A United Nations (UN) humanitarian aid convoy entered rebel areas of northwest Syria on Tuesday (September 19), passing through the Bab Al-Hawa border post with Turkey, for the first time since July, noted an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent on site. “The first convoy (…) is made up of 17 trucks loaded with different types of relief materials,” including medicine, Mazen Allouche, a border post official on the rebel side, told AFP.
The AFP correspondent saw several trucks bearing the acronyms of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Program (WFP) crossing the border.
Under a UN mechanism established in 2014, three years after the start of the war in Syria, UN humanitarian agencies could deliver food, water and medicine to rebel areas from this border crossing, without prior authorization from the Syrian government.
Violation of its sovereignty
But on July 11, this mechanism, denounced by the Syrian regime as a violation of its sovereignty even though it does not control it, was not renewed. And the UN announced at the beginning of August an agreement with Damascus to maintain it for six months. But several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have warned of the risk that the delivery of aid through Bab Al-Hawa will be hampered by the Al-Assad regime.
Bab Al-Hawa is controlled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS, former local branch of Al-Qaeda), which dominates the last pocket of armed opposition in the northwest of the country.
After the devastating earthquake which struck Turkey and Syria in February, killing nearly 6,000 people in the latter country, NGOs and opponents criticized the slow pace of UN aid in the rebel territories in the northwest of the country, where more than four million people live.
In mid-February, Damascus had authorized the opening of two other crossing points with Turkey: Bab Al-Salamah and Al-Raï, but it was through Bab Al-Hawa that 85% of humanitarian aid passed for the northwest of the country.
With an authorization renewed every three months, the UN welcomed the fact that Syria had extended “until November 13” the permission to pass through these two other border crossings.
The conflict in Syria, triggered in 2011 by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, has left more than half a million dead, displaced millions of people and fragmented the country.
