Opposition-held areas go through humanitarian crisis following quake

Introduction:

Earthquake-impacted people in Syrian opposition-held areas, northwest Syria, especially those in Afrin and its countryside, north of Aleppo, have suffered from bad circumstances and instability for two months, living in makeshift shelters in residential areas among rubble. In addition, they suffered from rains and floods, amid lack of justice in aid distribution, as ruling authorities steal aid most of the time and violate human rights as well as ignore the survivors’ needs and take advantage of their situation to achieve personal interests.

The earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey in February affected 12,731 people in Syria, according to data obtained by Monitoring and Documentation Department of North Press, as 5,315 were killed and 7,416 others were injured, while the number of buildings that were completely destroyed has reached 1,333, 516 of them in the opposition-held areas; and 4,595 buildings were partially affected, 2,151 of them in those held by the opposition.

Injustice prevails

Abdo Rashid, a pseudonym of a resident of Bulbul district, in the northern countryside of Afrin, said, “My house is almost destroyed. We cannot stay in because any tremor may destroy it. After committees inspected my house and assessed the damage, they promised to give me two tents, but I have not received anything yet.”

Rashid, 45, was obliged to borrow money to buy a tent of aide tents that were sold publicly. He said, “Most of the beneficiaries who registered in affected people lists are relatives of the local council, affiliated with Turkey, or employees in it, so that, they do not consider us affected because we do not know any one in the council.”

“I made a tent of wooden poles and cloth near my house, I know they will not protect us from weather conditions, but the only solution to save my family, get out of my almost destroyed house and stay near the house to protect it from stealing,” Ahmad Abdo, a pseudonym of a resident of the village of Ma’amel Oshaghi, in the countryside of Afrin, said.    

Abdo, 37, told of injustice he experienced while the process of distributing aid, saying that a charity visited the village to hand out tents to people, however, the representative of the village did not let him register, claiming that he has a car and tent that is made of cloth.

Abdo told North Press that he filed a complaint to the local council in Afrin, but they did not respond, claiming that he did not pay taxes in the months after the quakes. On the contrary, a number of settlers, who were not affected by the quakes, got tents because they know the staff of the council.

The matter is the same with Salem Ahmad, a pseudonym of a resident of Sharan district, in the countryside of Afrin, who told North Press that he left his house after it was damaged by the quakes along with his widow daughter, and headed to shelters established by the local council.

“They immediately registered me, however I was shocked to see the workers who were responsible for distributing aid harassing my daughter, at that moment, I knew their goal,” Ahmad said.

The 52-year-old father, added that he resided in the shelter for less than 20 days, and then he headed to his relatives’ house.

“I called for a tent several times … but they said that I have to go back to the camp to get a tent and aid, the thing that I completely refused,” Ahmad said.

Mustafa Khaled, a pseudonym of a resident of the village of Sheikhotka, in the countryside of Mabatli district, north of Afrin, said, “We have not received aid, because the head of the village, locally known as “muhtar”, asked me to give him papers of my brothers who are abroad to pretend that they are still here and take aid instead of them, and I did not accept.”

Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka Syrian National Army (SNA), used weapons several times to disperse those who gather to get aid, in addition to thefts by SNA leaders and militants through registering fake names in beneficiaries lists, not to mention the royalties that they use to pose on the mechanisms of delivering aid to quake-affected areas.

Organizations operating in Afrin and its countryside, in coordination with the local council and the SNA factions, established shelters for those who were impacted by the quakes in lands owned by residents without taking their permission or telling them about the duration of establishing the shelters in their lands. In addition, the SNA factions felled fruitful trees belong to residents to establish shelters in their place, as they felled more than 350 trees in the village of Aghjaleh, in the countryside of Jindires, west of Afrin, to establish a new settlement for quake-affected people, as they claimed.

The situation of those affected by the quakes in Afrin is very miserable due to the large damage and the presence of the local councils that violate people’s rights and prevent them from getting relief aid, and control the work of organizations and mechanisms of distributing aid.

A worker in an organization said, “There are no local or international accurate statistics about the number of families affected by the quakes due to manipulating the enumerating process by the local council and some local organizations.”

The earthquakes and the disaster that they caused have become business, as some institutions capitalize on the issue of quake-affected people to achieve personal interests, according to the worker.

International and local humanitarian aid is still flowing to the earthquake-affected areas, amid the continuing chaos in aid distribution and thefts, with the complete absence of a neutral monitoring body to control the distribution mechanism and hand over aid to those who deserve it, in addition to the lack of a mechanism to compensate those affected and rebuild their homes.

In addition, the solutions being developed are temporary and ill-considered, which have exacerbated the humanitarian situation in the region.

The SNA factions also did not stop committing violations against the residents of the region during the aftermath of the earthquakes, as the department documented, through its sources, that a large part of the humanitarian aid that the SNA factions prevented the organizations from distributing it and insisted on distributing it themselves, was stolen and transferred to their own warehouses in the village of Kurzeleh in Sherawa district in Afrin.

The SNA factions and militants of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS – formerly al-Nusra Front) randomly destroyed buildings and houses and blew them up, under the pretext that they are at risk of collapse without consulting specialists or studying the environmental situation of the area and the neighboring buildings that are still inhabited, ignoring the safety of  civilians and their right to housing, and without obtaining the consent of homeowners.

The department documented that 13 shops and 5 buildings were demolished indiscriminately, and the demolition of civilian homes is considered an international crime, as it unjustly causes the displacement of dozens of families.

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) stipulates that each person has the right to get humanitarian assistance that guarantees him his right to life, health, and protection from any brutal or humiliating treatment.

Demolishing houses indiscriminately violates the right to adequate housing, and it is considered forced displacement, in addition, it violates the IHL, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.