Syrian Kurds are angry and feel betrayed by the World Health Organization (WHO) amid the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. And they have good reason to be, after the WHO was revealed to have known about the first outbreak in Syria’s main Kurdish region and did not inform the local authorities.
In late March, a 53-year-old man who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus died in the Syrian Kurdish capital Qamishli. Neither the Assad regime in Damascus nor the WHO, both of which were aware of this, informed the Kurdish authorities.
Consequently, the Kurds did not find out that there was a potential outbreak in the heart of their region until April 16 and not from the WHO. As a result, they were unable to take additional precautions to limit any potentially devastating outbreak.
To appease the Assad regime, the WHO doesn’t work directly with the Kurds and has demanded all test samples made in the region to be sent to Damascus.
This infuriating state of affairs comes atop an already dire humanitarian situation in northeast Syria. The regions controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) host many displaced Syrians and have remained relatively secure and stable throughout most of the Syrian conflict, thanks largely to the fact that 11,000 men and women of the SDF gave their lives to combat the rampaging Islamic State (ISIS).
Now, the Kurds are left with scant medical supplies to combat any potential COVID-19 outbreak. To make matters worse, the United Nations has prevented the delivery of medical equipment into the region in adherence to a veto by China and Russia against the renewal of a resolution authorizing the delivery of aid into Syria from neighbouring countries. As a result, truckloads of medical supplies designated for northeast Syria’s civilians were left stuck in Iraq. Northeast Syria only has an estimated 40 ventilators in a region with millions of vulnerable people.
To their credit, the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and Iraqi Kurdistan recently delivered some supplies, including testing kits that the Syrian Kurdish authorities sorely lacked. The WHO, on the other hand, has delivered 1,200 testing kits to Syria, including to the opposition-held northwest Idlib province, but none of these testing kits were sent to the northeast.
A COVID-19 outbreak in northeast Syria could be utterly devastating. The region is home to many displaced persons in overcrowded camps where social distancing is impossible. Turkish-backed militants have severed essential water supplies. And on top of all this there are no fewer than 10,000 ISIS militants in Kurdish captivity who will seize any opportunity to escape and resume their sordid exploits.
By concealing its knowledge of a potential COVID-19 outbreak, the WHO has essentially betrayed the Syrian Kurds who, quite rightly, hold them accountable for any humanitarian disaster that could potentially ensue as a result of this. As one Kurdish official put it: “We at the Health Directorate see [the WHO] as responsible for the presence and spread of the coronavirus in our areas. It has concealed the existence of a suspected case and did not inform the autonomous administration, which is responsible for the governance of these areas.”
This shameful duplicity is yet another striking example of the WHO’s ineffective, to say the least, response to this ongoing pandemic. After all, autonomous regions and unrecognized states have proven themselves quite capable of containing this disease that threatens all of us. For example, the Iraqi Kurdistan region went on lockdown weeks before Western countries did and has been able to keep its death toll from COVID-19 in the single digits. Somaliland also proved itself efficient despite its limited resources.
The WHO has opted to kowtow to repressive regimes. In the case of Syrian Kurdistan, it needlessly endangered lives with its lack of transparency, which it did to placate a regime guilty of numerous crimes against humanity. The organization is also loath to acknowledge Taiwan’s successful combating of the contagion due to its shameless appeasement of Beijing. Incidentally, countries that did not listen to the WHO’s contradicting advice about how to contain the virus, such as New Zealand, have notably fared considerably better than states that did.
Given all of this, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to demand that the WHO should be thoroughly and fundamentally reformed if not outright dismantled and started over from scratch.
Image credit: United States Mission Geneva