GENEVA: The Syrian regime is co-opting aid and reconstruction assistance, Human Rights Watch said Friday, warning humanitarian players that they risked complicity in human rights abuses.
Eight years after the start of the civil war, President Bashar Assad’s forces control around 60 percent of Syria and are looking to rebuild the battered country.
The New York-based watchdog urged donors, investors and agencies partnering with the Damascus government to ensure their programs would not entrench repressive policies and contribute to serious human rights violations.
“The Syrian government has manipulated the massive amounts of humanitarian aid that have been delivered to the country, and it is frankly the most sophisticated, brazen operation that we have ever seen,” HRW chief Kenneth Roth told AFP in an interview.
“Aid gets diverted to loyalists of the government, away from the people who are most in need, who are often the people who have lived in opposition-held areas,” he said.
“A lot of it ends up in the pockets of government officials and cronies, and some of it even ends up funding the very security forces who are responsible for the humanitarian crisis, the ones who are detaining, torturing and killing,” he added.
HRW’s 94-page report, entitled “Rigging the System” details how humanitarian organizations often comply with Damascus’s conditions for fear of losing access or being shut down.
It also found that aid programs that include a human rights chapter are almost systematically blocked by the authorities.
Aid and reconstruction players in Syria are likely to have to partner with top regime figures and allies who dominate the economy and thus risk working with or funding rights abusers, the watchdog said.
The group admitted that aid in government-controlled areas of Syria was needed and that donors and agencies there had little room for maneuver.
“The Syrian government’s aid framework undermines human rights, and donors need to ensure they are not complicit in the government’s human rights violations,” HRW’s acting Middle East director Lama Fakih said in a statement.
Roth said humanitarian agencies were often cornered into supporting Damascus’s objectives.
At a certain point, he said, the humanitarians, donors and investors working with the regime “are all complicit in this.”
While the problem has been going on for a long time, Roth stressed the need to quickly break the cycle before reconstruction funds really start flooding in.
“A lot of money is at stake, many new opportunities for graft and for diversion of funds,” he said.
HRW did not call on UN agencies and donors to stop providing aid to Syria, but gave recommendations to minimize the chances they would end up complicit in violations.
In particular, Roth said, HRW would like to see donors and humanitarian agencies “band together” and create a common clearinghouse mechanism for setting and upholding standards and distributing aid.
“If they were to operate in a more unified way, not let Damascus divide and conquer, this would be a way to change things,” he said.
If humanitarian actors stand together, he said, they will have more leverage to ensure aid is “distributed not according to partisan preferences, but according to need.”
Syria aid rigged, donors and aid agencies risk abetting abuse
Syria aid rigged, donors and aid agencies risk abetting abuse
- Aid and reconstruction players in Syria are likely to have to partner with top regime figures and allies who dominate the economy and thus risk working with or funding rights abusers
- While the problem has been going on for a long time, Roth stressed the need to quickly break the cycle before reconstruction funds really start flooding in
Israel says it has launched ‘broad wave’ of strikes on Iran, as Tehran widens its response across the region
- US military says 17 Iranian navy ships destroyed, struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran thus far
- US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran: Iranian Red Crescent
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/TEHRAN: Israel early Wednesday launched new attacks on Iran as the US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets inside the Islamic republic, which tried to impose a cost by expanding a missile and drone barrage across the region.
With global energy prices on the rise, President Donald Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint into the Gulf that Iran has threatened to seal off.
Israel’s military said it launched a “broad wave of strikes” after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three separate missile barrages at Israel, causing mild injuries to a woman in Tel Aviv.
The US military has hit nearly 2,000 targets since attacking Iran alongside Israel on Saturday, targeting ballistic missiles and “all the things that can shoot at us,” said Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command.
“These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” he said in a video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called “shock and awe” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
The US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that could not be independently confirmed by AFP.
Iran vowed to inflict a heavy price in retaliation. Drones struck adjacent the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire but inflicting no casualties, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
The attacks came a day after strikes on the US embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City and on a US air base in Bahrain.
“We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centers, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard General Ebrahim Jabbari said.
Trump says no more talks
The United States and Israel launched the attack on Saturday and quickly killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two days after US envoys had been speaking to Iran in Geneva on a nuclear accord.
Trump insisted that Iran wanted to resume talks but it was “too late.”
He also walked back a statement the day before from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the US attack’s timing was precipitated by Israel’s plans.
“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” Trump said as he met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House.
Trump boasted that “just about everything’s been knocked out” in Iran, including its navy, air force and air detection, and said the attacks had killed even leaders who could have taken over.
“Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump said. “Now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.”
According to Iranian media, US and Israeli strikes targeted a building on Tuesday in the holy city of Qom belonging to the committee that is to elect a new supreme leader. The Tasnim news agency reported that strikes had already targeted the body’s main headquarters in Tehran the day before.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged Iranians to rise up but Trump said regime change was not the goal.
The assault came weeks after Iranian authorities clamped down on mass protests, killing thousands.
Iran hits US embassies
The US State Department said Tuesday it’s preparing military and charter flights for Americans who want to leave the Middle East. Several other countries also arranged evacuation flights for their citizens.
An attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire,” according to the Saudi Arabian Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
An Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the US consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington. He said all personnel were accounted for.
The United Arab Emirates said it has intercepted the vast majority of more than 1,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks against it.
US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon said they were closed to the public.
The US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. And US citizens were urged to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, though many were stranded because of airspace closures.
The US military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.
Four of the American soldiers killed were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt, Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who received a posthumous promotion in rank. They were assigned to the Iowa-based 103rd Sustainment Command.
Lebanon violence expands
The regional war also took a growing toll on Lebanon, where Hezbollah, the armed Shiite Muslim movement that long had Tehran as a benefactor, launched drones and rockets at Israel in retaliation for Khamenei’s slaying.
Hezbollah said it targeted the Israeli naval base in the northern city of Haifa and Israel said it struck Beirut’s heavily Shiite southern suburbs. Loud explosions were heard early Wednesday.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 52 people in Lebanon, according to the government, while the United Nations said that more than 30,000 people were displaced.
In a throwback to earlier wars, Israel said it was moving troops across the border to create a buffer zone inside Lebanon.
In Tehran, photos showed damage to Mehrabad airport, which handles mainly domestic flights.
The Israeli military also announced a strike on an underground facility on the eastern outskirts of Tehran where it alleged scientists were covertly working on a nuclear program.
The United States ordered non-emergency personnel to leave embassies in much of the region. The Washington Post reported that the Iranian drone in Riyadh hit the station of the CIA.
The United States encouraged all Americans to leave the region if they can find commercial flights, even though air travel has been severely disrupted.
The State Department said that some 9,000 Americans have found a way home.
Qatar said it had downed missiles targeting Hamad International Airport in Doha. Oman reported several drones attacking the port of Duqm, and in the UAE falling debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at an oil storage and trading zone, authorities said.
Ghost town
In Tehran, residents who have not fled remained shut away in their homes for fear of the US-Israeli bombardment.
The Iranian capital is normally home to around 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here,” said Samireh, a 33-year-old nurse.
Authorities had previously urged people to leave the city, and police officers, armed security forces and armored vehicles have been stationed at main junctions, carrying out random checks on vehicles.
In the more upmarket north of Tehran, the meowing of cats and chirping of birds replaced the usual din of traffic jams.
Iranian authorities said a strike on a school in the city of Minab on the first day of the war killed more than 150 people.
