A new battle has begun in Idlib: Assad’s army – backed by Iranian militia and Russian air forces – are facing off the Turks – and their Syrian allies loyal to them. More than three million Syrian citizens are trapped between the fighting, while 948,000 have been displaced (59% children) since December. If the crisis continues, it could result in the worst humanitarian crisis seen since the beginning of the conflict. 

“There are many people who dream of returning home. Others are terrified of the advance of the regime’s forces and want to go to bordering Turkey. The reality is that there is no more room in Idlib, and we are all stuck here” says Ali Haj Suleiman, a young Syrian photographer who lives in the town of Idlib, capital of the province which holds the same name.  

Like the vast majority of the more than three million Syrians living in Idlib, Ali is not from the province. He fled Damascus in 2013 with his family for fear of the regime’s forces who arrested his father in 2012. “We haven’t seen him since,” said the 20-year-old. Today in the province of Idlib there are more than three million Syrians, more than twice the pre-2011 population (1.3 million, 2009) “Here, the citizens come from Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Deraa or Damascus, like me. These are all cities that were won back by the regime. These civilians had to flee their houses because the regime would arrest and abuse them”.  

At least 1 million of these refugees, including women and children, live in camps. “We must not wait for the violence between Assad’s forces and the Turks to escalate before intervening. Idlib is already suffering the worst humanitarian crisis today. There are hundreds of thousands of people that literally live under trees: some are freezing to death, most of them lack food and water,” explains historian Marie Peltier, who follows the Syrian humanitarian crisis. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that about 2.8 million people in the Idlib region need humanitarian aid, meaning that not only those who were forcefully displaced need aid. 

Tweet Migration Camp: https://twitter.com/MarkCutts/status/1231522724184514560

The province, bombed several times every day, is considered the last territorial pocket of the rebels opposed to Assad. But families in north-western Syria find themselves trapped between the advance of Syrian troops – supported by Russian airstrikes and pro-Iranian militias – against Turkey and their Syrian allies. There are also soldiers from Hay’at Tahrir el Sham, the jihadist organisation formerly affiliated with Al Qaeda, and Hurras al-Din, which is still affiliated with Al Qaeda. 

“Most Syrians want to go home. But there is a security problem, because if these refugees are arrested by the regime, their fate will be very violent. On top of that, the law on urban renewal of 2018, allows the Assad government to seize the private property of citizens” said Marie Peltier. The law promises that owners are compensated, but it does not give any details on the terms of compensation.

Example Twitter Elizrael: https://twitter.com/Elizrael/status/1231327564725149696

Tweet: “The civilians who returned to Qubtan al-Jabal in western Aleppo to collect their belongings did not realise that the regime had taken over the city after the rapid rebel withdrawal. The Syrian army captured and beat them and ordered them to give rebel names. Their fate is currently unknown.

Escalation between Assad loyalists and the Turks

While Ankara continues to send military reinforcements to Idlib (artillery, tanks, troops), the Syrian army advances and gains ground in Aleppo. But on the night of January 27th to January 28th, 33 soldiers were killed near the town of Bulion, south of Idlib province, the highest number of Turkish troops killed in a single day since their intervention in Syria in 2016. The Turks accuse Assad’s army of being responsible for the attack, but activists on the ground say otherwise: they blame the Russians. The Russians deny any involvement in this strike. 

This was not the first time controversial reports confuse as to who was behind the strikes. “There is no doubt that the Turks would want to avoid open confrontation with the Russians. But they will have to answer to the families of fallen victims because the place of the army in Turkish society is important”, explains Dr. Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist and CNRS-Iremam researcher.  

The Turkish response was extremely clear: they openly declared war against the Assad regime, noting that its fight was not against Russia. Turkey retaliated in and around Idlib, including a “government air defense system in Idlib and strikes on a chemical weapons storage facility south of Aleppo”. Turkish Defense Minister, Hulusi Akar, stated that Turkey killed 2,200 Syrian soldiers since the January 28th attack against Turkish troops, as well as having shot down two Syrian jets, and another on March 3rd. 

