Ailing Syria Awaits Delivery of Coronavirus Vaccine from Key Players

A child sells bread in Raqqa, northeastern Syria (AFP)

London: Ibrahim Hamidi

11:00-29 December 2020 AD ـ 16 Jumada Al-Ula 1442 AH

London: Ibrahim Hamidi

11:00-29 December 2020 AD ـ 16 Jumada Al-Ula 1442 AH

Ailing Syria Awaits Delivery of Coronavirus Vaccine from Key Players

A child sells bread in Raqqa, northeastern Syria (AFP)

Contact lines staying unchanged in Syria for about a year is comforting for some and worrisome for others. For the first time in almost a decade, the spheres of influence have not shifted among the three major players in the war-torn country.

Casting a dark shadow, the coronavirus pandemic has spread across Syrian lands uninhibited by makeshift borders. Suffering under the pandemic unites Syrians living in all three areas of influence, knowing that political affiliations mean nothing for a virus that targets everyone.

In late 2019, the initial wave of the deadly coronavirus coincided with US-Turkish-Russian understandings for the east Euphrates region in Syria and US President Donald Trump signing the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which ushered in a host of economic sanctions against Damascus.

By the time it was March 2020, the virus continued to spread across the world, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement for northwest Syria and the Caesar Act had been in effect for three months.

Since then, and for almost a year, the three spheres of influence maintained their shape without major shifts taking place. This is the longest they have remained constant since 2011.

After the Russian intervention in September 2015, the Syrian regime regained large swathes of territory. Moscow then closed agreements with each of Washington and Ankara, splitting Syria’s 185,000 square kilometers of land into three zones.

Syrian regime forces, backed by Russia and Iran, would go on to control one sphere of influence. The Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by the US-led International Coalition, locked its control over a quarter of Syrian territory.

Meanwhile, Turkish-backed armed factions overran large territories in north and northwest Syria.

Naturally, Damascus managed to secure access to Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, after visiting Moscow, confirmed that Syria is looking forward to receiving its supply of the vaccine.

Priority will most likely be given to army forces and medical cadres.

However, it goes without saying that the vaccine could, like Russian army forces, take months to arrive.

Initially, Damascus adopted a policy of denial towards how affected it was by the coronavirus, implementing extremely shy measures to stem the spread of the virus.

Infections jumped staggeringly in August, especially in Damascus and neighboring provinces. Lack of social distancing measures paired with a health sector devastated by years of war helped the virus spread faster in regime-held areas.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported nearly 100,000 infections and 6,500 deaths in regime-controlled areas. It accused authorities there of engaging in misinformation and seeking to conceal true figures regarding the toll of the pandemic.

Statistics released by the Health Ministry in Damascus contradicted widely with data collected from hospitals and cemeteries.

The ministry recognized only 9,603 infections, 554 deaths and 4,548 recoveries. It is worth noting that most infections and deaths took place in As Suwayda, Latakia, Tartus, Aleppo and Damascus.

The “Najha” cemetery, located in Damascus’ south, was forced to set up an entire section just to bury the remains of coronavirus victims.

Russia restrained Syrian regime ambitions for more control in Idlib and the east Euphrates region, with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu visiting Damascus in March to make sure that it commits to the Russian-Turkish agreement on Idlib and avoids all-out battles during the pandemic.

As for SDF-controlled areas, where ISIS was dealt a final defeat, the UK-based war monitor documented 34,000 infections, 13,000 recoveries, and 1,200 deaths with most cases being diagnosed in Kobane, Hasakah, Qamishli and Al-Malikiyah.

The US-backed Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which is the administrative wing of the SDF, acknowledged 7,581 infections, 241 deaths and 1,087 recoveries.

Tragic and catastrophic best describe the situation in SDF-run territory, where theft of medical equipment became a popular phenomenon.

The SDF has managed to convince Washington, its ally, to make some exceptions with its economic sanctions to lower the impact they have on the health sector.

In the east Euphrates region, Turkish ambitions of expansion were not setback by the spread of the virus. Fierce clashes and bombardment continued to strike fear in the hearts of locals already struggling to survive the pandemic.

