BALLYVEAGHAN, Ireland — The Syrian regime’s opaque approach to the COVID-19 outbreak could lead to disaster in a country already ravaged by war, where millions of people are displaced and hospital capabilities significantly damaged.
World powers, preoccupied with containing the COVID-19 pandemic at home, have paid little notice to the potentially dire situation in Rojava. The autonomous administration in northeast Syria — while claiming de facto governing authority in most of the northeast — without international recognition, faces complications receiving help from the outside. The fractious politics of the country further hampers efforts of NGOs to facilitate humanitarian assistance.
So far, the region has only reported a single death from coronavirus, but the autonomous administration says it is simply unprepared to save many lives were an outbreak of COVID-19 to occur in its territories, which are outside Damascus’ reach. That now poses a real threat to millions of people in the war-torn region, including civilians, refugees, Islamic State prisoners, and their families alike.
All this has made Rojava increasingly reliant on Damascus during the pandemic, even as officials decry the regime’s response.
Officials in Rojava lambasted the World Health Organization and the Syrian regime last week, saying the UN agency failed to alert officials for three weeks about the deceased man’s test result. The man, who has not been identified by name, died on April 2 at a regime-controlled hospital in Qamishli, but the administration said it was not informed of the result until a few days ago. The man had no known travel or contact with anyone else infected by the virus, meaning it could already be spreading through the community, experts and the WHO say.
The details emerging from the Qamishli case show a flawed and barely-functioning system mired in distrust, and have again highlighted the various challenges in getting humanitarian aid to northeast Syria. These obstacles only continue to mount as the war with all its fronts enters a tenth year.
“Ultimately, it’s a political issue,” says Emma Beals, a journalist and researcher who focuses on Syria and humanitarian aid. In January, Assad’s ally Russia pressured humanitarian groups to funnel aid deliveries via Damascus, and then ensured that would be operationally impossible, explains Beals. Russia and China shot down a UN Security Council (UNSC) proposal to continue allowing aid to pass through the Al Yarubiyah crossing, closing a key lifeline into the northeast of Syria. Border crossings with Turkey are a non-starter given that the two powers are at war with one another, and fears of the virus have kept the Semalka crossing with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq limited to NGOs except for one day a week.
“Wasting time pushing humanitarians to fix a political problem is pointless, and with a global pandemic to deal with there’s no time to waste monitoring requests and permissions hoping something will change,” she told Rudaw English. “We know how this is going to go because we saw the government being difficult about cross-line aid time and time again through the conflict. States must push to reinstate full cross-border access to the northeast at the UNSC as soon as possible.”
No other country is publicly pushing for any coordinated measures to help with humanitarian assistance for a potential outbreak – including the US, UK or France, the powerhouse members of the multinational anti-ISIS coalition who worked hand-in-hand with the Kurds on the battlefield, but were unprepared to fight a pandemic.
Assistance for dozens of health facilities came through the Al Yarubiyah crossing, and it’s unlikely to be re-opened. Worse, the funding associated with the resolution is gone, meaning NGOs may have to suspend or close programs.
“We were already hugely concerned by this and now with COVID and the impacts that that has, it’s only further complicating matters in the northeast because of some of those restrictions,” the operations manager with one aid group told Rudaw English on the condition of anonymity. While there is still not significant transmission of coronavirus within the community, NGOs have a limited window of opportunity to act – but about half of international aid personnel left Rojava nearly two weeks ago, before the Semalka crossing was closed, the manager said.
The US State Department says it pledged $16.8 million to help Syria cope with the COVID-19 outbreak, without detailing which parts of the country the money will go to, although a Department spokesperson told Rudaw English “some of it is definitely for the northeast.” In early April, an official told reporters it was unable to even reach displacement camps in the northeast.
Trouble with Damascus
The relationship between the Assad government and the Rojava administration usually simmers on quiet tension, but has also at times swung between open hostilities and an alliance of convenience. The regime has effectively allowed the administration to run the northeast, even continuing to pay salaries to many government employees in the region over the years. Damascus also naturally benefited from the Syrian Democratic Forces’ fight against ISIS – a war Assad’s forces were not fit to win. And while the Syrian foreign ministry last year accused the SDF of being a “separtist terrorist force,” the regime and the administration gave in to a devil’s bargain – brokered by Assad’s backer Russia – in a bid to halt Turkey’s incursion into the region in October.
Experts and human rights watchdogs have for years accused the Assad regime of hampering aid access, or outright stealing humanitarian supplies in an effort to punish areas outside government control.
Working in the northeast means that many international NGOs aren’t officially registered with Damascus, and are entirely reliant on the Semalka crossing to bring in critical supplies for healthcare facilities and local partners. Syrians take significant risks working for NGOs that operate in the northeast, many of which are well-known international organizations — but in the government’s eyes it amounts to working for a terrorist group, the operations manager said.
