Is US missing 'Berlin Wall' moment in Syria with foreign aid cuts?

Donald Trump's halt on assistance comes at key moment of transition for Damascus

Norsk Folkehjelp, a Norwegian aid group specialising in de-mining, said this month it would let go of 1,700 workers in 12 countries after the US foreign aid decision. AFP

President Donald Trump's contentious stop to foreign assistance, including the near-closure of the US Agency for International Development, threatens key humanitarian operations in Syria at a crucial moment of transition.

Adham Sahloul, a former USAID special adviser focusing on China who was also Middle East policy adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign, said the decision means Washington is “losing an opportunity” at a “Berlin Wall moment” for Syria and the Middle East.

“What Syria needs is investment,” Mr Sahloul told The National.

Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai this week, Syria's transitional Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shibani said the country's new leadership has inherited a struggling economy, partly due to the sanctions imposed during former president Bashar Al Assad's regime.

Washington has historically been the largest source of humanitarian support for Syria during its decade-long civil war, allocating $16.7 billion in humanitarian funds “using existing funding from global humanitarian accounts and some reprogrammed funding”, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

Mr Trump and much of his Republican Party have long maintained that Syria is “not our fight”.

The Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre has been forced to lose 70 per cent of its team, keeping only “core” members who have been forced to lose 50 to 60 per cent of their salary, according to executive director Mohammed Al Abdallah.

The SJAC's work focuses on documenting war crimes committed throughout the Syrian conflict, expanding beyond Syria's borders to “follow war criminals” who had made it to Europe as refugees.

Their portfolio spans from: the protection of mass graves inside Syria; collaboration with war crimes units in Germany, France, Netherlands and Belgium; and building an open-source collection of evidence of war crimes, including the preservation of about two million YouTube videos from the course of the civil war.

Humanitarian aid, energy, health care, water infrastructure – these are all sectors that have a significant need in Syria, and it is “questionable who will fill that void”, Mr Sahloul says.

Head of UN investigative body for Syria: Time is of the essence to preserve evidence

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China already appears to be at the ready as Syrians tackle the day-to-day impacts of a sudden halt in US aid – including accountability in the fragile aftermath of more than a decade of war.

At a recent briefing on Capitol Hill, Mr Al Abdallah said Chinese officials had already been seeking contact with agencies like SJAC, warning Congress that “bad actors” could become more involved in Syria without Washington's leadership.

Defunding the work aimed at achieving justice in courts of law also have impacts for regional security and the endurance of governance in Syria, he said.

“The damage is going to be really prolonged and it only will evolve into instability and chaos, because if there's no accountability mechanism, people will want to take revenge.”

The aid cuts have already posed immediate security threats in Syria's north-east, where salaries were frozen for many of the prison and camp guards responsible for securing ISIS militants and their families at Al Hol and Al Roj. The guards left work until US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver.

Barbara Leaf, the former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told the Middle East Institute last week that Syria was “one of the first places” she thought of as the Trump administration carried out Elon Musk's promises to make major aid cuts.

“ISIS is far from a depleted organisation. In fact, it risks regenerating more rapidly within the context of Syria's current transition,” Ms Leaf added.

Syrian Democratic Forces members open gates at Al Hol detention camp in north-eastern Syria, where tens of thousands of mostly women and children linked to ISIS have been living for years. AP

For Syrians, the impacts go deeper than staffing measures and geopolitical strategy.

“When it comes to civil society work, when it comes to humanitarian aid, when it comes to clearing ordnance or a whole list of essential services, the Syrian civilians play the biggest price out of that,” Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, told The National.

“Many live under poverty. USAID cuts across the board is bad, especially for the region, but Syria is affected more than others.”

The Syrian diaspora is impacted, too.

At a briefing Senate Democrats hosted on Wednesday, USAID's former assistant to the administrator for humanitarian affairs Sarah Charles warned that she is “very worried about Lebanon,” and that as of this week there is “no food assistance in the pipeline” for the more than 800,000 Syrian refugees living there.

“At a time when this administration has decided we're going to accept zero refugees, we are also saying that we're going to cut off assistance to those countries that are hosting the largest numbers of refugees,” Ms Charles said.

The world of international aid and development has faced long-standing accusations of systemic corruption and disorganisation.

Aid “often comes with conditions tied to the interests of donor countries”, said Raad Al Tal, head of the University of Jordan's economics department.

“Continued dependence on it may delay sustainable development, reducing the country’s ability to tackle crises on its own,” he wrote in the Jordan Times.

Research on Lebanon published by the London School of Economics, for example, highlighted that “foreign aid has also played a role in keeping this entrenched Lebanese political structure alive” and perpetuating “structural deficiencies” in governance there.

Republicans leading the charge to disrupt US aid, including Mr Rubio, say the agency is plagued with inefficiencies and that only “10 cents on the dollar” of US aid goes towards actual development projects.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch cautioned at a policy hearing this week that “everybody needs to stay calm, we're going to get through this.”

“There's money that's been spent that shouldn't have been spent,” said Mr Risch, a Republican who has historically advocated on the importance of humanitarian funding and believes work like SJAC's is important for easing Washington's sanctions regime against Damascus.

"There's going to be some aches getting there, but we will get there, for things that are necessary for the best interests of the United States to continue," he added.

His Democratic counterpart on the committee, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, told The National that based on her discussions with Secretary Rubio, “an appreciation for the importance of getting waivers, particularly in certain areas, like the detention camps” in Syria.

But the abrupt – and some argue anti-democratic – execution of the halt on US aid poses significant risks for global development.

Mr Sahloul says the US has “amazing colleagues” in Japan, the Indo-Pacific, the UK and Europe who have “been ambitious” in global aid and could take more leadership, but Washington has played a key role as a “convener” for these countries' aid agenda.