Long-Suffering Yemeni Families Flee Renewed Fighting

A displaced woman sits outside her tent at a makeshift camp for people displaced by clashes between Iran-aligned Houthi fighters and Yemeni government forces, in Taiz province, Yemen September 21, 2026. (Reuters)

23:14-21 September 2026 AD ـ 10 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

Long-Suffering Yemeni Families Flee Renewed Fighting

As fighting escalates once again in Yemen's long-running war, thousands of families have been forced from their homes, many of them for a second or third time.

In the Al-Farsi camp in Aden, Arwa told AFP how she, her husband and their four children left Mokha on Yemen's western coast as it was seized by Iran-backed Houthi fighters.

They shared a single motorcycle to travel 200 kilometers, first to Al-Arah in the Lahj governorate and then on to Aden, temporary seat of Yemen's government.

"We couldn't find any means of transport... We stayed out in the cold and didn't have clothes to keep us warm," Arwa told AFP at the camp, where sat on the ground by a tent.

The camp currently hosts 128 families living under canvas along dirt paths where barefoot children run.

Their tents are sparsely equipped -- some bedding, cooking pots, and a few clothes and belongings that the families managed to bring with them when they ran.

It is not the first time Arwa has been forced to flee her home.

Nine years ago she left Maqbanah in Taiz governorate to head to Mokha, also because of the war.

"I hope I can find a house to live in with my children. We're exhausted by the heat, the dust and the humiliation," she said. "I hope the situation improves and we can return to our home and our families."

Armin Yedgarian, a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said the camp was "in dire need of more support", adding that its 8,800 inhabitants included many elderly people and women with children.

International organizations, including the World Food Program, distribute meals to the displaced.

Arwa received a portion of rice to feed her children. But she regrets that her seven-year-old daughter, her only school-aged child, has not been attending class since the family was forced to head to Aden.

- No schooling -

At Aden's Al-Firdaws camp, which currently shelters about 110 families who arrived over the past two weeks, the acting representative of UNICEF's office in Yemen, Obiya Atchieng, told AFP that families' needs were not limited to food and basic supplies.

"Most of the children were enrolled in schools," he says. "Our team carried out a field visit to assess the possibility of providing education services."

Last week, UNICEF said 57,000 children had been displaced inside Yemen in just two weeks and 243 schools had been closed or suspended, affecting more than 137,000 students.

Even before the latest escalation, 3.2 million school-age children were not enrolled.

After years of relative calm, Yemen's civil war flared back to life in July against the backdrop of the broader conflict in the Middle East.

In the past 10 days, a surprise Houthi offensive enabled the group to expand its areas of control as far as the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait linking the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, and by extension, the Suez Canal.

- 'Hearts beating' -

As a result of a 2022 ceasefire, those under the age of four have not previously experienced conflict of this intensity.

"The sounds of explosions were new to the children, and now any loud noise unsettles them, even if it's a motorcycle," said one 39-year-old father of two who remained in Mokha despite the Houthi takeover.

"I try to reassure them and convince them there is no danger. But even when they're in my arms, I can feel their hearts beating rapidly against my chest."

The man said he had been displaced from the city of Hodeidah eight years ago, and had no desire for it to happen again.

Noha, a housewife and mother of two children aged eight and 10, said she broke down in tears when she heard they were fleeing from Al-Khokha in western Yemen -- which the Houthis captured less than two weeks ago -- to her husband's family home in Aden.

"Because I cried, the children cried. We left in a bus with our neighbors and I haven't been able to make the children feel safe."

"Today I learned that my neighbor, a mother of six children who was in her final month of pregnancy, was also displaced and died in Aden two days after we arrived because of postpartum hemorrhage," she said.

"The newborn baby girl is in the incubator, and the other children and her husband are in a terrible, miserable state."

Features

Trump Shattered Canada’s Old US Relationship. Carney is Building a New One in Europe

FILE- Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, front left, speaks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Thursday, Sept 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Pascal Bastien, File)

Asharq Al Awsat

09:25-21 September 2026 AD ـ 10 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

09:23-21 September 2026 AD ـ 10 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

09:25-21 September 2026 AD ـ 10 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

09:23-21 September 2026 AD ـ 10 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

Trump Shattered Canada’s Old US Relationship. Carney is Building a New One in Europe

For nearly four decades, Canada built its economy around closer integration with the United States. President Donald Trump has turned that dependence into leverage, imposing tariffs, threatening Canada’s sovereignty and openly seeking to pull Canadian industrial production south.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has moved on. Rather than return to trade talks or wait for the next US president to restore the old relationship, he is urgently building a future in which Canada is less dependent on America, The Associated Press said.

