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Syrias brutal conflict enters its 10th year Sunday with President Bashar al-Assads regime consolidating its hold over a war-wracked country with a decimated economy where foreign powers flex their muscle.
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When Syrians took to the streets on March 15, 2011, they could scarcely have imagined their anti-government protests would turn into a complex war entangling rebels, jihadists and outside forces.
At least 384,000 people have since died, including more than 116,000 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday.
The conflict has displaced more than 11 million people internally and abroad.
“Nine years of revolution illustrate the extent of the suffering we have known, between exile, bombings and deaths,” said Hala Ibrahim, a rights activist who now lives in the town of Dana, in Idlib province.
“I left my university, my house which was bombed,” the woman in her 30s said. “Weve lost everything.”
Originally from the northern city of Aleppo, Ibrahim left in late 2016 after the regime retook rebel-held areas and she sought refuge in Idlib.
The northwestern region—Syrias last rebel stronghold—is the regimes latest target.
Today the world sees the devastation in Idlib and calls for action.
Idlib is only the most recent chapter in a 9-year horror story that's forced over 11 million people from their homes in Syria. pic.twitter.com/AKBqKHnEdK
— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@Refugees) March 13, 2020
Thanks to the military support of Russia, Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Assad has clawed back control of over 70 percent of the war-torn country.
A fragile ceasefire came into effect in the northwest earlier this month, and Turkish and Russian officials have agreed to start joint patrols in Idlib.
Syrian forces and Russian warplanes have heavily bombarded the region since December, killing nearly 500 civilians, the Observatory says, and forcing nearly a million to flee, according to the United Nations.
Ruin and misery
Siham Abs and seven of her children have been living for the past two months in a camp for Idlibs displaced near Bardaqli, not far from the Turkish border.
Many of those unable to find space in camps have been sleeping in fields or have sought shelter in schools, mosques and unfinished buildings.
In the Bardaqli camp, tents made of plastic sheeting are lined up along muddy paths.
Abs said she and her family would like to wash, but dont know where. “I am 50 years old and Ive never known such difficult times,” she said.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said on the eve of the anniversary: “The suffering of the Syrian people during this tragic and terrible decade still defies comprehension and belief.”
The Syrian conflict was born of unprecedented anti-government demonstrations in the southern city of Daraa nine years ago.
Protests spread across Syria, but a violent crackdown soon saw rebels take up arms with backing from Gulf nations and wrest key areas from government control.
Jihadist groups also emerged, notably the Islamic State group which swept across large parts of the country and neighbouring Iraq in 2014.
The conflict in Syria is entering its tenth year.
A decade of fighting has brought nothing but ruin and misery. And civilians are paying the gravest price.
There is no military solution.
Now it is the time to give diplomacy a chance to work.
