Syria: Top UN official stresses need for unity, humanitarian aid, reconstruction

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The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria has called for international support for the country as it embarks on the path to political transition following the overthrow of the Assad regime. 

“The stability of Syria will benefit everyone – not only the sub-region but the entire world,” Adam Abdelmoula said on Friday in a wide-ranging exclusive interview with UN News’s Ezzat El-Ferri.

Speaking from the capital, Damascus, he said the UN is consistently in contact with the de facto authorities from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – the armed group that is now in control, urging them to maintain law and order, foster inclusivity and ensure hospitals and other basic services are up and running.

HTS has been designated a terrorist group by the Security Council, and Mr. Abdelmoula explained that on the humanitarian front, the UN interacts with any entity that has control of an area where aid is needed, “and Syria shouldn’t be an exception, regardless of who’s in charge.” 

Focus on humanitarian needs to prevent instability

He highlighted the “bleak” humanitarian situation in the country, where more than a decade of war has left nearly 17 million in need. This has been further compounded by the influx of people who fled the recent hostilities in neighbouring Lebanon, and as scores of Syrian refugees contemplate returning home. 

“If we don’t manage the humanitarian situation very carefully and adequately, this could also create a climate of instability and could also provide the kind of environment that terrorist elements, and especially ISIL, could capitalize on,” he warned.

The top official began by describing the “spirit of triumph” across the country on Friday, as Syrians took to the streets in celebration.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Adam Abdelmoula: This is the first Friday after the fall of the Assad regime, so across all the Syrian cities there are huge crowds in public squares celebrating, and the leader of HTS, after the Friday prayers called on all Syrians to come out and celebrate and then afterwards asked them to attend to the task of rebuilding the country. 

Of course, against this background, there are also pockets of war going on. 

In the northeast there is a war between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the so-called Syrian National Army. There are also battles going on between the HTS Tahir al-Sham and the Syrian Democratic Forces in some areas around Deir ez-Zur, and also some fighting between the SDF and HTS in the northwest.  We do hope that as time goes on, these battles will come to an end and that the peace that we have seen prevail in the rest of the country after the fall of the of the regime will prevail all over Syria.

UN News: In the areas where there is no fighting right now, is there armed presence or police? What does it look like on the ground right now?

Adam Abdelmoula:   The police have disappeared since the HTS took over and now it is the HTS forces that are maintaining peace in all the areas that have been taken over from the previous regime. But overall, despite the fact that you see armed people on the streets and people are nervous about that, I can say that there is a semblance of peace.  

Two days ago, I asked a group of UN agencies and our UN Department of Safety and Security staff to make a road trip from here to Aleppo and back. And they went and came back and told me that they didn’t see a single checkpoint and that there was there was no security incident of any kind, so that kind of gave us reassurance that we can start scaling up our humanitarian response.

UN News: I’m sure you’ve been very busy in the past couple of days. Can you tell us what contacts you’ve had in the country, who have you been speaking to, and what do the communication channels look like for the UN now?

Adam Abdelmoula: Well, the communication channels with the new authorities are very, very limited, and we only have one channel of communication through their political committee. As you know, the new government has just been formed two days ago, and I’m sure on the other side they are also very, very busy trying to put their house in order, so we are giving them time. 

But we have been messaging them consistently that there is a need to maintain law and order, there is a need for them to show inclusivity as this is a very diverse country, there is a need that we should prioritize the needs of the people which cannot wait for all the political processes and reform processes to take shape, and that we should work together to at least make the hospitals operate and to provide people with the basic needs – and also to ask them to start operating the border crossings and airports so that we can get the supplies and the personnel that we need.

UN News: I just wanted to go back to something you said earlier – that the police disappeared. HTS had openly said that they want to maintain government agencies. Has this translated on the ground?

Adam Abdelmoula: During the first few days – and despite the fact that the HTS has been consistently messaging that there is going to be a degree of continuity – the sense of fear caused many civil servants including the police forces to stay at home, so life almost came to a standstill for at least three or four days. 

And now gradually people are coming back. Some civil servants have started reporting to duty as of Wednesday and Thursday, and now we have the weekend, so we’ll wait and see if things are going to improve.

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UN News: In the meantime, HTS is currently on the Security Council’s list of terrorist organizations and they are, of course, the main group in control right now. How does this work for the UN? How are you able to establish contacts with them?

