Quake in Syria offers leverage to isolated Assad

• Published date: 10 February 2023
• Publication title: Bangkok Post

President Bashar al-Assad is seeking political advantage from an earthquake that has devastated large parts of Syria and Turkey, pressing for foreign aid to be delivered through his territory as he aims to chip away at his international isolation, analysts say.

Amid an outpouring of sympathy for the Syrians hit by the earthquake, Damascus has seized the moment to reiterate its long-standing demand for aid to be coordinated with his government, shunned by the West since Syria's war began in 2011.

Western powers have shown no sign they are ready to meet that demand or re-engage with the Syrian president, but his hand has been strengthened by difficulties facing cross-border aid flows into Syria's rebel-held northwest from Turkey.

The aid flows, critical to 4 million people in the area, have been temporarily halted since the earthquake, although a United Nations official expressed hope they could resume yesterday. Damascus has long said aid to the rebel enclave in the north should go via Syria not across the Turkish border.

"Clearly there is some kind of opportunity in this crisis for Assad, for him to show 'you need to work with me or through me'," said Aron Lund, a Syria expert at the Century Foundation.

"If he is smart he would facilitate aid to areas outside his control and get a chance to look like a responsible actor, but the regime is very stubborn."

The West has long shunned Mr Assad, citing his government's brutality during more than 11 years of civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, uprooted more than half the population and forced millions abroad as refugees.

However, the frontlines have been frozen for years and Mr Assad, backed by Moscow and Tehran, controls the biggest part of the fractured country.

The United States State Department has shot down the suggestion that the earthquake could be an opportunity for Washington to reach out to Damascus, saying it will still provide aid to Syrians in government-held areas via non-governmental organisations on the ground not the government.

"It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now - gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured," US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told a briefing this week.

Still, the leaders of some United States-aligned Arab states have been in touch with Mr Assad since the disaster, including...