After quake, Syrians lost outside aid. They’re working to help themselves.

For a full week, Thamar Abu Nayla and a group of fellow volunteers scrambled through the rubble of Jandaris, a town in northwest Syria shattered by the recent earthquakes, using the few tools they had: picks, shovels, and their bare hands.

“Jandaris is devastated,” says Mr. Abu Nayla, in a telephone interview. “All the buildings are destroyed. All the streets are destroyed.” Those who did survive, he says, were left facing subzero temperatures and a glacially slow flow of international aid.

“We didn’t ask for food aid or water. We wanted [equipment to] help save people in the first 48 hours,” Mr. Abu Nayla explains. “Those who did not die from the impact of rubble died from the cold. People feel like the whole world abandoned them.”

A top United Nations official agrees. “We have so far failed the people in Northwest Syria,” U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Martin Griffiths said over the weekend. “They rightly feel abandoned, looking for international help that hasn’t arrived. My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”

Many of the 4.5 million people who live in the rebel-controlled strip of land along Syria’s northern border with Turkey have moved homes more than once, fleeing their country’s 11-year civil war. They depend entirely on United Nations-coordinated international aid coming across the border.

The earthquake brought such aid to a complete halt – and it only resumed, partially, days later.

This is partly because the Syrian nongovernmental organizations that implement the distribution of the aid, both those in Turkey and those in Syria, have themselves been hard-hit by the earthquakes. Some of their staff members were killed, many others have lost their homes and operations have been badly disrupted. Roads in the region are not always passable.

But the aid holdup is primarily a result of diplomatic wrangling. The Syrian government and its ally, Russia, have refused to allow U.N.-coordinated humanitarian aid to cross into northwest Syria except through one border point, at Bab al-Hawa.

On Monday, in negotiations in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Griffiths won his agreement to a deal that will open two more crossing points for three months.

For Tarek Alikhwan, who runs a Syrian NGO working in Turkey, this is welcome news but not enough. “From the humanitarian perspective this is very good,” he says. “For sure it will make a difference for the people affected by the earthquake. This also shows how easy it is for Bashar al-Assad to just say yes to cross-border aid.”

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. chief Antonio Guterres, said he was pleased that “all parties concerned in the conflict put politics aside.”

Fending for themselves

For the tens of thousands of displaced people in northwestern Syria, this is too little, too late. An estimated 5,700 people in Syria have died, the bulk of them in the rebel-held area, either from injuries sustained during the earthquake or from the cold since then. Graves are being dug faster than tents are being raised.

As so often in the past, as they fled the civil war, these displaced Syrians have had no choice but to fend for themselves. And as has been the case in the aftermath of Russian or Syrian air strikes, barrel bombs, and chemical attacks, it has been the White Helmets – volunteer rescue workers – who were the first on the scene. For many Syrians, the heroism and speed of that response stands in sharp contrast to lackluster international efforts.

Until Sunday, Mr. Abu Nayla and his motley crew focused on rescuing survivors from the rubble, but with little success. They managed only to save two families and, miraculously, a 3-month-old baby, still alive after 148 hours trapped in her crushed home.

But Mr. Abu Nayla has been able to use his pickup truck to distribute basic supplies donated by local people less hard hit than the residents of Jandaris. Mindful that survivors there have nowhere to cook, they offer canned foods, such as mortadella, cheese, and halawa, a sweet Syrian breakfast staple.

He says they have also manufactured and pitched four makeshift tents, using donated material and the skills of a local tailor and welder, because no tents are available at the local market.

“It’s nowhere near enough but it is what we can do,” Mr. Abu Nayla says. “People are giving everything they can to help. Those who have a little, give a little. Those who have more, give more.”

Mohammed al-Shebli, the White Helmets’ spokesperson, says search and rescue operations continue in some areas, even though no one has been found alive in the past 48 hours. Of the organization’s 3,300 members, about 2,600 specialize in search and rescue, but they lacked the equipment and fuel to operate on the necessary scale.

Under normal circumstances, White Helmet teams discourage onlookers from helping to pull people out of the rubble. But these have not been normal circumstances, and they sought help wherever they could find it. 

“We need to speed up”

“We saw great things from the Syrian community,” Mr. Shebli says in a telephone interview. “All of them chipped in in this crisis. Some gave us fuel. Some gave us their cars. They gave us supplies.”

In the absence of sophisticated equipment such as CO2 sensors or rescue dogs, nervous neighbors combed the rubble in Jandaris, listening for signs of life. White Helmet and other volunteers worked round-the-clock to save those they could, and agonized hours sharing the final moments of those they could not rescue.

They took down wills, a dictated letter from a granddaughter to her grandmother, phone numbers, and personal messages, Mr. Shebli says, his voice full of frustration. “Imagine: You can see a person who is alive and hear that person, but you can’t help.”

Making matters worse, many of the individuals the White Helmets did manage to rescue from the rubble died later due to lack of proper medical care. Some have lost or risk losing limbs, among them Sham, a girl who survived with her siblings but lost her mother.

Mr. Alikhwan of the IYD International Humanitarian Relief Association shares the mood of frustration. But outside help can still make the difference between life and death, he says.

“Syrian NGOs are trying to respond to the situation, but we depend on international aid,” he adds, criticizing the slow pace of action from the international community when there are projects ready to go.

“There is a bit of help, but in such small amounts it is embarrassing,” he says. “We need to speed up the help, increase the volume, and facilitate cross-border aid deliveries.”