In the early hours of February 6, 2023, southern Türkiye and northern Syria were rocked by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The earthquake and its aftershocks killed over 50,000 people, injured more than 100,000, left hundreds of thousands homeless in both countries, and caused an estimated $5.1 billion in damage in Syria alone. Recovery from such disasters is always challenging. But while deploying support and accessing recovery funds will be relatively straightforward in Türkiye, in Syria the picture is more complex because of the country’s conflict, which has just entered its thirteenth year. This situation impacted the humanitarian response to the earthquake from day one, while Syria’s shifting political sands risk consolidating the conflict’s most pernicious dynamics.
Syria’s stalled peace process has seen regional actors flirting with Damascus in an attempt to address regional concerns. The earthquake accelerated that trend, propelling a round of diplomacy and engagement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This approach does not prioritize human rights or address conflict drivers. However, given a Western leadership vacuum and the absence of meaningful activity at the United Nations in Geneva on Syria’s future, pivoting away from this trajectory will be difficult. While broader ambitions may remain out of reach in Syria, Western decisionmakers should view the post-earthquake moment as a critical, if rapidly closing, window to secure short-term policy outcomes that help improve the lives of millions of Syrians, including those affected by the disaster. Aid has to reach all those in need in a principled manner, while any expansion of assistance must ensure behavior change from the Syrian regime. The focus should be on establishing a nationwide ceasefire and long-term humanitarian access to northwestern Syria, remedying concerns about the regime’s grip on foreign aid through Damascus, and addressing the conduct of the Syrian security apparatus.
These aims prioritize humanitarian outcomes, but they will require political dealmaking. Achieving them will necessitate a coordinated approach from all Western, regional, and humanitarian actors. A failure to do so will lead to a further degradation in humanitarian conditions, perpetuate unchecked conflict and security-sector violence and persecution, and embolden the regime.
Syria After the February 6 Earthquake
Today, Syria is divided into three areas. One is held by the regime and its allies, another by armed opposition groups and Turkish forces in the northwest, and a third by Kurdish groups and the U.S. military in the northeast, though further variations in territorial control exist. The United Nations–led peace process under the terms of Security Council Resolution 2254 has stalled. The resolution calls for a political transition in Syria, the drafting of a new constitution, and UN-supervised free and fair elections, among other things. A pastiche of formal and informal truces has been in place for three years, though violence increased prior to, and continued after, the earthquake. Humanitarian access and operational issues remain unresolved in all territories, while humanitarian conditions have deteriorated sharply due to the conflict’s devastation, mass displacement, corruption, and dwindling economic resources across Syria and in nearby countries. Syria’s neighbors have grown frustrated with hosting Syrian refugees and all have pushed for their return. However, an unreformed Syrian regime and security sector mean the number of refugees going home remains small, while arrests and ill-treatment are common among returnees.
The rebel-held Syrian northwest was severely impacted by the earthquake, as were northern areas of several governorates controlled by the Syrian state. Northwest Syria houses more than 4 million people, of whom nearly 2 million are internally displaced, with 1.8 million living in camps and makeshift shelters as of January 2023. The area is accessible to humanitarian organizations operating across the border with Türkiye, in a step initially authorized in 2014 under Security Council Resolution 2165, which was necessitated by the regime’s blocking of aid. The authorization has been renewed every six to twelve months since in fraught negotiations with Russia, which has extracted an increasingly high price for agreeing to it.
After the earthquake, the aid response in the northwest was slow. International rescue teams reaching Türkiye did not enter Syria. Only local rescue workers and prepositioned and preplanned aid supplies sustained the population until earthquake aid began moving in nearly a week later. This meant that many people perished under the rubble due to a lack of manpower and heavy machinery. Finally, the Assad regime announced it would permit the use of two other crossings into the area, angering the inhabitants who felt loved ones had died because of access restrictions and resented the regime’s control over their fate. The situation exposed the precarious nature of the aid architecture in the northwest and dashed hopes that the tragedy would bring the conflict parties closer together.
Meanwhile, aid began pouring into Damascus immediately. Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates, sent material the day after the earthquake. By February 9, at least 54 airplanes had arrived carrying thousands of metric tonnes of assistance, and rescue teams were on the ground supporting the regime’s efforts. Syria immediately called for sanctions relief, which was privately echoed by Arab states and UN agencies. Washington, which has imposed sanctions on Syria, authorized earthquake relief transactions on February 9. Only then did the regime seek humanitarian assistance from the European Union (EU), which the EU provided, as did several European states bilaterally.
It took six days for Assad to view the damage. Since then, he has focused on capitalizing politically on the situation, personally receiving senior UN officials and regional diplomats and embarking on official state visits. During these trips he has demanded that the world help repair the earthquake damage as well as destruction from the Syrian conflict, deliberately conflating the two in an attempt to overcome restrictions on war reconstruction without progress on a peace process. Regional states and UN officials, eager to find ways around Western redlines on reconstruction, were quick to build on this narrative. Western states, unwilling to appear insensitive to the tragedy, failed to push back against such reactions.
