This March, as most of the world grappled with the alarming spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the conflict in Syria entered its tenth year. Although the conflict started almost a decade ago, the worst could still be ahead.
The lengthy conflict was sparked in March 2011 when Syrians, inspired by the Arab Spring then spreading throughout many countries in the Middle East and North Africa, began protesting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad responded with brute force. What started as predominantly nonviolent acts of protest and civil disobedience rapidly descended into a horrific and bloody civil war.
Armed factions sprouted across the country against the regime, with many soldiers and officers defecting from the Syrian Army to form the self-styled Free Syrian Army (FSA) which sought to overthrow Assad. The regime in turn brutally besieged urban centres in a bid to rout the rebels, invariably slaughtering civilians trapped in the crossfire.
Urban battles for Homs (2011-14) and Aleppo (2012-16) became increasingly more brutal as the regime pounded redoubts with as much firepower as it could muster. Crude barrel bombs became an infamous weapon of the war. The regime also used chemical weapons – most infamously in Ghouta in August 2013, which killed hundreds of people.
The rise to prominence of groups like the Islamic State quashed the prospect that a moderate and secular opposition movement could replace Assad. The group conquered almost one-third of Syria before being rolled back by Kurdish-led forces. These forces won the military support of the United States for doing more than any other force to combat the Islamic State threat, sacrificing approximately 11,000 of their male and female fighters in the process.
As the conflict worsened and hopes for a better future dimmed, millions of Syrians left their homes, many living in cramped refugee camps in neighbouring countries. Others made it to Europe and began new lives. Millions of others remained displaced and destitute within their own country. The United Nations stopped counting the dead in 2014. It’s likely around half a million have been killed in a country which had a population of about 21 million at the onset of this conflict.
Russia militarily intervened on Assad’s side in the conflict in late 2015 – at a time when his forces only controlled about a quarter of the country and were on the defensive. Russian air support enabled Assad to regain ground and by December 2016 completely rout the entrenched opposition from East Aleppo after a particularly ferocious battle. Assad’s inevitable victory over the uprising has since become a foregone conclusion.
The conflict has, nevertheless, dragged on until the present. Assad gradually reconquered most key areas and increasingly began focusing on the northwestern province of Idlib – the last major redoubt held by his opponents. Aside from Raqqa – which was the de-facto capital city of the Islamic States’ self-styled caliphate from 2013-17 – Idlib was the only provincial capital city Assad lost complete control over to his opponents. Also, far from being controlled by moderate elements, the region was controlled by the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group.
Despite continued fighting in many fronts, the last two years of the 2010s saw a marked decrease in the conflict’s death toll, potentially signalling that the worst of the conflict is over.
In 2018, an estimated 19,666 Syrians were killed throughout the year. In 2019, almost half that number were killed, with ‘just’ 11,215 people losing their lives, the lowest number of deaths in a year since the conflict began.
However, this downward trend may not continue. Up to 3 million Syrians remain in Idlib, trapped between the regime and the HTS militants. A renewed regime offensive backed by Russia began in December and between then and early March displaced 900,000 civilians in the province. They have few places to flee from the violence since neighbouring Turkey refuses to permit the entrance of anymore Syrians onto its territory given the huge number it already hosts.
While a ceasefire reached between Russia and Turkey has, at least for now, halted the fighting, another flare-up remains a possibility given the volatility of the situation on the ground.
Many Syrians today are particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus outbreak. While Damascus previously denied there were any cases in the country is has now officially confirmed its first case. If the virus spreads among the large civilian population in Idlib, it could prove catastrophic since many people there are so abjectly impoverished that they cannot even maintain the basic hygienic requirements needed for lowering the risk of exposure to the virus. “You want us to wash our hands?” one Syrian relief worker rhetorically asked. “Some people can’t wash their kids for a week. They are living outdoors.”
Furthermore, years of aerial bombardments by both Syrian and Russian warplanes have pulverized most of Idlib’s hospitals and healthcare infrastructure, meaning the province simply does not have the resources to deal with any significant outbreak. The rest of the country is unlikely to fare much better after years of destructive war and widespread deprivation which could well drag on into the first half of this new decade.
Consequently, even though Syrians have endured a brutal war about as long as both world wars combined, there is still no end in sight to the suffering of millions of Syrians.
Image credit: Anthony Gale