Last week, Carney embraced the prospect of Canada becoming the European Union’s first associate member, not as a step toward full membership, but as a way to reduce Canada’s dependence on any single country without ceding control over its own decisions.

“There is now a price to be paid for access to the United States market,” Carney said Sunday, pointing to tariffs, US investment commitments and demands for domestic policy changes.

Carney told the European Parliament on Thursday that countries need enough economic strength to keep any one power from dictating their choices.

Building options beyond the US

He carried that argument into a meeting Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, the French territory just off Newfoundland’s coast.

“Canada and Europe will build an alliance for the future that will strengthen our collective resilience so we can live our lives as we choose based on the values that we share,” Carney said while standing alongside Macron.

Carney’s relentless schedule reflects the urgency of his push to build alternatives to the United States.

He began last week in Toronto hosting some of the world’s biggest investors, flew to Strasbourg, France, for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the European Union address, raced to Liverpool, England, to meet Britain’s new prime minister and returned to Strasbourg to address the European Parliament.

He met Macron in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon before flying back to Ottawa to meet Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre. On Monday, he is set to open a new session of Parliament before heading to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

Europe becomes the alternative

Trump has suggested Canada’s closer relationship with the EU could amount to a “hostile act” and threatened “very heavy tariffs” on Europe if he judged the move unfriendly.

Canada could become a test case for other middle powers trying to avoid being pushed around by larger countries. In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Carney argued that “middle powers must act together,” warning that “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Støre echoed Carney on Sunday, saying tariffs should not become “a weapon to be used against countries, because we will all end up losers.”

The next major step in shaping that proposed relationship is an Oct. 29-30 Canada-EU summit in Montreal.

Unwinding 40 years of dependence

For Canada, that means undoing some of the reliance developed over nearly 40 years.

The 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and later NAFTA deepened integration, creating cross-border supply chains in autos, energy and manufacturing. Roughly 70% of Canada’s exports went to the US Europe remains nowhere close to replacing the US market.

Carney walked away from trade negotiations in August rather than accept terms he said Ottawa could not live with. The talks remain suspended, and Carney said Friday that leaving the table was the right decision.

“It was easy business, but it meant we relied too much on one economic partner,” Carney said recently. “That time is over.”

Investment chair wants to ‘crank the non-US’

Dominic Barton, Carney’s pick to chair Invest in Canada and a former global head of McKinsey & Co., said diversification does not mean abandoning the United States.

“We can’t complacently count on it,” Barton said. “It’s not about, let’s not do stuff with the US It’s let’s crank the non-US Let’s be way more ambitious on that side.”

Barton, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said Canada has been too inward-looking.

“We are not very global,” he said, calling Trump’s pressure a “jolt” Canada should use to build more global companies.

Carney wants to double non-US trade over the next decade and aims for a free-trade deal with India by year’s end. He said Canada’s tariff-free access to 1.5 billion consumers could double within six months.

Canada sells the trust America is losing

Carney is trying to turn growing doubts about the US as a predictable place to invest into a Canadian advantage. His pitch to global capital is increasingly clear: where Trump’s America uses tariffs and uncertainty as leverage, Canada offers stability, rule of law and reliability.

“The most sought after commodity today is trust,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said. “The world has changed and America has changed. And I think the world has taken notice.”

Trump may ultimately have done Canada a favor by forcing the country to confront its dependence, Barton said.

“Maybe in 20 years, we’ll thank Trump for shaking us out of our complacency,” Barton said. “Let’s use the moment.”

The ambition has limits. EU “associate membership” does not yet exist, and Europe cannot quickly replace a US market that buys nearly three-quarters of Canadian exports.

But Carney is hardly alone in concluding that Canada must rely less on the United States.

Former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, from the opposition Conservatives, said the government “had no choice but to take this path.”

That conclusion was particularly difficult for Harper as “one who has long been and known to be a great admirer of America” and who regarded Canada’s close relationship with the US as “among this country’s most precious assets.”

The current US administration now views the countries’ economic integration as incompatible with Canada maintaining its sovereignty, he said.

