If the troops of the Syrian regime should advance on Idlib in the next few days, if food, accommodation and medicines are becoming increasingly scarce in this enclave in the northwest of the torn Syria, if Islamists then intensify their own terror on the streets, then that will be in Few of them are interested in Germany. There is a threat of a refugee movement that has not come from Syria for a long time.
After ten years of war, hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of displaced persons, the victory of the central government is looming in Idlib – the power that in the West was branded as illegitimate rule with sanctions, then largely forgotten by the public.
The governorate is one of the last strongholds of the insurgents, in which – there are only vague estimates – up to four million Syrians live. Islamists rule in many places, secular oppositionists elsewhere. Wedged between the regime’s troops and the Turkish border, where many refugees have been crowding for months.
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On Friday evening, the UN Security Council extended the use of the only corridor to the outside just in time for the expiry of the existing regulation: the Syrian government, with the support of Russia and perhaps China, wanted to close the border crossing at Bab al-Hawa to Turkey for aid transports in the future .
The current regulation, which has now been extended by six months, which US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed as a compromise during a telephone call, allows international aid workers to transport goods via Turkey to rebel areas. So far, the United Nations and social organizations have ensured that around 1000 trucks passed the corridor under UN protection every month.
Syria’s President Bashar al Assad would only like to organize such deliveries via the capital Damascus – his army could at the same time tighten the ring around Idlib.
Jacqueline Flory thinks about Idlib all the time. The Arabic translator from Munich helps refugee Syrians – and those who are staying in the enclave, where there are also masses of refugees who once came from other parts of Syria. Flory learns daily, sometimes hourly, how the situation is developing. “Our local people are extremely concerned,” says Flory. “Hunger, chaos, violence will escalate.”
“There is desperation because it is unclear what will happen next”
Jacqueline Flory had ten makeshift schools set up with local helpers in Idlib, most of them in tents – her association, which works with donations, is also called “tent school”. She speaks regularly to the teachers who work in Idlib. Video conferences via Zoom, Teams or Facetime, as is common in group discussions in Germany today, often do not work. The network reception in Idlib is not strong enough, says Flory, it is enough for WhatsApp calls without video function.
“There is desperation because it is unclear what will happen next,” she says after such phone calls. “Even the misery there could get worse.” Already today, food supplied by the World Health Organization is being traded on the black market in Idlib. If the border crossing is closed, prices will rise, distribution struggles escalate in Idlib itself, and robbery and theft will increase.
For Assad, Idlib is ruled by terrorists; he sees himself as the guarantor of a unified Syria, which would otherwise disintegrate into ethno-religious fragments. Assad had always said that his government would occupy the entire territory and control all the country’s borders with its soldiers.
Putin supports the regime in Damascus
If the border crossing is closed, the insurgents will be cut off from supplies and Assad’s troops could advance. Vladimir Putin supports the Damascus regime, which is otherwise only helped by Iran’s mullahs because Moscow has no allies in the region – at least none so close that they can provide it with a military base. Putin also speaks of the terrorists who ruled Idlib.
It is unclear exactly who is in charge. One of the most powerful groups in Idlib right now is Hayat Tahrir al Sham. The Islamist militia, which is mostly abbreviated to HTS, includes al-Qaeda supporters from all over the region and is responsible for a large number of extremely serious crimes. What do the HTS jihadists do when the pressure on the enclave increases?
Flory says she has already been there herself. She does not talk about details: Under international law, Idlib is the territory of Syria, whose government is in Damascus, even if Assad has not controlled the region since 2011 – from the regime’s point of view, such visits are illegal border crossings.
Schools were set up in tents
Flory is in Lebanon more often, 1.5 million Syrians fled to the neighboring country. Her association has set up 17 tent schools in Lebanon’s huge refugee camps. As in Idlib, says the translator, Syrian educators on site are the key helpers. The Syrian refugees, both in Idlib in northern Syria and in the Bekaa Valley in southern Lebanon, came from all walks of life: “We have doctors and illiterate people.” Islamists are seldom there, and the fear of jihadists and Assad is equally pronounced.
The curriculum in the tent schools is based on the Syrian pre-war curriculum, without the Koran and physical education. 7,000 boys and girls between the ages of five and 14 are currently attending classes in the tent schools, 1,500 of them in Idlib.
Germany’s Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) has now called on Russia to guarantee open traffic through Bab al-Hawa. The European Union urges the governments in the UN Security Council to extend the resolution. And the EU commissioner responsible for crisis aid Janez Lenarcic said during a visit near the Turkish-Syrian border: “This is a matter of life and death.”
While Germany is dealing with possible chancellor qualities and annoying corona measures, non-governmental organizations are making a few minimum demands to the international community: keep the UN corridor open, ensure food transports, broker a ceasefire. In addition, Flory says on the phone, she hardly sees any solution in the medium term: There will be no Syria in the foreseeable future in which all political camps, all denominations and all ethnicities come to terms.
The Turkish army occupies many places in the autonomous region
There is already constant fighting around Idlib: Pro-Assad militias and government troops against Islamists and other opposition members, sometimes also against Turkish fighters who were armed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan not only strengthened the militant Muslim Brotherhood and Turkmen nationalists in Syria, but with their help he fought particularly intensively against the Kurdish autonomy movement.
Together with Islamists, the Turkish army has occupied many places in the Kurdish autonomous region known as Rojava. The units of the local self-government in northern and eastern Syria repeatedly defend themselves not only against cells of the “Islamic State” and provocations by the Assad troops, but also against Turkish attacks.
Erdogan wants to prevent the Kurds from rising across borders, including in the south-east of Turkey. The Syrian Kurds, led by the secular PYD party, are supported by the USA – albeit on a decreasing basis, which is why Assad emphasizes that he also wants to return Rojava to the central state.
Iran is also providing support with militias
The regime may plan to take this step once it has defeated the insurgents in Idlib. In any case, Assad’s troops made headway, so it must be said, in the end. In February they regained control of the M 5 motorway, which connects Damascus with the commercial center of Aleppo, for the first time since 2015. Militias controlled from Iran are also helping the regime.
If the crossing in Bab al-Hawa were now closed, said Mohamed Altwaish, a doctor from Idlib, a few days ago, then millions of Syrians would be “in the hands of Assad, Russia and Iran”. The local infrastructure has often already been destroyed by air strikes.
There is still the Turkish head of state Erdogan, who has been equipping the rebels, including Islamists, for years. But he also convinced Putin last year of a ceasefire, at least that it should better refrain from a major offensive on Idlib. For a long time now, not only in northern Syria’s Turkish occupation zones, but also in Idlib, payments are made less often with the Syrian pound than with the Turkish lira. And Erdogan wants to prevent millions of refugees from Idlib from pushing to the border. Does Putin listen to him?
There is not only hunger in Idlib, but also in Assad-controlled central Syria. The country is plagued by a drought, the UN agricultural office FAO expects crops to fail in 2021, and twelve of the 17 million Syrians do not have enough food. And the Kurdish self-government also announced that wheat production was collapsing in the once fertile fields in the east of the country.
Ethnic groups are incited against each other
The Kurds are closely monitoring the situation in Idlib. Despite all their hostility to the Arab Islamists ruling there, they know that Idlib may be something that threatens them too. Local politicians from Rojava say that the regime has repeatedly tried in recent weeks to incite the ethnic groups against one another.
The multi-ethnic, i.e. not only Kurdish, Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration announced these days: “The government in Damascus does not accept any proposals for solving the Syria crisis. It’s all about maintaining power and ruling Syria as it did before 2011. ”That sounds like a catastrophe is imminent.
