Syria's earthquakes have dragged its warring sides even further from peace

International aid into north-west Syria has been limited by politics over how it can be delivered

The earthquakes that have devastated northwest Syria are highly unlikely to reinvigorate the stalled Syrian peace process. Rather, they have already amplified existing political fault lines. The natural disaster has highlighted deepening divides between the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad and its allies on one side and the Syrian opposition and its international backers on the other side, as well as the impotence of the UN.

Damascus is trying to utilise the humanitarian catastrophe to get out of international isolation. Shortly after the earthquakes, the regime’s public reaction was not to express condolences for all Syrian people affected by the tragedy but to use its key figures to try to achieve de facto legitimacy on the international stage for Mr Al Assad. The Syrian ambassador to the UN, Bassam Sabbagh, told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last Monday that any foreign assistance must be delivered through co-ordination with the Syrian government and sent through Syria, not Turkey. Government adviser Bouthaina Shaaban later claimed that international sanctions imposed on the regime by the US and Europe are hampering aid delivery. The US was fast to respond with public statements confirming that existing sanctions have always had a humanitarian exemption.

Despite this, the US Department of the Treasury proceeded on February 9 to announce a 180-day suspension of sanctions on transactions related to earthquake relief. This step by the US will facilitate the transfer of remittances to Syria, which will help earthquake survivors. It is also a way of holding the regime to account: If assistance for non-regime-controlled areas can be sent directly to Damascus, will the regime allow it to reach its intended recipients?

There have been allegations by activist groups, including the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, that some food packages sent by Arab countries to regime-held areas are being sold on the black market instead of being delivered to earthquake victims. And despite the Syrian government’s agreement on February 9 to allow crossline aid, there has been no significant delivery of such aid to opposition-held areas to date.

The Department of the Treasury’s announcement has caused a sharp division among US policymakers, with two senior members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee criticising it as allowing the regime to pilfer aid and pave the way for normalisation. Such disagreements within US policy circles can be only welcomed by Damascus as well as Moscow, as the lack of US policy consensus weakens the position of the US in its support of the UN-led peace process and the Syrian opposition, as well as vis-a-vis Russia.

Russia for its part is, unsurprisingly, repeating the same narrative as the Al Assad government, seeing in the earthquakes a political opportunity for normalisation. It has rejected calls for increasing the number of border crossings open between Turkey and Syria, saying that the sole open crossing – Bab Al Hawa, whose mandate was renewed until July in the latest UN Security Council Resolution last month – is enough, and that other aid should be delivered solely through Damascus.

Until his visit to Aleppo on February 10, Mr Al Assad had kept silent about the earthquakes except for public posts by the office of the presidency showing him leading an emergency meeting to respond to the crisis then listing the messages he received or phone calls he had with foreign leaders – of Russia, the UAE, Oman, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, China, Iran, Belarus, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Armenia, Lebanon and the Vatican as well as Abkhazia – who expressed condolences or offered humanitarian aid. The presidency’s prioritisation of highlighting this engagement by international and regional leaders is an indication of Mr Al Assad’s view of the aftermath of the earthquakes as an opportunity to present himself internationally and nationally as the legitimate leader of Syria.

The Syrian opposition have in turn also publicly highlighted their leaders’ engagement with international policymakers, including from the US, France and the UK, in the aftermath of the earthquakes, but they have framed this engagement as aiming to request aid for northwest Syria. The opposition have also expressed public criticism of the slow and inadequate response by the UN to the earthquake crisis, which echoes critiques of the UN by international and local aid agencies, Syria analysts and earthquake survivors. That the Syrian opposition has not been able to do more in this context highlights its longstanding lack of political leverage.

Had the UN-led peace process been more effective, the Syrian opposition would have been in a stronger position. The UN also would have been better able to respond to emergencies like the earthquakes more nimbly and equitably, without being stymied by Russia’s veto in the Security Council. The earthquakes have shown not only the extent of the politicisation of aid but also how, in the absence of a strong political challenge, the suffering of Syrians can be used as political currency.