At the same time, the fighting has continued. Attacks resumed as early as February 7, mostly from regime areas into the northwest. These caused further displacement, traumatized communities, and because of the Syrian armed forces’ history of targeting humanitarian infrastructure, had a chilling effect on recovery and rehabilitation work.
In parallel, the iron grip of the regime’s security forces has expanded. The Syrian Network for Human Rights recorded over 221 arbitrary arrests by the security forces between January and March. Local complaints about aid diversion in government-controlled areas also led to arrests. The regime and its security branches have extended their sway over the earthquake response through “operations rooms” that manage the response in each affected area and utilize nonhumanitarian actors in relief efforts, including militia-linked individuals, and cash support through sanctioned businessmen. The need for security clearances to access properties and the spate of immediate demolitions in former opposition areas suggest the rebuilding process is likely to negatively impact those whom the Assad regime considers opponents. These trends show that the core conflict driver—the regime’s oppressive, discriminatory, and authoritarian behavior—has not changed.
While Western and regional states were united in a desire to help Syrians after the earthquake, their approaches diverged. The EU, the United Kingdom, and the United States provided sanctions relief and humanitarian assistance and promised more help at a donor conference in mid-March, with another one scheduled in June. Politically, they restated the need for a UN-led peace process and repeated their calls to isolate the regime and hold it accountable for its crimes. Arab states sent assistance, but in many cases followed this up with diplomatic outreach and statements indicating displeasure with the regime’s isolation, despite the lack of reform from Assad in response to their previous attempts to secure behavior change. The Arab League remains divided over whether or not to reinstate Syria. However, early actions by Arab states have already partly legitimized Assad, which shifting dynamics in the region may accelerate. The parliament of the Arab League also decided in February to support Jordan’s proposals to set up a regional fund to support Syria’s recovery.
Regional actors are pursuing their interests in Syria, and Western states, without renewed high-level diplomatic engagement of their own, are unlikely to fundamentally alter their calculations. However, it is still possible to organize a coordinated approach among Western and regional states that secures conditions focused on the welfare, security, and human rights of the Syrian population.
Three Paths of Potential Improvement Before the Window Closes
No true resolution of the Syrian conflict can be achieved without meeting several preconditions. These include justice for the crimes of the Syrian regime, release of missing persons or information on their whereabouts, and a political solution that delivers full implementation of Resolution 2254. Western states should continue to pursue these objectives, even if today they remain further out of reach than ever.
In the absence of progress on this front, Western countries must not accept a degraded status quo, and they should not allow a regional pivot toward Damascus without extracting concessions in return. If these countries work with their Arab counterparts and political and humanitarian actors, it may be possible to accomplish a number of policy objectives. These would be focused on improving the humanitarian and security situation and ensuring that the earthquake response doesn’t threaten the survival of those in the northwest, benefit the regime, and squander leverage by failing to secure behavioral change from Damascus.
The first of these short-term aims should be organizing a nationwide ceasefire. Syria has benefited from three years of relative calm, but this has not prevented military action. Securing a meaningful ceasefire would enable humanitarian and recovery work, provide protection for UN and humanitarian workers and affected populations, and reassure donors that their investments will not be destroyed. Due to its military presence in Syria’s northeast, the United States is well-placed to show leadership on this, which may encourage other actors to comply, using the UN ceasefire taskforce in Geneva as a monitoring forum. A ceasefire should be outlined as a clear precondition that would need to be in place to expand recovery or rehabilitation work into regime areas.
A second short-term aim involves expanding the provision of aid to Syria. This would have two dimensions—gaining long-term access to the northwest across the Turkish border and resolving enduring concerns about aid operations run out of Damascus. In the northwest, the constraints and resource demands caused by six- to twelve-month renewals of the cross-border mechanism have had a negative impact on the ability to implement appropriate aid programs amid dwindling budgets. The deadly consequences of a cautious approach to access permissions were seen in the days after the earthquake. Moreover, the lack of any political agreement means there is no reason to believe that the regime’s policy of aid denial and collective punishment of the population in the northwest has changed.
Obtaining long-term access to the northwest, if need be without the permission of the Syrian authorities, should be a priority. This must allow for as many crossings as is required for recovery work, as well as approving the physical presence of any relevant international staff or technical experts. The region’s traumatized population cannot wait until the eleventh hour for a renewal of the Security Council resolution authorizing cross-border humanitarian aid. Work should begin immediately to negotiate at least a twelve-month extension beyond the July date when the current resolution expires. This must be secured through a clearly articulated policy of access for all as a precondition for further recovery or rehabilitation work in regime-held areas. Türkiye, the UN, and Arab states should make such a request of Russia and the Assad regime, and work alongside the Security Council members who are penholders on the resolution. If a solution cannot be found, this would not only deny assistance to the population of the northwest but also further destabilize Türkiye’s conflict-and-quake affected border regions. To prevent such an outcome, the same actors will need to work together to find a solution that allows assistance to be provided unilaterally, as well as censuring the Syrian regime for obstructing the UN resolution.
