Fabrice Balanche is a lecturer at the Université Lumière Lyon 2. He is also an associate researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
LE FIGARO. - Syria is hit by an earthquake after more than a decade of war. Who controls the affected areas?
FABRIC BALANCHE. -
The region affected by the earthquake, in the north of the country, is divided into four zones controlled by different entities.
First the city of Aleppo and its surroundings, controlled by the government.
Then the Idlib region, in the hands of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, heir to Al-Qaeda.
North of Aleppo, along the border, are the pro-Turkish rebels opposed to those in Idlib.
This area is actually controlled by Turkey.
Finally to the east is the Kurdish zone, held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
This is without taking into account the fragmentation within these areas.
The pro-Turkish rebels are divided between multiple militias which each hold their own canton.
The city of Aleppo itself is divided: the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsoud, for example, is under the control of the SDF, as is the northern periphery around Tel Rifaat.
These multiple fractures do not bode well for the delivery of humanitarian aid to populations.
What are the different obstacles to NGO intervention
?
Again this morning, 48 hours after the earthquake, pro-Tuc rebels fired artillery at Tal Rifaat, the Kurdish enclave north of Aleppo.
This means that any idea of a ceasefire and cooperation after the natural disaster is absolutely unthinkable.
Moreover, very few NGOs are located in the government zone.
Almost all left the country in 2011-2012, for security reasons, and because donors predicted the fall of the government.
Expatriates working for large international NGOs, such as Doctors Without Borders or Doctors of the World, are based in Antioch or Gaziantep in Turkey, and are content with what are called “flash visits” to assess needs.
UN aid to rebel areas passes through Turkey, through the Bab al Hawa corridor.
However, this poses a real problem of redistribution.
Look at the region of Afrin, in the northwest of the country.
More than half of the Kurdish population was driven out in 2018 when Turkey regained control.
Do you think that the Arab or pro-Turkish rebels will allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Kurds still present?
These authorities who act as intermediaries between the NGOs and the civilian population are real predators, confined within a politico-clientelist perspective.
During the civil war, an acquaintance at OCHA (the coordination of humanitarian affairs of the United Nations, editor's note) told me that the rebels indicated completely delusional numbers of victims.
It's voluntary, to get as much humanitarian aid as possible, and
ultimately
get your hands on it.
The risk is all the greater as the rare organizations active in the region, such as AFAD, the Turkish government agency for disaster management, are rarely neutral in the conflict.
The Syrian government has nevertheless called for help from the international community. Can we believe it? Isn't this an opportunity for him to regain control of certain territories?
One can legitimately fear that Bashar el-Assad will not allow a lot of humanitarian aid to reach the rebel areas.
Its long-term objective remains to reconquer all of these territories.
For that, what better than to asphyxiate them?
Several NGOs have requested accreditation in recent years to intervene in areas under Damascus control, but Bashar-el-Assad has always refused, unless they abandon their action in rebel areas.
He will certainly ensure that all aid passes through Damascus, and no longer via Turkey - as is currently the case for the rebel areas, and thus show that he exercises his sovereign power over the whole territory. .
But the aid from Damascus will reach in priority the populations loyal to the regime, and will neglect the others.
However, the rebel areas taken over in 2016 by the Syrian army - for example all of eastern Aleppo - are among the most affected by the civil war.
They are composed of informal constructions, with patched-up structures, repeatedly shaken by bombardments or rebuilt on the cheap, because the builders cheat in particular on the quantity of iron that must be mixed with the concrete to support the buildings.
All this is
collapsed like a house of cards during the earthquake.
The people who need it the most, because they have not been loyal to the regime, will be the last to be served, that is obvious.
Read alsoEarthquake in Turkey and Syria: in the ruins of Antioch, the complaint of the victims awaiting help
On the geopolitical side, can we expect a rapprochement with the West?
So far, 45 countries have responded to Turkey's request for help.
For Syria, there was only one, Russia, followed later by the United Arab Emirates.
On the French side, will the Quai d'Orsay crisis center allocate emergency funds to government Syria?
In 2017, Emmanuel Macron tried to restore ties with Syria through humanitarian aid.
Various associations for the defense of human rights, intellectuals or journalists strongly criticized what they considered to be a rehabilitation of the “
butcher of Damascus
”.
I do not think that the French president wants a new controversy of this type, moreover in the context of the confrontation with Russia, of which Bashar al-Assad is a faithful ally.
Read alsoEmmanuel Macron tempted by a rapprochement with Bashar el-Assad
However, one would hope that such a disaster would make the various players aware of the urgent need to find a solution to the Syrian conflict.
On the eve of the earthquake, the situation was already appalling.
Everyone wants to leave the country, terrorism is fueled by this misery and Daesh is reappearing… We should be concerned about this, but I fear that the geopolitical oppositions are too strong.
In the midst of war against Russia, the time does not seem to relax either in Ukraine or in the Middle East.
As usual, the international emotion will last for a while, then fall.