Closure of al-Ya’rubiyah border crossing portends catastrophe – official
MANBIJ, Syria (North Press) – An official at the Manbij camps office, affiliated with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), said on Sunday that the continuing closure of the al-Ya’rubiyah (Tel Kocher) border-crossing would create a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
Al-Ya’rubiyah border-crossing is located on the Syrian-Iraqi border and was the official crossing between the two countries prior to the Syrian conflict in 2011.
Prior to the crossing’s closure in 2020, which happened because of a Russian-Chinese veto in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), 103 medical facilities were receiving aid across the crossing to northeastern Syria, according to a report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the Security Council.
Ahmad al-Khalaf, an official at the office of Manbij camps, told North Press that the continuing closure of the border crossing would exacerbate the already hard economic and humanitarian conditions and threaten the lives of IDPs and refugees in the camps of north and east Syria.
The IDPs in these camps are going through difficult living conditions amid no humanitarian aid deliveries through the crossing which is considered the only corridor by which such aid can reach the AANES-held areas.
Closing the border crossing negatively affects the residents of these camps and deepens their suffering in light of harsh winter, he added.
In 2014, the UN Security Council allowed aid deliveries into Syria through four border crossings: al-Ramtha crossing with Jordan, Bab al-Salam and Bab al-Hawa with Turkey, and al Ya’rubiyah (Tel Kocher) with Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). However, under pressure from Russia and China, the Security Council reduced them to one in the beginning of 2020, which is the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.
On July 12, 2022, the UNSC approved to extend lifesaving aid deliveries into northwest Syria through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey for six months.
Since July 10, 2020, Bab al-Hawa has been the only crossing kept open for UN aid based on the resolution 2533 (2020).
At the end of 2022, the last deliveries of UN aid entered through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing whose mandate expires on January 10, this year.
The official demanded the International Community and the humanitarian organizations to put pressure on the active powers of the Syrian issue to open the border crossing so that aid could be rendered.