With rebels now in control of Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad forced out of the country, this week marks a momentous and sudden change for Syria after 13 years of war and more than half a century of brutal rule by al-Assad’s family.
Even before al-Assad led a vicious crackdown on protesters during 2011’s so-called Arab Spring, leading to a devastating civil war, his father Hafez was notorious for repression, and – along with his brother – for crushing a 1982 rebellion by massacring tens of thousands of people in the city of Hama.
Syrians both inside and outside the country are celebrating al-Assad’s demise, which was precipitated by a rapid two-week rebel advance – from Idlib through Aleppo, Hama, and Homs to Damascus – led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former affiliate of al-Qaeda.
It’s not clear what will happen next, or even if the war is over for good or simply heading into a new stage. But whoever ends up governing is inheriting a country in the midst of a long-running humanitarian crisis where needs are at their highest point ever.
Over the past 13 years, aid in Syria has been politicised, diverted, and weaponised, with the victims, as ever, Syrian civilians. As Syria heads now into this unknown post-Assad era, here is an early look at the humanitarian challenges ahead:
Pre-existing needs
Al-Assad’s ouster has thrown up a host of new challenges, but Syria was already in a state of severe humanitarian crisis.
Over the past few years, even though front lines were relatively calm prior to the rebel advance from Idlib to Damascus, more and more Syrians have needed aid because of the snowballing impacts of years of war and economic collapse – not to mention a devastating series of earthquakes that killed more than 5,900 people in northern Syria last February (and some 55,000 across the border in Türkiye).
The UN’s 2024 appeal for aid to the country estimated that 16.7 million out of 23.5 million Syrians (more than 71%) were in need of some sort of assistance. That’s the most people in need since the eruption of the civil war in 2011, and many of them haven’t been receiving aid due to funding shortages and other complications.
Numbers are changing fast, but some two million people in the northwest – the area that has been mostly administered by HTS – live in camps and informal settlements, many without decent electricity, sanitation, or shelter from extreme weather.
This part of the country has long been a centre of need, but in recent years its ongoing hunger crisis has been compounded by aid cuts, inflation, and the earthquakes. The poor conditions have led to outbreaks of diseases like scabies, and Syria is also dealing with an active cholera outbreak.
Civilian infrastructure has been destroyed and bombed over the years; Russian and Syrian airstrikes recently hit hospitals in Idlib and Aleppo. Many civilians rely on water trucking or distribution from aid agencies, and in the still Kurdish-held northeast, Turkish airstrikes regularly mean cuts to water and power.
All of this is compounded (and caused) by a severe economic crisis across the country – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and international sanctions. More than 90% of Syrians live under the poverty line, and severe poverty is on the rise. While it is most severe in the northwest, the value of the Syrian pound has been falling for years and people in every part of the country have been hit hard.
The UN asked for $4.07 billion to fund its response inside Syria this year, and to date only 31.6% of that money has been given.
Refugees and displaced people
And so far, that’s just needs in Syria: An estimated 4.9 million Syrian refugees live outside Syria in the wider region – mostly in Türkiye, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Having fled the war and repression, while some countries (in the Middle East and further afield) at first offered a warm welcome, the last few years have seen increasing anti-Syrian rhetoric, forced deportations, fences, and growing pressure to return. While some EU countries, notably Germany, did offer humanitarian admissions to Syrians in the past, they’ve found less of a welcome in Europe in recent years, arriving by sea and foot only to end up being turned away or stuck in dismal camps on Greek islands.
It’s likely that some of these people will now feel safe to return to Syria – there have been traffic jams at Syria’s borders with Türkiye and Lebanon – but given the mass destruction of the past 13 years, it’s not clear if they will have homes to return to.
The same is true of the 7.2 million displaced people who were forced to flee their homes but stayed inside the country; and that number does not take into account the one million people the UN estimates have fled escalating violence over the past month (many of them had likely already been displaced at least once before).
An estimated 3.4 million people in the northwest are among those displaced, many forced into the region after evacuations that followed punishing sieges on rebel enclaves. People who were previously packed into Idlib can now go to Damascus and reunite with family members, but rebuilding their homes and lives will not be so simple.
Sanctions and complications
HTS is considered a terrorist organisation by the UN and various major aid donors including the US and UK, although the UK has already said it could reconsider this status quite quickly. It grew out of a merger of several rebel groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which was affiliated with al-Qaeda. HTS officially split from al-Qaeda in 2016.
It’s not impossible for aid groups, the UN, or foreign powers to work with a sanctioned organisation or government: Al-Assad (and, by extension, the entire country) was under severe sanctions for years. But as the international community proved in its sluggish response to the devastating February 2023 earthquakes, it doesn’t really know how to deal with HTS, or the Salvation Government it established in the northwest.
Most donor governments don’t have direct contact with HTS, only engaging indirectly through the UN due to security concerns and worries about crossing legal red lines on lending “material support” to terrorist groups. They have been hesitant to provide anything but “emergency” humanitarian support to areas they control, with funding for any sort of long-term reconstruction out of the question.
With al-Assad, donors tried to link reconstruction aid to political transition. It didn’t work. HTS is clearly looking to rebrand: Leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (whose real name is Ahmed al-Shahraa) has promised security and protection of minorities. He also says state institutions will be run by al-Assad’s prime minister, Mohammed al-Jalali, until a transition (al-Jalali says the government is for the most part still running) – but it’s not clear how donors and aid groups will take this.
Coordination and control
The entire political map of Syria has likely now been redrawn, and that requires a major rethink of how – and who – delivers aid across the country.
HTS and its affiliates do not control all of Syria: Tūrkiye-backed rebels hold some of the north, Kurdish groups the northeast, and there are pockets controlled by other rebel groups in the south. All of this will likely matter in the future.
For much of the war (after al-Assad regularly blocked and removed aid to rebel-held regions), the UN relied on a Security Council resolution for permission to deliver aid across Syria’s borders, most recently from Türkiye. Last July, the Security Council failed to renew the mandate, but al-Assad temporarily gave the UN permission to deliver aid across those borders after the earthquake.
The aid effort has – until now – been segmented, by design. UN-coordinated aid to government-controlled parts of the country has been run from Damascus, and the cross-border response mainly from Türkiye. Many groups that worked in the northwest could not – or would not – work in Damascus.
A rethink of how this works won’t be easy, and there has been unease in the past from aid groups in the northwest about working directly with the UN in Damascus. This was in part because of the Damascus office’s perceived ties to al-Assad and concerns about sharing data – including anything related to aid workers or beneficiaries in the northwest. It’s not clear if these tensions will remain.
On 7 December, as the rebels hurtled towards Damascus, the UN said it was “strategically reducing its footprint by relocating non-critical staff outside the country”. It stressed that this was not an evacuation, but a “precautionary measure to protect our teams amid evolving circumstances”.
But it’s worth remembering that the lion’s share of work is done by local aid workers and aid groups – often funded by or working in partnership with international organisations – not to mention people pitching in to help each other or organising themselves. That’s the case now, too, although many aid workers are likely themselves displaced or otherwise impacted by the violence.
The Syrian Civil Defence, better known as the White Helmets, which previously operated only in rebel territory and is best known for its search-and-rescue operations, just received an infusion of cash from the UK. They say they are out doing emergency response and clearing unexploded ordnance, among other tasks. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says the Syrian Arab Red Crescent is on the ground “to provide food, water, and basic items, emergency health care and support to hospitals with medical supplies and clean and safe water”.
Edited by Andrew Gully.
