Assad normalisation leaves Syrians in Rukban camp fearing future

Thousands of Syrians still live under siege in a makeshift settlement in the arid “no man’s land” between the Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian borders.

The Rukban camp is surrounded by the Syrian government and Russian troops, who accuse the more than 8,000 residents of being “terrorists” and have blocked access to the camp since 2019 with United Nations aid, forcing residents to evacuate. survival of small amounts of smuggled in goods.

The recent tide of normalization with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has left the camp in an increasingly precarious position. The Syrian government has recently been reinstated in the Arab League after it was suspended more than a decade ago, a move that will end the country’s regional isolation.

“Any action that gives the regime power or any kind of shifting control in a region, no matter how small, could be catastrophic for the area… It will destroy the camp residents’ hopes of achieving stability,” General Fareed al-Qasim said. , a local commander of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), an armed opposition group assisting US troops stationed near the camp.

The attention al-Assad received in the aftermath of the February earthquakes was a catalyst for the Syrian president to rekindle ties with his estranged neighbours.

Since the earthquakes, Syria has reopened several embassies and has hosted diplomats from the regime’s former rival countries, including Saudi Arabia, which was one of the main financiers of the opposition that rose against al-Assad in 2011, but which now defeated in most of Syria.

Meanwhile, attacks near the camp have increased. In January, a health clinic vital to the residents of Rukban was hit by a drone strike – the first attack on civilian infrastructure.

Al-Qasim told Al Jazeera that while there were no casualties in the recent attack on the health clinic, two FSA personnel were injured and civilians and US military doctors were present at the site just hours before.

The general also noted that “everything is expected” from the Iranian-backed groups he blamed for the attack, including another attack on civilian infrastructure in the camp.

“We are all very scared,” says 21-year-old Maryam, originally from Homs in western Syria, but who has been detained in the camp for seven years. “We are afraid something worse will happen… We are afraid of losing our children or our lives,” she told Al Jazeera.

A front group known as “Al-Warthoun”, with strong ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has claimed responsibility for the attack.

However, Iran’s United Nations ambassador wrote to the Security Council this month that Iran had “never been involved” in attacks on the US in Syria or Iraq. The ambassador also called on the US to end the “illegal occupation” in Syria.

Deteriorating situation

The camp is located within a 55 km “deconfliction zone” that surrounds the United States’ al-Tanf base, where US partners train against ISIL (ISIS) and disrupt the activities of Iranian-backed forces, which are deployed in close proximity of the desert outpost.

US troops patrol the deconfliction zone along with Syrian opposition forces following a 2016 deal with Russia.

Outside the zone’s perimeter camp, residents are forced to return to regime-controlled territory, where they are often subject to arrests, torture and enforced disappearances, according to Amnesty International.

The Syrian Emergency Taskforce (SETF), an organization in direct contact with the residents of Rukban, documented the deaths of two men who were killed by torture after they were arrested as they left the camp last October, according to SETF.

But within the US-controlled zone, the humanitarian situation has worsened. “The current situation in Rukban remains dire and is getting worse,” Mouaz Moustafa, SETF’s executive director, told Al Jazeera.

The camp suffers from serious shortages of basic food and medical supplies, has hardly any form of education and does not have suitable housing that can withstand rain and storms.

The camp has not had shipments of flour for several months and bread is extremely difficult to obtain, camp resident Maryam said.

She is a mother of two young girls and has a third child on the way. Without enough schools and teachers, the children in the camp have not received a proper education for years now.

“Of course I’m scared,” she said. “Who wouldn’t be afraid that their children in the camp don’t know how to learn… How can we live normally and see our children and their future ruined?”

Six months pregnant, Maryam said she also feared the day she would give birth, as she receives good medical care at the camp. “Our camp is losing a lot of children due to lack of treatment,” she said. “I am afraid that when the child comes, he will be sick and die from lack of medicine”.

Drug trafficking is booming

In recent years, the production of and trade in Captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant, has exploded in Syria, with the government turning the war-torn country into one of the world’s largest narcotics companies. according to to the Carnegie Endowment.

The country is home to multiple sea and land smuggling routes to Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq that are critical to the lucrative drug and arms trade. One of these routes is the Baghdad-Damascus highway, which cuts through the US-controlled zone around the Rukban camp.

Al-Qasim told Al Jazeera that over the past six months his forces had seized about $3 million worth of hashish, Captagon and crystal meth being transported through and around the US-controlled zone.

Militia groups backed by Iran, a staunch ally of al-Assad, have been critical to the transportation and trafficking of drugs produced in Syria, analysts say. The groups viewed the US-controlled zone, including the Rukban camp, as “a real eyesore,” according to SETF’s Mustafa.

Even as aggression from inside and outside the “deconflict” zone has increased, no organized aid is still entering the camp and the border with Jordan has been largely closed since 2016 for what Jordanians consider to be security reasons.

Despite the proximity of the military base, the US continues to rely on the UN office in Damascus to organize humanitarian aid in the camp.

US troops stationed in al-Tanf were asked to comment on reasons why aid has not been delivered, but referred Al Jazeera to the US State Department, which responded that the Syrian government and Russia are “repeatedly sending aid shipments to Rukban had blocked”.

“[We] strongly support the UN’s efforts to negotiate,” said a spokesman for the US State Department.

However, Moustafa said the UN was “at the mercy” of al-Assad’s government and Russia. “If you rely on a process to bring aid to the camp and that process is at the mercy of the same people who are besieging the camp, it’s clearly a failure,” Moustafa said.

“It is time for USAID to declare that they have failed to provide immediate assistance [to the camp] … Because then we can actually see what other options we have,” Moustafa said.

Meanwhile, the residents of Rukban will continue to wait in fear.

“Only God knows how much we all suffer,” said Maryam. “We are the families [of Rukban] waiting for someone to look at us… So few people know us. Nobody helps us.”