The German Federal Government is blocking humanitarian aid for northern Syria

In view of the renewed civil war in Syria and the advance of the Turkish-backed Islamist forces, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) is once again calling on the German Foreign Office to end its policy of blocking humanitarian aid for the areas in northern and north-eastern Syria that are controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “According to our local sources, around 50,000 refugees from Aleppo and Afrin have already arrived in the region controlled by the Autonomous Administration of Northern and Eastern Syria. Approximately 120,000 people are still on the run and have to be accommodated as well,” reported Dr. Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East Consultant, in Göttingen today. “All these people are in desperate need of tents, food, medicine, and psychological support. Many were forced to flee more than once in recent years and had to leave behind all their possessions.”

The Foreign Office has been blocking all humanitarian aid for the Kurdish people in Syria for years – and especially for the areas controlled by the AANES, because Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is strictly against this. “Officials of the Foreign Office are virtually avoiding any action, any statement that could upset Erdoğan. Even politicians of the SPD, the Green Party, the FDP, but also the CDU/CSU are following the directives of the ministry without questioning them,” the human rights activist criticized.  

“It is a scandal that the Foreign Office is not even questioning Erdoğan’s actions. The ministry is obliged to respect the principles of international law, human rights, and humanity,” the Middle East expert added. “In my view, the behavior of the Foreign Office in Berlin is not in line with the views of many people in Germany. In conversations, I often hear that the people would want more solidarity and more commitment to help the needy Kurds, Assyrians/Aramaeans, Armenians, Christians, Druze, and Yazidis in Syria.”

After Erdoğan and the Syrian Islamists (who are financed, provided with weapons, and backed by international Sunni Islamism) managed to take control of Aleppo and the city’s surroundings, there are still hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people and members of other religious or ethnic minorities in Aleppo – especially in the districts of Sheikh Maksud and Al Ashrafia in the north of the city.  

The Foreign Office in Berlin, but also the federal government and leading politicians in Germany should put pressure on their NATO partner Erdoğan and the Syrian Islamists – who are also funded by Germany – to immediately stop their attacks on the Kurdish districts of Aleppo and on the AANES-controlled regions in the north-east of the city. “In addition to Turkey’s daily attacks, mainly with fighter drones, new attacks on the AANES-controlled areas could also be carried out by the ‘Islamic State’, which still has many cells in the Syrian Desert,” Sido warned. There are around six million people of different ethnicities and religious communities living in the AANES-controlled regions. The AANES territory is also threatened by radical Shiite Militias who can rely on support by Iran.