Troubled solidarity: How communities in Southern Syria responded to the 2023 earthquake disaster

After a devastating earthquake struck northern Syria in February 2023, communities in the southern governorates of Daraa and Sweida witnessed the emergence of local initiatives aimed at providing the affected population with aid and support. Long-standing political tensions and unresolved conflicts in these peripheral regions nevertheless resulted in fragmented and disjointed humanitarian efforts, giving rise to distinct patterns of initiatives by different actors targeting different beneficiaries. Drawing on interviews conducted with state and non-state actors in Daraa and Sweida governorates between February and April 2023, this paper investigates the patterns of aid efforts which emerged in southern Syria as community responses to the earthquake. It examines factors that undermined the willingness of many locals to engage in aid responses and the ways the Syrian regime leveraged these initiatives to reaffirm its authority in the two peripheral regions. While the empirical focus of the paper is on local initiatives after the earthquake, the analytical framework is intended to be more broadly applicable to local initiatives during crises and emergencies in southern Syria.