The rebellious Syria, the great forgotten of the earthquake

In the Syrian town of Jindires, there is more anger towards the rest of the world than towards the earth for taking 400 lives when it trembled there on Monday.

The earthquake last Monday has left a devastating image of entire streets with hardly any standing houses, with an impossible number of people under the rubble: local rescuers do not have the technology to locate them and many displaced by the advance of loyalist forces a Bashar al-Assad were not registered in the house where they lived.

Yet in this town of 30,000 — located in a northwestern part of the country that Turkey and its allied militias have controlled since 2018 — no one complains about the quake itself, considering it part of God's written destiny.

What prevails is a feeling of grievance, that they, who are trying to overthrow the Syrian leader by force of arms (as if it were still possible), have paid more than ever for their solitude these days, looking for the dead alone among the rubble while, to the north of their homes, the world turned to Ankara and, to the south, Damascus received promises of aid from its allies.

Ahmed Ahmed, with his children in a tent after losing his home in Jindires, on February 11, 2023. Antonio pita

“Nothing has entered Syria in three days.

Because?

Why are we Syrians?

Because we don't want Bashar Al Asad, who has killed the country?

100 countries should be helping us!” says Muhammad Hanu, 72, angrily.

"We are devastated and they only put 14 trucks in," he protested, referring to the United Nations humanitarian convoy that crossed the border on Friday.

Saudi Arabia has also sent aid to the area this Saturday.

Hanu also charges against Turkey: "He helps us, but the pass is closed", referring to Jirbet Al Joz, the one used by people traffickers to cross to the northern neighbor, who wants to return part of the 3.7 million of Syrians who welcomes

Northwestern Syria can only receive humanitarian aid through a crossing with Turkey, Bab Al Hawa.

The Security Council resolution allowing it must be renewed every six months.

Years ago, it entered through several border crossings, but the threats of a veto from Moscow and Beijing reduced it to just the current one.

Last January, Russia allowed another half-year extension in a vote feared it would close the rebel zone's only umbilical cordon to exact the price of Western support for Ukraine in the war.

The Government of Damascus —in a clear position of strength since its ally Russia entered into combat in 2015 and turned the tide of the war— considers that it should receive and channel aid to the entire territory.

Today it controls the vast majority of the country.

The West does not recognize the government of Bashar El Asad, maintains sanctions on the banks and is wary that the aid would reach its destination, if it did so.

It is this dilemma, which has been resolved in international forums with the slowness typical of situations with conflicting strategic interests, which has now exploded in all its harshness in the face of an earthquake that has left tens of thousands of people homeless.

Haisham Yaber, team leader in Jindires of Syrian Civil Defense, the organization better known as the White Helmets that make up some 3,000 volunteers, was facing the consequences of the earthquake this Saturday with some cranes that the organization has and others that residents of area.

“When we got to Jindires, the number of fallen buildings was huge and we didn't know if there were people inside or not.

”.

Yaber says that they have identified part of the dead through photographs that relatives show them and that they compare with the face of the corpse found.

"From outside, we lack heavy machinery and sensitive electronic systems that allow us to locate people," he adds, aware in any case that -almost a week after the earthquake and alone in the effort- the possibility of finding survivors is already very slim.

“We are used to this type of rescue, due to the bombings.

There is no difference in how we act.

What changes is the gigantic number in such a short time.

We were not used to that ”, he points out in the framework of an unusual trip organized from Turkey to Syria on the occasion of the earthquake by the Syrian Emergency Task Force organization with the green light from the Ankara authorities.

The White Helmets - who do not operate in the area dominated by Damascus, which was also affected by the earthquake - did not reach Jindires until the second day.

In the first, the dimension of the natural catastrophe in the last rebel stronghold in Syria forced them to prioritize other locations.

Alone, the inhabitants of Jindires tried to understand street by street in the dark which neighbors they missed and tried to hear the cries of the buried, recalls one of them, Ahmed Nasbi Yasem.

“People came out to rescue on foot, with their hands, there were no cars.

We heard screams, but we couldn't tell where they were,” says Yasem.

The president of the Jindires local council, Mahmud Hafour, puts a figure of 400 dead, 1,100 houses damaged and 270 houses completely collapsed by the earthquake.

“We have not received any kind of help from outside.

On the third day it began to arrive from local and charitable associations.

Now there are more than 40 helping, but they are local initiatives, with very little capacity”, he admits.

Haisam Sido has just benefited from that help.

It's noon and the first thing he's going to eat in the day is some bread and biscuits that he's just been delivered from a van.

He is 30 years old, has four children and has lived since the earthquake in a tent that he bought in Afrin with $100 that his father gave him.

Like most Syrians, he is unemployed.

"Do you have any plans on what to do now?"

—Yes, buy me another house.

-You have the money?

—No, I don't even know how to achieve it... The truth is that no, I have neither money nor plan.

Ahmed Ahmed, 30, also lost his house in the earthquake, as well as a toe.

He lives in a store with two other families.

There are 11 in total and they were asked to occupy a building across the street that appears to be in good condition in the midst of destruction.

"We are afraid to go in there and it will collapse," he argues.

On both sides of the road that connects the Bab Al Salam border crossing with the city of Afrin, there is more poverty than destruction caused by the earthquake or by almost 12 years of a war that has left half a million dead and 6.6 million refugees.

Only a handful of cars, motorcycles and carriages circulate, and you don't see any more merchandise than blankets, diesel, food or scrap metal.

Poverty exceeds 80% and inflation is skyrocketing.

On the sides you can see two types of tents.

Almost all are old.

These are informal settlements installed on one of the few plains that do not occupy the ubiquitous rows of olive trees.

Part of the 6.8 million displaced by the conflict survive there.

Many have ended up in the province of Idlib, to which Jindires belongs and which had a population of 1.5 million before the war.

In 2021 there were already 2.7 million, according to a report by the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs.

A small part of the stores are newly opened.

They are those affected by the most serious earthquake in the region in almost a century, with more than 22,000 deaths in Turkey and more than 3,500 in Syria.

If they have a logo, it's Turkish: from AFAD (the government's emergency management agency) or from IHH, an Islamic charity from the same country.

Dozens of women wait sitting with their children on a blanket next to the olive trees.

The fear of an aftershock or a collapse is evident: many people are seen outside their houses, even though they are still standing.

Mohammad Mahmud Shile, 53, and his nephew Mouaz Shile, 14, are also displaced.

They fled from the enclave of Eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, when an advance by regime forces after a five-year siege sparked a mass flight amid panic.

The first cries in the hospital in front of the bed where the second remains bedridden with a broken leg and injuries to his face.

He “was sleeping on the ground floor (of a four-story building).

When I felt the earthquake, I tried to escape, I remember that a wall fell on my leg and nothing else, ”he says from his hospital bed.

Then, he recounts, he alternated moments of consciousness and unconsciousness in which he would scream and hit the wall when he heard noise around him.

Suddenly, a white helmet pulled back veins of stone that covered him, light filtered in for the first time, and he was surprised to find that it was daylight.

He spent 63 hours under the rubble before being rescued, says Mohammad Mahmud.

The one who accompanies him in the hospital is his uncle: his parents and two of his brothers died in the collapse, he explains.

The adolescent Mouaz knew it, but hearing it from someone else's mouth seems to suddenly become aware of the dimension of his tragedy, and he fights to control his tears.

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