Adam Abdelmoula: Well, I will answer that in two ways: first as a lawyer, and second as a UN staff member. In both cases I just want to say that there is no prohibition whatsoever on any UN entity to interact with the HTS, regardless of whether it’s labelled a terrorist organization or not. 

Because we are an international organization, we don’t confer legitimacy on any entity by interacting with it, and we don’t withhold legitimacy on any entity by not interacting with it. That prerogative is squarely for Member States that can recognize or unrecognize, confer legitimacy or withhold it. We don’t have that power. That’s one.  

Two: when it comes to our humanitarian work, we are bound by the core humanitarian principles of independence, impartiality and neutrality, and we always consistently everywhere in the world interact with any entity that controls a territory that has people who need our services. And Syria shouldn’t be an exception, regardless of who’s in charge.

UN News:  Have you been in contact with the HTS leader? Have you spoken to him, and if so, what have you heard from him?

Adam Abdelmoula: Let me just clarify again. Over the years that they have been in control of northwest Syria, our teams based in Idlib have been working with them directly to deliver humanitarian assistance to northwest Syria. They were the government there and we have been dealing with them for years. 

Now they are here, they are now the national government, and we are looking for ways of engaging them at all levels

Now they are here, they are now the national government, and we are looking for ways of engaging them at all levels – from the small functionaries to the top leaders. And now they’re busy settling in and forming their government, and so on, so we are engaging with them through the channels that they made available to us. As a matter of fact, I sent a letter yesterday to the Prime Minister asking for a meeting with him.

UN News: Thank you for that clarification. You told us before that there are pockets of fighting that continue in Syria, and yesterday the Secretary-General expressed his concern about the hundreds of Israeli air strikes across the country. How has this affected your humanitarian operations?

Adam Abdelmoula:   According to public Israeli sources, Israel said that it conducted more than 500 airstrikes across Syria and that it has destroyed 85 per cent of Syria’s military capabilities. That includes the entire national fleet, the entire air force, all the radar stations, all the air defenses and so on, and also weapon depots including suspected chemical warfare capabilities. That is what Israel admitted to. 

Now, while the UN and its assets may not have been a direct target of these air raids, they have the unintended consequence of not allowing us to conduct normal humanitarian operations for the fear of just being caught in the wrong time in the wrong place. Also, they create an atmosphere of fear among the population. 

Some of these air raids have in the past killed innocent civilians, and I issued statements in the past that stressed the need for the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to avoid these civilian casualties and reminding them of their obligations under international humanitarian law. 

So, I again take this opportunity to repeat that appeal: that civilians should not be targeted and that the principles of proportionality should be observed at all times.

© UNICEF/Khaled Akacha

A child living in an IDP camp in northwestern Syria (file).

UN News:   In addition to the complicated scene that you that you drew for us, there’s also large movements of people, whether coming to the country or moving within the country. What is the main driver right now of this movement? Where are people going and are you still able to reach them, given also that you have a lot of financial restraints right now or budgetary issues.

Adam Abdelmoula: The humanitarian situation here is very bleak. We began 2024 with a caseload of 16.7 million people needing humanitarian assistance. And we estimated that those needs will cost around $4.1 billion, of which so far we have only received around 28 per cent. And then came a huge influx of around 600,000 people in September from Lebanon and we estimated their needs, independent of the original Humanitarian Response Plan and its cost, to be around $324 million. Of that, we only received around 23 per cent.  

And now in the context of the campaign that led to the toppling of the Assad regime, the displacement that took place in just over a week reached 374,000 people and counting still, because there are pockets of fighting.

My biggest fear is that with the peace and stability, at least in the significant parts of the country now, many refugees living in neighbouring countries – Türkiye, Lebanon and Jordan – may voluntarily or involuntarily come to Syria, and that will only compound the humanitarian situation that is already bleak. 

The country is not ready in terms of the availability of basic services. We are talking about health, education, water and sanitation, infrastructure, shelter, you name it. Those basic needs are not there even for the people who live in the country, let alone an additional influx coming from the outside.

If left unaddressed, this humanitarian situation could derail the transition agenda, and that is not something that we would like to see happen

This is an urgent matter and that’s why I’ve been trying to meet with the new authorities so that we can come up with a plan to jointly prioritize this humanitarian issue and also to jointly appeal to international donors and partners to help. Because if left unaddressed, this humanitarian situation could derail the transition agenda, and that is not something that we would like to see happen.