“If they know that it’s for us, nobody will help us,” Raparin Hassan, co-chair of the self-administration’s health board, said of the Syrian government. Speaking to Rudaw English, Hassan said the regime thwarts shipments by delaying them, or outright denying them but without returning supplies to the sender.
And without their own factories to make equipment in Rojava, the self-administration has to purchase everything, including basic protective gear like gloves and face masks on the open market, paying the same price as anyone else rather than being to negotiate a bulk deal like a government, she said. This is at a time when the cost of basic goods has skyrocketed across Syria due to currency depreciation and scarcity.
Rojava’s Kurdish neighbors in Iraq facilitated the delivery of two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines that will allow the administration to test coronavirus samples without relying on Damascus – but the NGO operations manager told Rudaw English that the machines are not yet operational. Hassan said four additional PCR machines have been promised.
Access to those machines would have prevented the entire situation because the man who died of COVID-19 in Qamishli could have been diagnosed by the self-administration. It has claimed that the only existing PCR machine in the northeast was in a hospital in Sari Kani (Ras al-Ayn), which fell under the control of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels after the October incursion, forcing the agreement with the WHO to send tests to Damascus.
On Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called on the Iraqi Kurdistan government to facilitate access for humanitarian organizations across the border to Rojava. The Kurdistan Region has closed Erbil’s airport, a critical lifeline for supplies and staff who enter Rojava, due to coronavirus fears. MSF says it has urgently-needed supplies and staff ready to travel, but lacks the guarantees that they can enter Iraqi Kurdistan and move on into northeast Syria.
“We need to also be considering the broader impact of COVID of which might have even further reaching consequences than the outbreak itself,” MSF Emergency Manager Will Turner told Rudaw English.
“Whilst we remain hugely concerned around this situation with regards to COVID and the lack of adequate response now, we also need to be looking ahead and seeing the potential impact of this COVID emergency on the continued provision of humanitarian assistance,” Turner said.
The hamstringing of WHO
Another consequence of Russia’s successful shuttering of the Al Yarubiyah crossing is that it has further hindered the World Health Organization’s ability to operate in Rojava. Since 2014, a Security Council resolution had allowed UN agencies to operate through key crossings without needing to get permission from Damascus beforehand every time – although the government did have to be notified. When that pipeline dried up with the January debacle at the Security Council, WHO immediately forecasted that the availability of medical supplies would be impacted, and UN trucks loaded with supplies sat in Iraq, unable to cross.
WHO, like all UN agencies, has no option but to work directly with the Assad regime, and some staff in the Damascus office are pushing for further consolidation of aid efforts under the umbrella of the Syrian government. It also is reliant on its blessing to continue to operate in the country, which may explain why it has not spoken out more strongly about restrictions.
Nearly four years ago, Beals’ reporting for The Guardian found that $900 million of the UN’s $1.1 billion 2015 response plan was channeled through the regime, which decides who UN agencies can work with, what can be distributed, and where it can be sent.
On Saturday the New York Times cited a WHO official as blaming failure to report the Qamishli results to Rojava officials on a procedural error. The Syrian regime also knew the results of the test, but it, too, failed to tell the administration.
WHO Spokesperson Inas Hamam told Rudaw English that the deceased man’s swabs were taken at home by a rapid response team working under the Syrian Health Department in Hasaka, before he was sent to Qamishli hospital and later transferred to Damascus. Hamam attributed the fumble to “the unfortunate delay in sharing information at different levels among health authorities.”
“Although it is not a role usually assigned to WHO, we are working to strengthen reporting mechanisms,” she said, adding that WHO is also pushing for a lab to be established in the northeast.
WHO has airlifted 20 tons of medical supplies – including critical ventilators and personal protective equipment – to Qamishli destined for health facilities at the hospitals in
Tabqa, Raqqa, and Manbij; under the autonomous administration’s control, as well as to health authorities at Hasaka National Hospital in Deir Ezzor, and to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which all operate under the aegis of the regime. Hamam did not elaborate on the type and distribution of supplies intended for each facility, but said the “majority” of the shipment would go to the self-administration controlled area.
WHO has recently reverted to an old method of reporting aid delivery in weight, rather than detailing the number of items, so it’s difficult to ascertain how much is included in the shipment – 20 tons of face masks and testing swabs are far more urgently needed than 20 tons of informational pamphlets. It’s also unclear whether there will be any future deliveries or how the agency can restore trust lost in the Qamishli case.
Hamam said while WHO was aware of the recently-established Kurdish Red Crescent hospital in Hasaka, its Damascus office had not received any request to support it. “WHO is strongly advocating for the establishment of a reference lab in Hasaka in order to speed up identification, diagnosis, and follow-up of suspected cases,” the WHO spokesperson told Rudaw English.
That situation has hardly changed as Assad’s forces push to recapture rebel strongholds and cement the government’s hold on the country. At the same time, the self-administration’s position in the northeast remains tenuous: without foreign political support, it risks being further squeezed by the regime, losing out on critical aid and supplies, and failing in its effort to contain the pandemic.
Edited by Shawn Carrié
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