Leaders of humanitarian aid organizations have, over the last few months, repeatedly implored the warring parties in Syria and their backers not to use the delivery of food and medicine as a bargaining chip in their negotiations about war and peace. But the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries did just that on Thursday night, striking a deal over access to aid during diplomatic negotiations in Munich. The very groups that had been begging for relief to besieged towns now welcomed the promised relief with extreme caution, describing it as a half-step that only underscored how bread, blankets, and even vaccines for children, have become politicized in the five-year-old civil war. Access to aid is enshrined under international law. But in […]