Donors must also adopt a clear strategy for expanding recovery work in the northwest that addresses the shelter crisis and lack of basic services and livelihoods in the area. This must include finding ways to work around the designated group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, whose presence in the region hinders rehabilitation and long-term shelter assistance.
Alongside the expansion of aid to Syria’s northwest, major donors also have to press the UN to address the ingrained problems that have plagued the UN-led response through Damascus since the beginning of the war. The regime’s consolidation of control over the earthquake response, together with the UN’s continuing lack of contextual understanding, restrictions on data collection, limitations on staff and partner selection, and problematic procurement practices all continue today, as does the UN’s tendency not to push back against the regime’s manipulations or policies that have impeded aid work in line with the humanitarian principles and access. These concerns have only increased after the earthquake.
Donors should better acquaint themselves with the challenges and ensure that the UN lays out its operational needs and limitations in a more transparent way. They should also use forums such as donor conferences to lay out benchmarks and expectations for operations, along with pledges that will be forthcoming only if these are achieved. Regional contact points between donors and the UN—such as the existing Regional Dialogue Mechanism, in which the UN and donors meet to address cross-cutting issues, or a new oversight body for earthquake relief—can be used to monitor progress against these benchmarks. They can provide close oversight of programming to ensure that those in need, rather than the regime, receive assistance and that the response itself is not responsible for inflicting further harm. A support mechanism for this response that is headquartered outside of Syria and managed by an independent actor could help to triangulate analysis and resolve complex policy questions. This mechanism could also convene stakeholders, including Syrian civil society figures and refugees, to get their input into any recovery or rehabilitation work and help ensure that their rights are considered and preserved.
A third and final short-term goal is for Arab states currently engaging with Damascus to address core security concerns. To date, efforts to reform the regime and its brutal security state have failed. It is not guaranteed that major changes can be achieved on this front. However, at a moment when significant diplomatic outreach and funding increases are being extended toward Damascus in exchange for progress on a limited number of regional concerns, such as ending the production and trafficking of Captagon, it is essential that efforts also be made to extract concessions from the Syrian authorities on the security and human rights front. The window to do so after the earthquake is very narrow, as changes can only happen if all outside actors tie them to greater diplomatic engagement with, or funding for, Damascus. Once diplomatic reengagement and a certain level of reconstruction takes place, there will be no chance of modifying Assad’s actions.
To achieve any of these outcomes in the diminishing political space, Western states and UN negotiators should work with Arab states to lay out a range of core requests pertaining to Syria’s security sector and the basic rights they seek for Syrians. A collaborative approach to formulating these requests would ensure that there is unity in what is asked of the Syrians through all forms of engagement—quiet and public, formal and informal, regional and bilateral, as well as through UN processes and political negotiations. These include the release of detainees and the missing, or information about them, tangible improvements in the rule of law that reduce arbitrary arrests, disappearances, and the security state’s stranglehold over every aspect of daily life, including the pervasive use of security clearances to carry out basic administrative tasks. It also means addressing mandatory military conscription and grievances pertaining to housing, land, and property.
Western donors and the UN should also ensure that Damascus and Arab states are aware that securing these behavioral changes from the Syrian regime is a requirement for the eventual return of refugees and internally displaced persons. In doing so, it would make clear that these returns, which are a stated concern driving Arab engagement with Assad, cannot be facilitated through flimsy “guarantees” from a regime seeking to secure additional funding. The United States should be prepared to employ secondary sanctions or other tools to disincentivize further overtures toward Damascus without having obtained these conditions, though the Americans, and Western states in general, should be prepared to provide positive concessions if the Syrian authorities implement them in a verifiable and irreversible manner. Placing the conditions front and center may not result in their acceptance, but would at least take the normalization process back to a framework in which it could be stalled if the regime remains intransigent and unreformed.
Conclusion
Unless Western and regional states take advantage of the narrow opening provided by the February 6 earthquake, Syria is likely to continue on its current path. The regime will consolidate its hold over the population under its authority, while further marginalizing the millions of Syrians living outside areas of government control in the country’s northwest and across the region. For those countries that are seeking stability in Syria, what they are likely to get is precisely the opposite, namely a perpetuation of the refugee and internally displaced status affecting millions of Syrians. This will only drive further conflict and instability, which will spread to Syria’s neighbors, the wider region, and potentially beyond that to Europe.
