UAE-backed Syria aid group hard at work rebuilding amid conflict

The Syria Recovery Trust Fund was set up in 2013 with the UAE, Germany, and the United States as the original donors.

The flour mill in Syria built by Syria Recovery Trust Fund. Courtesy Syria Recovery Trust Fund

ABU DHABI // The story of an aid group backed and co-founded by the UAE to rebuild shattered Syria is one of quiet revolution.

The Syria Recovery Trust Fund, established in 2013 with the UAE, Germany and the US as the original donors, has been completing infrastructure projects in the country despite the complex war raging around it.

Hani Khabbaz, director general of the fund, said projects were carried out in strict secrecy for security reasons.

“We try to work in areas that are relatively stable,” Mr Khabbaz said. “The conflict is all over the country from east to west, north to south, but there are some windows of opportunity of which we make good use to try to deliver services.

“Areas that are under control of designated terrorist organisations are off limits and we will never operate in them.”

Projects have included restoring power to 300,000 Syrians in the northern parts of the country, and trucks are delivering drinking water to locals in the city of Aleppo after its system was destroyed.

The fund, which has received Dh496 million for infrastructure projects, has also built flour mills that have ensured 500,000 Syrians have bread.

“Against all odds, we’ve been able to be very successful and deliver serious infrastructure work,” Mr Khabbaz said.

“People need schools, they need electricity, water, hospitals, clean water, they need to produce their own food, they need the rule of law. And that you cannot do with humanitarian aid.”

Mr Khabbaz said his was the only group carrying out large-scale infrastructure work, which also included sanitation, health care, education and waste removal.

Financing has also come from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Japan, the UK, Kuwait, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.

Mr Khabbaz said that by playing its role, the fund could help to ease the refugee crisis that had strained resources in the region and as far as Northern Europe.

He said most people who had fled included educated Syrians who were once part of the country’s middle class and who would eventually be needed to rebuild the country.

“Many are leaving because they lost hope and when they see services being restored again we give them that hope, and hopefully keep them where they belong and are needed,” Mr Khabbaz said.

“Restoring essential services for those people inside Syria is a fraction of the cost of feeding them as refugees in Europe.”

The fund and its donors recognise the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces “as the legitimate representative of the Syrian People”, and work with the US-led coalition to deliver the fund’s projects.

But in a constantly changing political landscape with various factions fighting over territory, Mr Khabbaz admits the situation is complex.

Sebastian Broekelmann, a spokesman for the German embassy in Abu Dhabi, said the fund was forced to abandon approved projects after extremists made advances in Idlib province.

“The SRTF finances projects in areas and in cooperation with municipalities held by moderate forces of the Syrian opposition,” Mr Broekelmann said. “In the dynamic processes of the civil war in Syria, stability in local areas can never be taken for granted.”

Along with more than Dh2 billion in aid donated to refugees who have fled the country, involvement broadens the scope of UAE involvement in the Syrian crisis.

“The UAE has as a stake in what is happening in terms of getting the country back towards stability,” said Mohammed bin Huwaidin, head of political science at UAE University.

“There is risk to it, but I think the UAE is trying to show itself as a responsible state in the region and within the international system.”

The country is well suited to help to rebuild Syria after playing similar roles in Afghanistan, Egypt and Yemen, Mr bin Huwaidin said.

While not being able to offer specifics, Mr Khabbaz said the UAE was expected to announce further contributions to the fund this year.