that was getting into Syria, it was actually procured in southern Turkey. So for example, tents. Tents are desperately needed in northern Syria, but you can't find them on the shelves in southern Turkey anymore because the tents are now needed there. Right, right. We also drove down to the border and crossed into Syria.

And some of the roads just looked torn apart. And this was one of the reasons why the UN cited for not being able to send aid immediately because of the road conditions. So has any aid been getting into Syria through Turkey at all? It was very slow at first. And for the first three days, nothing went into Syria through Turkey at all? It was very slow at first. And for the first three days, nothing went into Syria except for the bodies of Syrian refugees who had died. They were being repatriated back to Syria in order to be buried. Not until the fourth day, Thursday, did the first UN convoy of aid go in. But this was not actually in response to the

earthquake. This was a previously scheduled aid convoy, and it carried some sheltered materials and non-food items like detergent and diapers. And Syrians on the ground, they were furious. One man told me that we don't need diapers. What good are diapers going to do for babies, children who are trapped under the rubble? And a UN official also acknowledged that the UN had basically failed the people in northwest Syria. And he said that they rightly felt abandoned. So what is the UN doing to rectify this situation? So on Monday, UN officials in Damascus got Syrian government officials to agree to allow the UN to bring aid into northern Syria through two additional crossings in the north. And this

is something that could help quicken the pace of delivery of much needed aid. And help me understand that, Raja. Is that a big deal? What does it mean that Assad opened up more checkpoints in the north? It's an important development, and it will eventually allow for more aid to get in faster. But it's going to take time because, as aid groups are telling us, currently a lot of that aid is still not available in Turkey. So it's not an immediate solution. And it's not just areas under rebel control that were hit by the earthquake, right? I mean, areas under Assad's control were also hit and they need aid too.

Absolutely. Those areas were hit quite badly as well. There were several provinces and major cities that were hit, including the city of Aleppo, which used to be the country's commercial hub. We've spoken to people in Aleppo and they're telling us that buildings are still collapsing more than a week after the earthquake hit. Many, many people are displaced. They're living in shelters, they're living in schools, churches, mosques, even in cemeteries. The UN has told us that nearly 11 million people in Syria have been affected by the earthquake, and the majority of those are in government-held areas. So what is Assad saying? Is he also asking for aid?

So we are seeing some aid going into government-held areas of Syria, but the Syrian government has still been using the earthquake since day one to argue that there's a need for sanctions, the sanctions that have been levied against Syria since the beginning of the war, that there's a need for them to be lifted in order to allow for aid to flow more freely into Syria. And is that a valid argument? I mean, that the sanctions are preventing the aid from flowing? It's complicated. Syria does still get aid. Syria gets actually a lot of aid. Last year, it got more than $2 billion through UN agencies. So that is

not impacted by the sanctions. And in fact, many of the very countries that sanction Syria are some of the biggest donors for this U.N. aid. But at the same time, countries such as the U.S. and Germany and the U.K., because of the sanctions, are unlikely to send direct aid flights to Syria, as we are seeing happening in Turkey. aid flights to Syria, as we are seeing happening in Turkey. And that can slow the delivery of aid because countries can dispatch aid much faster sometimes than the UN can. Okay, so it sounds like, in a way, the Assad regime is conflating the two things. Sanctions don't stop humanitarian assistance, but potentially do slow it down a bit. It can potentially slow it down. It can also potentially hinder it. For example, the sanctions are on financial institutions. Syria is not able to use the U.S. banking system to transfer money.

So if you're somebody who wants to send money directly to Syria, you're not able to do that because of these sanctions. However, last week, the U.S. said it would ease these banking restrictions, as well as restrictions on money transfer companies, for six months in order for people to send aid that is related to disaster relief. So it sounds like the Syrian government, in other words, the Assad regime, is getting some attention here. Like, he's used this earthquake to force countries like the U.S. to re-engage on this question of sanctions. And in some way, this fact in and of itself, you know, that the world is paying attention to him,

engaging with him on some level, feels like some sort of shift. So even before the earthquake, there were countries that had cut off diplomatic relations with the Assad regime during the course of the war. They were beginning to restore diplomatic ties. And that's largely because the Assad government has emerged victorious from the war. The Assad government controls most of the country by and large. And this is something that is definitely worrying the opposition. They're worried that the earthquake could be this turning point for the government, because it really is giving the Assad government a kind of platform and forcing the world to

directly engage with him in a very public way. So is it possible that the earthquake is actually a win for Assad? It could be, and it might be too early to tell. But what's clear is that the Assad regime is trying to turn it into a win. So earlier this week, when the Assad regime said that they would be opening up two additional border crossings for aid to be delivered to northern Syria, they talked about how this was a way to get aid for all Syrians and that they wanted aid to go to all Syrians. But this is the same Assad regime that used aid to punish its enemies. And so clearly this is a regime that's trying to use the earthquake to remake its image. So that's Assad. But what about the Syrians themselves?

The earthquake really has created, as you said at the beginning, a crisis within a crisis. And Syrians are exhausted. And I wonder if the earthquake itself is a catalyst for some other type of change for the country and for its future. Like after this acute phase of recovery is over, what does the future look like for Syria? How has the earthquake changed that? So the future is quite bleak for Syrians. Yes, right now they want aid to help with the earthquake relief, but the bigger problem remains the war. When I was in Syria, a lot of the buildings that I saw that collapsed, people told me that they'd already been weakened over the years because of the war.

They already had damage from shelling and airstrikes, and that made them more fragile. And you still have piles of rubble from the war. Somebody had told me that the way you can tell the old pile of rubble, the one from the war, from the new pile of rubble, the one from the earthquake, is that in the old pile, you have these little weeds poking through, these little plants. And that, frankly, tells a lot about what the country and what the people have been through. So yes, the quake was a catastrophe, but the larger problem for Syrians remains the war. And that's what people want to end. Raja, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back. To be continued... life in prison without the possibility of parole. I did a terrible thing that day. I shot and killed people because they were Black. During the hearing, the gunman apologized to the families of his victims, but it did little to diminish their emotion or their fury. You can come to our city and decide you don't like Black people. Me? You don't know a damn thing about Black people. We're human.

We like our kids to go to good schools. We love our kids. As the sister of one victim denounced the gunman, the relative of another victim angrily lunged at him before security officers blocked his path. And a U.S. government report found that the United States is on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, more than previously forecast. costs of government spending on things like the military and veterans health care, raises the stakes of the standoff between President Biden and House Republicans over the nation's debt limit. Republicans have said that they would not raise the limit. If they do not, that could set off a financial crisis as soon as July, the government said. Thank you. YouTube and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonder League. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.