Syria crisis blindsided UK government, says report

The Department for International Development (DfID) was initially blindsided by the size, complexity and pace of the Syrian crisis, according to a report that warns the department must urgently ready itself for similarly large and intractable humanitarian emergencies in the future.

The independent, DfID-commissioned evaluation of the department’s early handling of the crisis says senior management did not react “with sufficient boldness or timeliness” to the challenges thrown up by Syria’s rapid disintegration, adding that the response could, in hindsight, “have been considerably better”.

Nearly five years after the uprising against Bashar al-Assad began, the UK is the second biggest bilateral donor to the region behind the US.

It recently pledged to double funding to the crisis to more than £2.3bn by 2020 to fund education, jobs and humanitarian protection in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

But the report – which focuses on February 2012 to June 2014 – notes that the department, like the UK government, originally believed the fighting would tail off, paving the way for a more stable regime.