BEIRUT: Before civil war devastated Syria, the northwestern province of Idlib was known for its olive groves and the abandoned but well-preserved archaeological remains of the so-called Dead Cities.
In the years since fighting erupted in 2011, Idlib became the largest rebel-held territory in the northern part of the country, and it remains home to many of Bashar Al Assad’s most implacable foes.
Now, with opposition forces facing defeat in other parts of Syria, the regime has turned its sights to Idlib.
The estimated two million people living there face a grim choice: Stay and risk being killed in the fighting, or flee towards the Turkish border to the north in the brutal Idlib winter with no shelter.
More than 130,000 people have opted for the latter, according to figures provided this week by the Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation. The exodus came as the regime’s elite Tiger Forces, backed by a ferocious barrage of air strikes and shelling, advanced hundreds of square miles in recent weeks and stormed dozens of rebel-held villages.
Regime forces appeared poised Tuesday to take Abu Duhur, a strategic military air base where more than 56 regime soldiers were executed by the Al Qaida affiliate formerly known as the Nusra Front when its fighters overran the base in 2015, according to regime media.
“We’ve been seeing hundreds of vehicles on the road, all of them leaving their areas and heading northward,” Ahmad Barakat, a 50-year-old cowherd living near Idlib city, said in a phone interview Monday.
Pro-opposition activists uploaded videos and images of trucks with piles of furniture teetering as they drove past. People clung to the sides of vehicles or rode under a tarpaulin cover with their livestock.
Barakat said prices of items have plunged to less than 50 per cent in some cases, as people seek to offload what possessions they own before they travel. But he insisted he and his family were staying put.
“Where can you go? Turkey? The borders are closed, and it’s too cold,” he said. “You have nothing before you but death.”
One million displaced
For many in Idlib, this is not the first time they have been uprooted. Faced with crushing government sieges, the rebels who once held sway in Aleppo and other opposition enclaves throughout the country acquiesced to so-called reconciliation deals, which allowed them to stay in their areas on condition of laying down their arms, or leave for Idlib.
The United Nations believes one million people in Idlib are among Syria’s internally displaced.
Those people “left their homes in other parts of Syria and came to Idlib looking for safety. Now they’re displaced again, and when they arrive at settlements, the capacity is limited and services are overstretched,” said Rula Ameen, Middle East and North Africa spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in a phone interview Tuesday.
“Conditions for those fleeing are dire: not enough shelters, not enough toilets, not enough showers. ... At some sites, the needs are 400 per cent over what is available, and it’s not clear how this escalation will unfold,” she said.
Turkish charities such as IHH have been building new shelters and providing food, but Abdul Salam Shareef, IHH’s Gaziantep Office coordinator, said refugees were running out of space, even as aid organisations face donor fatigue after a nearly seven-year crisis.
“Those 100,000 who came now? They live in peasant grounds under olive trees, and it’s muddy. When it rains, your foot sinks ... into the ground. So a tent sinks in and you see mud and water going inside it. It’s a real catastrophe,” Shareef said in a phone interview Monday.
“And now there is no funding like before, so we’re barely able to cover our feeding and drinking expenses, and we have less tents, blankets, heaters, pillows and insulators,” he said.
In the early years of the civil war, Idlib became the site of fierce anti-government resistance, with much of the province’s majority Sunni Muslim population participating in uprisings.
Rebel factions flourished, taking advantage of Turkish authorities’ carte blanche to cross to ferry men and materiel, supplied by Turkey or the opposition’s Western allies, to fight Al Assad’s troops.
By 2015, a loose coalition of Islamist groups known as the Army of Conquest, and which included Nusra Front, had driven out remaining regime forces.
Since last year, however, the once-powerful Islamist factions have fallen prey to infighting, while the Western arms support dried up for fear of weapons getting into the hands of extremists.
Nusra Front (which rebranded itself as the Organisation for the Liberation of Syria, or Hayat Tahrir Al Sham) emerged as the top authority in Idlib and did away with both its Western-supported rivals and its onetime allies, such as the hard-line Islamist group Ahrar Al Sham.
Pro-opposition activists and other rebel groups accused Hayat Tahrir Al Sham of allowing regime troops to enter Idlib virtually unopposed.
“The regime’s rapid advance in Idlib is due to the behaviour of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which dismantled the factions and weakened them,” said Ahrar Al Sham in a general call to arms issued Sunday.
But the group’s leaders denied any collusion, posting photos on its dedicated Telegram channel that show attacks on government troops.
Opposition leaders and activists suspected the weak resistance was because of a joint de-escalation agreement forged by Russia, Iran and Turkey in the Kazakh capital, Astana, in September.
Russia and Iran are Al Assad’s most ardent international supporters, and Turkey has emerged as the rebels’ top backer. The de-escalation agreement had reduced the intensity of government and Russian airstrikes on Idlib.
It was unclear how the recent advance by regime forces, including the capture of more than a dozen villages Monday, fit into the de-escalation agreement.
Any clarity might come from Russia, Iran or Turkey as the forces behind the agreement, Rasha Esmail, a spokeswoman for special envoy Staffan de Mistura, the UN official in charge of peace talks between Damascus and the rebels, said in an email Tuesday.
