The Biden administration touted this summer’s United Nations Security Council deal to avert humanitarian disaster in northwest Syria as proof that Washington and Moscow could come together on a cause that serves the Syrian people. 

But elsewhere in Syria, in a remote settlement mere miles from a US military base, a group of civilians trapped under a Russian-backed government siege say their pleas for desperately needed assistance continue to go unanswered. 

Rukban camp, an informal settlement located in the Syrian desert near the borders of Iraq and Jordan, is home to some 10,000 displaced civilians, an estimated 3,000 of them children. Most arrived at the tented camp in late 2015 after fleeing parts of central Syria then under Islamic State control. 

The Syrian government has weaponized what little aid reaches Rukban’s residents as a way of forcing them to return to regime-held areas. Food, clean water and medicine run scarce, as government-run checkpoints have obstructed traders and relief workers from entering the besieged camp. The last UN humanitarian envoy came in 2019, providing just one month’s worth of food.