“Thus, to maintain that sovereignty, we must pursue diminished reliance on the United States,” Harper said. “I do find this all very sad, just as equally necessary.”

Features

Voluntary Return or Pushed Out Against their Will? Migrants in Tunisia Go Home

African migrants during a protest demanding to be repatriated because of the harsh conditions they are living under in Tunisia (AFP)

Tunis: Asharq Al Awsat

05:58-20 September 2026 AD ـ 09 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

Tunis: Asharq Al Awsat

05:58-20 September 2026 AD ـ 09 Rabi’ Al-Thani 1448 AH

Voluntary Return or Pushed Out Against their Will? Migrants in Tunisia Go Home

African migrants during a protest demanding to be repatriated because of the harsh conditions they are living under in Tunisia (AFP)

Less than a year after arriving in Tunisia, Michael Oppona had not planned to return to Ghana.

But, faced with increasingly harsh pressure from local authorities, he is among thousands of sub-Saharan migrants seeking to head home.

Many, like Oppona, have registered for a free return to their countries of origin.

But humanitarians say many migrants and refugees are being pushed out against their will.

Oppona, 37, had crossed the Sahara with his wife and two toddlers before arriving in Tunis but Europe proved out of reach after a 2023 deal with Tunis to curb migrant departures.

"The people here, the government... they treat us like we're not human," said Oppona, waiting for a "voluntary return" appointment near the International Organization for Migration headquarters in Tunis.

Many sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisia face increasingly harsh conditions following a speech by President Kais Saied in 2023 in which he said "hordes of illegal migrants" were posing a demographic threat.

The IOM told AFP it had helped 4,965 migrants return to their countries of origin from January 1 to August 31.

The IOM's program is separate from a namesake program run by the Tunisian government, and operates a major "return hub" near the city of Sfax.

Authorities did not respond to several requests by AFP for interviews and a visit the center.

In June, a Tunisian National Guard official told AFP that nearly 5,000 migrants had been sent to their home countries in the preceding 12 months and that "near-daily" return flights were now scheduled.

But humanitarian sources say these returns should not be considered "voluntary", arguing that socio-economic and political pressures including racism were deliberately forcing migrants to leave Tunisia.

"These are clearly expulsions," one source said.

Humanitarian sources also said migrants were at times coerced to leave even when it was unsafe for them in their home country.

"Authorities say that migrants stay at the so-called 'return hubs' for about two weeks, whereas we know that that process can take months, especially with people without documentation," one said.

The sources also said the conditions in which migrants were held were unclear, adding that some might have been sent to the wrong country.

"We've seen that more people have been arriving in Libya lately," one said.

UN experts in July said they were alarmed by an "alleged system of mass detention, expulsion and trafficking" at the Tunisia-Libya border.

Neither Tunisian nor Libyan authorities have commented on the allegations.

The humanitarian sources to whom AFP spoke also raised concerns over the lack of official information regarding the government's return program.

"We don't know how the authorities have been repatriating people who hold no documents, for example," one source said.

More than 40 global NGOs have said that refugees and migrants in Tunisia faced harsh mistreatment, including rape, according to testimonies they gathered.

In a joint statement in July, the NGOs -- including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International -- said "refugees, asylum seekers and migrants have faced racist violence" in Tunisia, added to "arbitrary detention, collective expulsions, abuse, torture and other ill-treatment".

Their statement marked the three-year anniversary of a controversial deal the European Union signed with Tunisia to provide Tunis with financing, equipment and training to stop irregular departures.

The groups said the deal came at "a significant cost to human rights and dignity" and called the EU "complicit".

Campaigners say Tunisia's crackdown on organizations that supported migrants, compounded by the suspension of the UN refugee agency's operations in 2024, have barred thousands from receiving help.

Using pseudonyms, 24-year-old Moussa and 22-year-old Karim from Guinea also waited for an IOM "voluntary return" appointment in Tunis.

The two friends said they came to Tunis three years ago with one aim: to cross to Europe.

"But it's impossible to go now, and impossible to stay," said Karim.

Moussa said there was "more pressure now", his voice shaking.

"You're not free. The police prevent you from going anywhere -- to work or get something to eat," he said.

"So why not go back home?"

Ailing Syria Awaits Delivery of Coronavirus Vaccine from Key Players

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