Syria
Kurdish administration official Sheikhmus Ahmed speaks to Rudaw on January 12, 2020. Photo: Rudaw TV
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A UN Security Council decision to solely use Turkish border crossings to send humanitarian aid to northern Syria will only exacerbate dire humanitarian conditions in the country, officials in the Kurdish-majority northeast have told Rudaw.
The UN Security Council voted on Friday to extend the humanitarian aid to Syria. However, under pressure from Russia, it scaled back the programme – agreeing to continue assistance for only six months, instead of renewing it for a year as it had done in the past.
It was also decided that aid will enter Syria through just two crossing points along the Turkish border -not through border crossings controlled by the Syrian regime. Tel Kochar, a border crossing between Iraq and Syria and a key entry point for aid to some 1.3 million people in northern Syria will remain closed after the UN Security Council decision.
In recent weeks, approximately 300,000 people have been displaced from parts of the northwestern province of Idlib by intensified conflict between the Russia-backed Syrian regime and rebel jihadists trying to maintain a hold on their last stronghold. The province was already home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people from elsewhere in Syria.
In northeast Syria - known by Kurds as Rojava - fifteen camps were in operation before a Turkish invasion dubbed Operation Peace Spring was launched in October. Two more camps have since been opened by Rojava’s administration to accommodate for the hundreds of thousands displaced by the operation, Sheikhmus Ahmed, head of the internal displaced persons (IDP) and refugee office for the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) told Rudaw.
Ahmed warned the UN decision will exacerbate already difficult conditions in camps.
“There are 17 camps in Rojava,” he said. “It is very difficult for the Rojava administration to manage all of these camps.”
Kurdish Red Crescent official Dilgash Issa also criticized the UN Security Council resolution, estimating it would affect over a half a million people in northeast Syria.
“At least 500,000 people will be affected by the UN decision,” Issa told Rudaw on Sunday.
The operation of over a dozen of the humanitarian organization’s projects is left hanging in the balance by the resolution, Issa added.
“Kurdish Red Crescent has 16 projects that would cease if the UN stops their aid and support,” he cautioned, as the organization is “unable to implement them alone.”
Khalid Ibrahim, head of humanitarian organization affairs department in Northern Syria told Rudaw on Sunday that the resolution is another example of politicization by the UN.
“The UN Security Council is once again considering political interests, as it did during the Turkish incursion into the region,” Ibrahim said.
Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring on October 9 with the stated aim of pushing the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) up to 30 kilometers back from its southern border, to create a ‘safe zone’ for the resettlement of Syrian refugees in its place.
Ankara considers the YPG - the backbone of the SDF – to be the Syrian extension of the PKK, seen as a terrorist group in Turkey.
Kurds accuse Turkey of carrying out ethnic cleansing and demographic change by uprooting the predominantly Kurdish population from their homes, to make way for mostly Arab refugees from elsewhere in Syria.
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