The rival armies are now fighting over Idlib district, one of the five districts of Idlib province. Russian jets have been bombing the city all day long on February 27th, while Turkish backed rebels were able to push back Assad’s forces and take the town of Kafr Batikh in southern Idlib, and recuperate Saraqeb, located 13 km from Idlib district. 

“Nayrab is extremely close to the town of Idlib. Since the regime took control of this locality, the nature of the battle has changed, as Assad’s forces and the Turkish army have never been so close. The advance of Assad’s forces in Aleppo and the Turkish intervention in Idlib brings them closer than ever. They are only about 15 kilometres from each other” points out Thomas Pierret. 

Interests and political survival 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on February 19th: “We will not take the smallest step back in Idlib and we will certainly push the regime outside the borders. We are determined” unless the regime’s army withdraws to the designated borders of the Sochi agreement in September 2018.

Putin and Erdogan had agreed during the Sochi summit to create a demilitarised buffer zone between the Syrian army and the Turkish backed rebels to avoid a worsening of the humanitarian crisis. It was already catastrophic at the time but the Turks want to prevent another flow of Syrian refugees to pass through the Turkish borders. Since the beginning of the war, Turkey has taken in just over 3.5 million Syrian refugees. “For the Turks, Idlib is a red line: no reason for Damascus to put its hand on the province. The survival of the AKP is at stake, if these three million refugees cross the border” continued Thomas Pierret. 

Erdogan’s party, the AKP, lost Istanbul in the mayoral elections after 25 years of rule in June 2019. The cultural capital was the heart of the AKP and since its loss, the government has been pursuing an anti-migration policy and has taken measures to remove and repatriate Syrian refugees.”The considerable deployment of Turkish troops in Idlib, as well as their dense military presence shows their willingness to create this buffer zone. They want to avoid at all costs another flow of refugees returning to Turkey,” analyses Thomas Pierret.

On the other hand, Assad has vowed to regain all of the lost territories and is monopolising the skies thanks to Russian air forces. “What matters is what the Russians want, not what Assad wants. Putin has become the owner of Syria and has to ensure its survival. The economic situation is catastrophic and they will want to control the country’s two largest highways, the M4 and the M5” Pierret said.

The M4 motorway leaves Latakia, reaches the Iraqi border, passes through Aleppo and then Kameshli near the Turkish border. The M5, the most used in the country, leaves from the Jordanian border and passes through the most important cities of the country including Aleppo, Damascus, Homs, Hama and has been recuperated by the Assad regime. 

“Everything that will make Syria’s already devastated economy functional will be carefully preserved by the Russians to ensure the survival of Bashar al-Assad’s regime” concludes the researcher.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be travelling to Russia and will meet on March 5th, Russian President Vladimir Putin. But in the meantime, the fighting continues. A United Nations officer stressed that there are no more “safe havens in Idlib“. 

“The Dirty War” for dummies

The politicisation of the Syrian massacre was predictable. Every major humanitarian crisis was an opportunity for politicians, journalists, and businessmen to make friends and pick a side. Here in France, countless journalists have named the Turkish-backed rebels as jihadists while avoiding to label the Assad and Russian armies as criminals of war. 

There is no doubt that the opposition is composed of countless radical Islamist rebel groups led and run by jihadists among other rebels with different ideologies. But in the eyes of the civilians sleeping in the wild in Idlib, the only person to blame for their situation is Bashar al Assad. 

The nature of this relentless militia war has caused mayhem in humanitarian terms as more than 50 medical facilities were destroyed in the past 5 months, disabling newborns to even survive due to malnutrition and basic medical care. 

No war is clean. But if Syria’s war is a dirty one, it is because it started as a revolution against Bashar al-Assad’s establishment and became a platform for Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the U.S. to compete for hegemony in the region and Syrian civilians find themselves in the middle of a bloody conflict. It is a dirty war because soldiers who used to fight for the Islamic State, have taken their weapons and now serve in the Syrian army after the Daech was destroyed in 2017, while others joined rebel groups. It is a war that has become so dirty that we cannot ignore it anymore.