UN News:  I wanted to ask you about these images that everybody has seen from Sednaya and other prisons across Syria. What is the UN doing to secure evidence of possible crimes against humanity?

Adam Abdelmoula: I have been working on human rights for the better part of my career, including at one point being the person in charge of the Middle East and North Africa in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), so I’m intimately familiar with the complexity of the human rights situation in Syria over the past three decades. 

OHCHR has detailed files about the locations of suspected mass graves, locations where torture might have occurred, all the secret prisons, all the military bases where civilians were held. I have all that information from OHCHR and I’m looking forward to talking to the government and the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) and see together how we can preserve those sites. 

I’m very, very, very worried that many of these places will be ransacked by the rebel forces, a lot of documentation might have been inadvertently mishandled, also some of the people that you might need to talk to may just vanish and become inaccessible, and they could be very valuable witnesses. 

Also, in the context of any future transitional justice kind of initiative, we need some of these places to remain intact. So, through this interview, I’m also appealing to all people who have influence to do their utmost best to preserve the places as they are and to document the names, addresses and identities of all the people that they released from these infamous sites, including Sednaya.

UN News: I wanted to ask you about the UN presence in in Syria. You have a big job ahead, even bigger maybe than the job that you’ve already had, and the UN has relocated its non-essential staff out of the country for security purposes. Are there any current plans to return to full capacity, and do the staff that remain in Syria feel safe to continue doing their job?

Adam Abdelmoula:  We collectively took a strategic decision to stay in Syria. Back in 2012, we championed and piloted the mantra of stay and deliver. I was the RC (Resident Coordinator), and since then that mantra has been used in many crisis situations, so we saw that the recent crisis shouldn’t be an exception. As a humanitarian community, we decided to honour that mantra but at the same time, out of abundance of caution, to relocate non-critical staff.

Now, as the situation stabilizes, we want to bring back the staff: not necessarily the ones that we sent out, but the kind of battle-tested people who can work in this new environment. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee, which is the highest humanitarian body in the world, took a decision just two days ago to scale up in Syria. “Scale up” in humanitarian jargon means this is the highest level of emergency and we should pull all stops to bring as many people as we can to scale up the humanitarian operation here and to deliver to our maximum ability.

If a faction or a small number of factions try to exclude the others, that could lead to renewed fighting and instability

So, we are looking forward to our first meeting with the Prime Minister and his group so that we can see how we can put this into motion. And that would include opening the border crossings for personnel and supplies, and also having a joint plan with the government to address this very, very dire humanitarian situation.

UN News: You’ve been in this position now for over a year, and you’ve worked on the Syrian dossier in previous capacities in previous roles. What are your expectations for Syria and what is your message to the Syrian people?

Adam Abdelmoula:  My message at this point to all the Syrians is unity is an imperative for the success of the transition. Syria is a diverse country ethnically, religiously and even culturally, and so it is very important that this transition should be inclusive. 

I can’t stress this enough. If a faction or a small number of factions try to exclude the others, that could lead to renewed fighting and instability, and that’s the last thing that Syria needs. So, I consistently message that the success of the transition hinges on the ability of the leaders – all the leaders – to come together and forge a joint path ahead. So that’s number one.

Second: The needs are enormous. As I said, you have more than 17 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, in addition to the fact that it’s likely that we see a massive return of refugees.  If we don’t manage the humanitarian situation very carefully and adequately, this could also create a climate of instability and could also provide the kind of environment that terrorist elements, and especially ISIL, could capitalize on, so it is very crucial that that the second most important priority be addressing the humanitarian situation. 

And then lastly, the third priority should be an immediate robust plan for the reconstruction of Syria, and that would need not only planning on the side of the government and its partners in the UN, but also the support of Syria’s neighbours and the international community at large. The stability of Syria will benefit everyone – not only the sub-region but the entire world.

UN News: This is a great message, and a very important message, but are you hopeful that this will actually happen? Where do you see Syria going from here?

Adam Abdelmoula: Well, we can’t afford not to be hopeful because anything else would be very, very difficult to even contemplate because this country and the Syrian people have been through a lot, and so I can’t imagine that we would allow this suffering that has gone on for over a decade to continue. 

Also, as I said, there are a lot of countries and actors who will benefit from a stable Syria than from a destabilized Syria, and now there is an opportunity for all of those external actors to contribute towards the stability of Syria that will benefit everyone.