Over the course of Syria’s long war, a remote desert camp for thousands of displaced people grew up in the shadow of a US military base, just out of reach of Syrian government forces.
The Rukban camp, a few miles from the US base in al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, was eventually nearly cut off from aid, largely due to closed borders and a Syrian government policy of blocking nearly all aid efforts to areas beyond its control . As a result, many of the 8,000 residents, who live in tents or mud houses, struggle to survive without adequate food and health care.
A Syrian-American aid group has been working for years on a way to alleviate their plight. In recent days, the group has been sending a first wave of much-needed supplies with the help of an obscure US military facility known as the Denton Program. It allows U.S. aid groups to use available space on U.S. military cargo planes to transport humanitarian goods such as food and medical supplies to approved countries.
“There is no door we haven’t tried to knock on” to get aid to the camp, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the aid group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force. “We have cried out at all those who have been complicit in the failure to help these people trapped in the middle of the desert,” he added. “We went to the State Department and USAID and talked to the United Nations.”
A lack of aid led to a humanitarian crisis.
Rukban is located in a US protected zone near the border of Syria, Jordan and Iraq. That puts it just beyond the reach of forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, the authoritarian Syrian president, who are stationed at checkpoints just outside the protected area.
The government of Mr. al-Assad has called many of the camp’s residents “terrorists,” a term applied to almost anyone who opposes his regime’s rule.
For several years now, residents said, the only goods that have reached them have been through smugglers.
“I saw people eating plants that are normally only used to feed animals,” said Khaled al-Ali, a resident of Rukban since 2014. “Everything comes to the camp via smuggling, without aid groups or the United Nations,” he added. the past month had been particularly difficult.
The US was criticized for not helping the Syrians.
The various military forces operating around this corner of Syria – including the United States, the Syrian government and its Russian backers – have exchanged blame for the bleak situation in the camp.
Washington has been criticized for not doing enough to help the camp’s residents, who live in an area completely under the control of the United States. Last year, some US lawmakers sent a letter to the Biden administration urging it to address the humanitarian crisis in Rukban.
The United States, in turn, has blamed Assad’s government for not authorizing the United Nations to provide aid. In remarks earlier this year, the US ambassador to the United Nations said he was “deeply concerned about the great need for aid in Rukban”.
Without the approval of the Syrian government, United Nations supplies cannot reach Rukban, either through the government-controlled capital of Damascus or across the Jordanian border. The United Nations last succeeded in providing aid at the end of 2019.
Displaced Syrians first arrived in the remote spot in 2014, settling in a zone between two berms that mark the border between Syria and Jordan. It was a few years after the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Syria, which turned into a multifaceted war that attracted foreign powers, including Russia, Iran, and the United States.
In 2016, the US military turned al-Tanf into a small outpost. It lies on the strategic Baghdad-Damascus highway – a vital link for forces backed by Syria’s ally Iran in a corridor that runs from Iran’s capital Tehran, through Iraq and Syria to southern Lebanon.
The de facto protection provided by the American presence helped the camp population grow and at its peak was home to some 70,000 people. Since then, largely because of the lack of aid, all but about 8,000 refugees have left, says Jesse Marks, a senior advocate with Refugees International.
The aid group’s plan was years in the making.
The Syrian Emergency Task Force has spent years devising its relief mission.
It wanted to use the Denton program, which is jointly administered by US government agencies, including the State Department and Defense Department. But when the task force applied for the program two years ago, Syria was not on the list of approved countries. So the organization lobbied to add it.
The Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East and South Asia, said on Tuesday it had expanded its support for humanitarian aid by helping to transport “life-saving aid” to the Rukban camp .
On Saturday, the first pallet of wheat seeds arrived at the al-Tanf base by Chinook helicopter, followed by nine additional pallets on Monday containing irrigation equipment and school supplies for the more than 1,000 children of the Rukban camp, the task force said.
On Tuesday, the US military handed over the pallets to the task force team at the camp, said Mr Moustafa, the executive director.
About 900 US soldiers remain in Syria, though the government would not say how many are with al-Tanf. Their operations in the country include training and arming local troops to fight the remnants of the Islamic State terror group.
Some of the Syrian fighters they train and equip live with their families in Rukban, camp residents said.
The Pentagon did not respond to questions about why the United States itself had not provided aid to the camp.
Robert Ford, a resident scientist at Washington’s Middle East Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Syria from 2010 to 2014, said that because the United States effectively controls the area around the camp, it was obligated under international law to preserve its continued existence. of the residents.
“The arguments that the US government has put forward that the US presence is temporary do not absolve it of its direct responsibility,” said Mr. Ford.
Hwaida Sad reporting contributed.