Syria, Facing Deadline, Allows Limited Aid to Besieged Town of Daraya

Rick Gladstone, The New York Times

2 June, 2016

Image: Vehicles from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations entered the rebel-held Syrian town of Daraya, southwest of the capital, Damascus, on Wednesday for the first time since 2012.

Facing a United Nations commitment to start airdropping aid to civilians in rebel-held areas, the Syrian government eased some limits on humanitarian truck convoys on Wednesday and allowed one into a deprived Damascus suburb blockaded since 2012.

Despite appearances of a relaxation, however, international aid workers, opposition figures and Western officials said the aid deliveries, conducted by the United Nations and the Red Cross, were minimal and contained no urgently needed food.

Britain’s top diplomat described the convoys as a cynical gesture by the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and suggested that the promised airdrops would soon begin. One government opponent called the truck deliveries “farcically small.”

A five-truck convoy to Daraya, a rebellious Damascus suburb that had been denied deliveries for more than three years, contained some wheelchairs and a few dozen boxes of items like infant formula, vaccines, mosquito nets and anti-lice shampoo, according to residents reached by telephone and the internet.

Another aid convoy was allowed into the nearby town of Moadamiya, which had not received any supplies for a month. Other deprived areas where insurgent groups are ensconced received nothing.

Some aid charities said the deliveries seemed designed to avert, or at least postpone, airdrops of food and other supplies to parts of the country hostile to Mr. Assad, who is entangled in the sixth year of a war that has left vast sections of Syria devastated or beyond his control.

Mr. Assad has made clear that he does not want to give any relief to his enemies or to civilians sympathetic to them.

“You can’t hide the fact that this isn’t the solution,” said Christy Delafield, a spokeswoman for Mercy Corps, which helps displaced Syrian civilians. She described the deliveries as “tiny amounts of aid that are let in after long battles.”

In a statement, Mercy Corps said that “deliveries of aid continue to be rejected, delayed or tampered with — leaving the most vulnerable communities still in need.”

Videos posted by opposition groups, which could not be independently corroborated, appeared to show that the deliveries to Daraya were skimpy.

Mohammed A. Ghanem, a senior political adviser for the Syrian American Council, an anti-Assad group in Washington, said the videos showed that “no aid, or at least a farcically small amount of aid, has been delivered by land.”

He and other opposition figures exhorted the United Nations to make good on the pledge to begin airdrops.

Wednesday had been regarded as a potentially decisive moment in the protracted effort by the United Nations and other groups to send food and medicine to the many thousands of Syrian civilians isolated by the war — an important preliminary step toward any possible peace agreement.

The International Syria Support Group, a multinational organization that includes Russia and the United States, agreed last month that Mr. Assad must stop blocking access to areas held by his adversaries.

Otherwise, the group pledged to help the World Food Program, the main food agency of the United Nations, airdrop emergency supplies starting as early as Wednesday.

Russia’s participation in that pledge was regarded as significant, because the Russians are Mr. Assad’s most important foreign allies and have been helping his forces on the battlefield for the past nine months.

“Clearly the regime is seeking to defuse the pressure that would have been exerted on it as of today,” said Bassma Kodmani, a member of the High Negotiations Committee, an opposition group that has been engaged in on-again, off-again political talks with Mr. Assad’s government, moderated by the United Nations.

In a telephone interview from Paris, Ms. Kodmani said that Russia’s endorsement of emergency airdrops might have played a role in providing some relief to Daraya, but that “one convoy is obviously not a sign of the end of the starvation strategy.”

The Red Cross and the United Nations relief coordination agency were among the first to publicize via Twitter the aid delivery to Daraya.

Daraya’s plight was evident last month when an aid convoy that had tried to enter the city was blocked for hours and ultimately turned away despite pledges by the Syrian government. Crowds of deprived residents had gathered to await the delivery.

Whether airdrops of aid will now proceed remained unclear.

Stéphane Dujarric, a United Nations spokesman in New York, said that airdrops were under consideration but that he had no information on when or where they might begin. He said a meeting of humanitarian officials would assess the situation on Thursday.

“The real issue here, what we want to see, is a lifting of all the sieges,” Mr. Dujarric told reporters in response to questions about the aid deliveries.

“We want to see unlimited access and we’re not seeing it,” he said. At the same time, he warned that airdrops of aid, particularly in conflict areas, were “a very challenging operation.”

Britain, however, suggested that they could begin soon.

The country’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said in a statement that Mr. Assad’s government had “cynically allowed limited amounts of aid into Daraya and Moadamiya but it has failed to deliver the widespread humanitarian access called for by the international community.”

While airdrops are costly and risky, Mr. Hammond said, “they are now the last resort to relieve human suffering across many besieged areas.”

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