A $1.5 billion international aid effort, carried out under dangerous and politically charged conditions by the United Nations, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and smaller local organizations, provides stopgap food, schooling and medicine to millions of people. But it is underfinanced, covers just a fraction of the needs, fails to reach people in blockaded areas and does not begin to address the collapse of Syria’s health, education and economic infrastructure and its devastating implications for the country’s future, aid officials in Syria and across the region say.

“If we continue to deal with this crisis as a short-term disaster instead of a long-term effort, the region will face even more severe consequences,” Neal Keny-Guyer, the chief executive of Mercy Corps, wrote recently, calling for increased American financing and a new focus on longer-term development projects, like repairing water infrastructure.

Some go further, saying that the only meaningful humanitarian action now is to end the fighting.

Omar Abdelaziz al-Hallaj, an independent Syrian adviser to aid, development and conflict resolution efforts in the region, told the Lebanese Economic Association in Beirut recently that the focus must be shifted “from saving a few lives to saving more lives by halting the violence.”

The war, Mr. Hallaj and United Nations officials in Syria said, is disintegrating administrative and social structures at a pace that makes it impossible to deliver adequate aid even if financing were available, which it is not. “No donor funds have ever been known to be given in the magnitude of aid needed in Syria,” Mr. Hallaj said.

To help the more than six million people displaced or severely affected by the crisis inside Syria, the United Nations has asked for $1.5 billion, far less than the $3 billion it has requested to aid the two million refugees outside the country. The discrepancy stems in part from United Nations principles of dealing with sovereign states, under which the plan is intended only to support efforts led by the Syrian government. That creates a politically awkward situation, in that much of the need is in rebel-held areas.

If the war goes on for another year, Mr. Hallaj said, Syria “will be reduced to the bottom of the development ladder, along with countries like Somalia and Yemen,” a shocking fall for a country that before the war produced most of its own food and medicine, and despite worsening economic inequality had a strong social safety net and educational system by regional standards.

The Syrian government prides itself on continuing to pay salaries even in areas controlled by the opposition, and in some cities local ministry offices continue to work with United Nations agencies. But the estimated $10 billion the government used to pump annually into local spending for social services, utilities, subsidies and the like has mostly evaporated, Mr. Hallaj said.