THE FUTURE OF AID AND CONFLICT IN SYRIA
BY JUSTIN CHAPMAN
The Pacific Council recently hosted a webcast discussion with U.S. Institute of Peace senior advisor Mona Yacoubian and Chatham House senior consulting fellow Zaki Mehchy about restrictions placed on humanitarian aid delivery in Syria because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion was moderated by Kemal Kirişci, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Here are takeaways from the discussion:
“It is estimated that more than half the city of Beirut has been damaged by the recent port explosion, more than 5,000 were injured, nearly 200 killed, which includes 40 Syrian workers,” Yacoubian said. “There’s real impact to what happened in Beirut with respect to the conflict in Syria. Lebanon hosts the highest numbers of refugees per capita in the world, and as Lebanon has a difficult financial time, Syrian refugees bear the brunt of that. The port is really a primary channel for humanitarian assistance into Syria, and it’s now disabled.”
“The pandemic has arrived a bit late in Syria,” Yacoubian said. “Recently, we’ve seen a real surge in COVID-19 cases in Syria, particularly areas under government control. The WHO numbers are quite low still, just 1,300 confirmed cases, but we also know the government has been suppressing information. The pandemic has had quite an impact already.
“Syria has one of the highest percentages of internally displaced persons,” Yacoubian said. “The typically defined strategies that one undertakes to deal with a pandemic, whether it’s social distancing, quarantining, hand washing, even mask wearing, all of these things are difficult because of the conditions people are living in as well as the fact that many of them are impoverished. People don’t have enough money to buy masks, for example. People can’t stay home and not work because of the difficult economic conditions. The healthcare infrastructure was badly damaged if not destroyed in some areas, and 70 percent of Syria’s doctors have left the country. How do you deal with a pandemic in the midst of a conflict?”
“Syria’s estimated economic loss from the conflict is estimated at more than half a trillion dollars, which is equal to about nine times Syria’s GDP in 2010,” Mehchy said. “This dramatically effects the living conditions of Syrian people.”
“There is a shift that Syria is experiencing, from a traditional economy to a destructive economy,” Mehchy said. “This effects the internal power dynamics in Syria, where profiteers, cronies, and warlords are dominating the resources of the country and reallocating these resources of their own benefit at the expense of the majority of the Syrian people.”
Watch the full conversation below:
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The views and opinions expressed here are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
