Due to the earthquake, the United States temporarily lifted sanctions imposed on Syria for the brutal treatment of its citizens. The sanctions included bans on trade and financial flows. The suspension will last 180 days. When Assad opened border crossings about ten days ago to allow the flow of humanitarian aid, Syrian activists immediately warned Western donors that the dictator would use the tragedy to regain accreditation.
"The earthquake gave the regime an advantage to survive politically," Omar Alshogre, a Washington-based Syrian activist who was detained and tortured by the Assad regime, told Rainews24.it "because the Syrian regime will use the earthquake to normalize." We asked him what the current situation is also with regard to aid after the earthquake.
Omar Alshogre, Syrian activist born on May 14, 1995 and from 2012 to 2015 detained in Assad's prisons. Today he is director of the Department of Detainee Defense of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. He has brought his testimony in all international forums, including the United Nations, and today he is committed to giving aid and assistance to the Syrian population of northwest Syria affected by the earthquake.
"I was arrested in November 2012 with my cousins Bashir, 22, Rashad, 19, and Noor, 17. We were transferred from prison to prison, eventually stopping at Damascus' notorious 215 Branch, which we dubbed "slow death row."
I saw Rashad and Bashir die in prison, and I heard that Noor was also killed. While I was in prison, the regime killed my father and my two brothers, fifteen-year-old Osman and nineteen-year-old Mohammed, and set fire to our house. He bombed my school, arrested my childhood friends and massacred people in my village. My mother and sisters managed to escape to Turkey.
In prison I learned more about the reality of dictatorship than I could have learned from outside. The guards had created an environment in which you had to attack others if you wanted to survive. Those who wanted to eat had to steal someone else's meal. The same was true for drinking. In prison I saw a father kill his son to survive. In those prisons you die in pain or you live with pain and guilt. On June 11, 2015, after three years of imprisonment, I was freed by some guards who had been bribed by my mother. To get me out, they staged a fake execution. Ten days later I arrived in Turkey, where I found my mother. "
The government of Bashar al Assad has two major international sponsors Russia and Iran but at this moment they are engaged in the war in Ukraine and the other with the internal revolts born from the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022. And the feeling, perhaps, for Assad is that he no longer has his back completely covered.
Today Syria is a country divided between the part of the territory under the control of the regime, and the part, close to Turkey where the rebel forces are located at the Regine and the enclave of ISIS, in the area of Iblid. And it is the presence of Islamic terrorism that for Assad and his allies, especially Russians, the bombing of the area is justified because theirs is a war against terror.