Report: The Assad regime curtails humanitarian aid, with its affiliates winning UN reconstruction contracts

DARAMSUQ, Syria – The Guardian published a 70-page report entitled “Rescuing Aid in Syria“, which documents the increasing grip the Syrian Ba’ath regime has on international aid agencies working in the country.

The report was prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, and is based on interviews with United Nations (UN) officials, diplomats and humanitarian workers in Syria, as well as open access documents, reports and evaluations.

The main concern that the CSIS reports finds is that the Assad regime has tightened its grip on aid organizations in several ways, including visa approvals, and that it had become normalized for relatives of senior regime officials to have jobs within UN bodies.

Contracts that relate to the rebuilding of the country are another issue the report raises. Mohamad Hamsho, a businessman close to the elite Fourth Division of the army, and Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother, won procurement contracts with the United Nations.

In their case they were tasked with stripping metals in areas retaken by the government and reworking them for sale at Hamsho’s Hadeed Metal Manufacturing Company.

The report further alleges that the United Nations Development Program contracted the (Holeb) Aleppo Defenders Corps, a pro-regime militia responsible for displacement of residents, to remove the rubble and rehabilitate the city they helped destroy, as Human Rights Watch also explained.

Another controversial finding of the report regards the distribution of humanitarian aid. When aid was transported across lines of conflict or control, from Syrian regime territory to opposition areas in both north-west and east Syria, there have been thefts and medical equipment has been distributed haphazardly.

Moreover, supplies took four months to reach people in need, as it sat in warehouses. This is because the regime would not allow opposition-linked NGOs to distribute it according to the author, Natascha Hall.

“There aren’t many situations in our history, where someone who has committed mass atrocities to the level that the Assad government has, stays in power and controls the aid apparatus,” said Hall.