Local council corruption, dominance of families, and secret deals between Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, Rescue Government, and organizations operating in Idlib stand behind the growing tragedy of hundreds of thousands of people in need of assistance

Despite the horror of the Syrian tragedy, in which civilians live and suffer, the merchants of war and their beneficiaries have not wasted their time without gains, from the military to demographic agreements to the money of the Syrian civilians, who are barley have enough strength to wait for a food basket, which keeps them from asking for help and requesting assistance, but the saliva of individuals, organizations, and governments, on food baskets or some of money, in order to allow this organization or that to operate within areas controlled by this party or that.

The Syrian north and especially Idlib province witnessed wide work by medical, food, humanitarian and other Syrian, regional and international associations and organizations, but these organizations were shocked by the direct intervention of two main parties, the first of which is Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham, which imposes its presence in large areas of the province, and the second one is the National Rescue Government which was formed in the last quarter of 2017 and is active in Idlib province.
Although the organizations have a very wide activities, they are not able to absorb the vast amount of people in need of such assistance, and the Syrian Observatory for Human rights monitored motivations bhindi the lack of provided assistance, the first is the large number of civilians who depend on food baskets presented by the humanitarian organizations as means of living, and the second one is the interference of military parties -each within its controlled areas- in the work of these organizations and imposing harassment on them in order to force them to sit down at a secret negotiating table, where the overall results are in favor of the parties controlling the area, and by these negotiations they obtain money the organizations pay in order to resume their work in distributing aid and providing medical care, or getting food baskets presented to a group of members and leaders controlling the area.

Reliable sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory that the relief operation by humanitarian, medical and aid organizations is not limited to only providing baskets, treatments, and medical assistance, but it goes beyond that to securing enough drinking water for civilians in need and repairing damage caused by secondary accidents, shelling, or bad weather conditions, and providing fuel for civilians, however, the interventions by Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham and then the National Rescue Government came as a big burden on the people, whose shares declined and some of them have been denied their shares, as a result of forcing organizations to pay a share of the baskets to Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham or the Rescue Government, in exchange for facilitating the work of organizations and protecting their teams, let alone the negotiations that take place for nothing but money to the parties controlling the land, and despite the negotiations, the sources confirmed that some relief projects are cancelled because the organizations wishing to work in the area do not accept the conditions imposed on them, which push some of them to withdraw from the area and suspend their work, while other organizations evasive by introducing mediaries, and secret negotiations are held between both parties often end up in favor of allocating a proportion of the organization’s work and assistance to the negotiating party, which is either a military faction; Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham mostly, or the National Rescue Government.

Some of the scattered points in the work of relief organizations have raised the discontent of people, some of whom spoke to the Syrian Observatory about the dominance of certain families, parties, or entities themselves, about the relief work in the province of Idlib and areas in its surroundings in the Syrian north, where the rush of many people to work in relief organizations because of the high wages they receive; have made certain families control the direction of relief work and who it is applied in certain areas, and for families at the expense of other families, some people complained that often because of the monopoly of certain families for the distribution of aid; other families are living extreme poverty, where these families get no food baskets and return disappointed to their tents or homes, and these families called to reduce the spread corruption in local councils and the projects operating in the area.

Reliable sources confirmed that there is a sequential distribution of relief, medical, health and humanitarian aid, but the people who are really ion of it are not benefiting from it, for several combined reasons, the first is the deals held by the Rescue Government and Hayyaat Tahrir al-Sham with the organizations wishing to work, and the significant corruption in local councils and committees responsible for the assistance, and the dominance of families over relief allocations, aid, distribution and quantity allocated for distribution, and because some of the parties responsible for the distribution deliberately obtain food baskets and aid by illegal ways, and then re-sell them at high prices to civilians.
All of that has created a great resentment among the citizens, of whom the specter of hunger started depriving them of sleep day after another, where the area of the Syrian north overcrowding with displaced civilians as well as residents of the area, which increased the size of suffering, of which the beneficiaries and merchants of war have turned a blind eye.