Whilst earthquake-stricken parts of north-western Syria still reel from the effects of massive infrastructure damage, government held areas in the region, particularly Aleppo, Tartous, Hama’, and Latakia are experiencing a secondary challenge of sanctions and interference by the Syrian government in the effective dispensing of aid to areas and communities with the direst of needs. Government held areas have seen a death toll of, at the time of writing, nearly 770, with a further 790 in rebel-held areas.

In the first instance, Sources have told London Politica that government forces lifted resources provided by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to affected areas, after taking pictures with resources and victims of the earthquake. The Syrian government allows aid to enter the region through only Bab al-Hawa, a crossing on the Syria-Türkiye border itself hobbled by the earthquake. The development of more crossings allegedly threaten the legitimacy and “sovereignty of the government”, who tightly control the flow of aid from the border to Damascus, after which it is centrally distributed (the Syrian government does not recognise non-governmental organisations working in the northwest of the country). Such bottlenecks allow the government to take advantage of aid carriers in such a fashion, without it ever entering any rebel-held territories in the northwest (including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a rebel group with ties to al-Qaeda). Fundamentally, however, resources that would have typically been diverted towards sustaining aid flows to Syria have been redirected towards relief efforts in Türkiye itself, crippling the Syrian response further without Türkiye present as a facilitator.

In the second instance, sanctions have played a significant role in hindering free and unadulterated access to target aid in such regions. Khaled Hboubati, head of the Syrian Red Crescent said that his group is ready to deliver relief aid to all regions of Syria, and called for the European Union to lift its sanctions on Syria in light of the massive infrastructure damage caused by the earthquake. As of writing, no such sanctions relief has been implemented by the EU, and the US State Department issued a statement suggesting it would even be “counterproductive” to reach out to a “government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now”.

In theory (assumptions which the EU and US are seemingly operating under) sanctions should not be blocking aid flows to government-held areas, on account of US and EU exemptions for organisations conducting humanitarian aid. In practice, however, financial transactions necessary for suppliers to facilitate aid flows may be blocked out of excessive caution by banks who do not want to be caught on the wrong side of sanctions. Hboubati has explicitly mentioned the difficulties of there being “no fuel to send convoys” on account of the “blockade and sanctions”. In areas not held by the government, the rebel Syrian Civil Defence have reportedly seen no aid so far.