SYRIAN ARMY TO CHIP AWAY AT EDGES OF REBEL STRONGHOLD IDLIB
▶ Government forces amass troops but Turkish diplomacy with Russia and Iran may ward off an assault
The Syrian government has started what is likely to be a slow and difficult march to regain control of the northern province of Idlib.
The Syrian army has been amassing troops and heavy weaponry on the outskirts of the province. In recent days, more than 50 civilians were killed in a heavy bombardment by Syrian and Russian jets in the area, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Idlib is the last holdout of the various rebel forces who tried to oust President Bashar Al Assad from power.
After recapturing large areas of territory over the past year, the president declared last month that “Idlib is our goal”.
On Thursday, helicopters dropped thousands of leaflets urging residents to reconcile with the government, saying the war “is close to an end”.
The next day, the Syrian army shelled a number of positions on the edges of the province, in the south, east and west.
The attack broke months of relative calm in Idlib province, which is part of a “de-escalation zone” agreed between Turkey, Russia and Iran.
With an offensive looming, the fate of more than 2.5 million residents is in the balance.
Turkey has closed its border with Syria, meaning civilians will be trapped by any attack.
“We have nowhere to escape to,” said Qusay Noor, a journalist in the town of Maarat Al Nu’man, in southern Idlib.
Noor fled with his family from Eastern Ghouta four months ago, when the government recaptured the area.
“I do not want to see this happening again in Idlib. I know the brutality of Bashar Al Assad and Russia. I have seen lot of the crimes of the regime, but here is our last place.”
The UN has warned of a bloodbath if the offensive goes ahead, and called for talks.
But it is unlikely the Syrian government will try to recapture the whole province, but will focus on the edges.
The first stages of the assault are expected to target Jisr-AshShugur and the surrounding area in the west of Idlib, which borders the Alawite heartland of Latakia. After that, it may target the M5 motorway between Hama and Aleppo.
As part of the de-escalation agreement in Idlib, Turkey set up 12 observation posts around the edges of the province. It also has forces in “safe zones” along the border.
Turkish officials have declared Idlib a “red line”, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lobbied Russia to prevent an attack. Yesterday, Mr Erdogan said Turkey had finalised plans for more safe zones in Syria, and military and diplomatic efforts had been accelerated to avoid a catastrophe in Idlib. Those efforts may slow down the government’s plans.
“To the extent that Turkey has the means to discourage an offensive, those means are mainly political, not military,” Sam Heller, a senior analyst at Crisis Group, told The National.
“The main deterrent to action is Turkey’s political entanglement with Russia and Iran, co-sponsors of the north-western de-escalation. Iran and, in particular, Russia have political efforts in which they’ve co-invested with Turkey and rely on Turkey’s continued participation.
“And their relationships with Turkey are important for other reasons, whether that’s pulling Turkey away from Nato for Russia, or resisting new US sanctions for Iran,” Mr Heller said.
Ankara has also bolstered allied Syrian rebels, helping rival groups to unite. But about 60 per cent of the province is controlled by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a coalition led by Al Qaeda’s former Syria affiliate.
Its influence in the area has been used as a justification for the Russian and Syrian attacks.
“The fact of the matter is that Turkey is the sheriff of Idlib. In the eyes of Russia and the United States, it is Turkey’s responsibility to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda and its ideological fellow travellers in Idlib,” said Nicholas Heras, Middle East Security Fellow at the Centre for a New American Security.
“The only alternative to Turkey in order to take out Al Qaeda in north-west Syria is Bashar Al Assad. If Turkey wants to avoid hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing to the Turkish border from a conflict in Idlib launched by Assad, then Turkey needs to act decisively now to eliminate Al Qaeda,” he said.
The battle for Idlib won’t be easy, said Wissam Zarqa, an English teacher who was displaced from Aleppo to Idlib.
“People in these areas are not as tired as people were in Aleppo, Homs and Ghouta, where they were besieged for a long time. Here it’s different. That’s why if there is a battle, it won’t be a short one. It would be a long war.”
Yesterday, an explosion in the north-west of Idlib killed 39 civilians, according to the UKbased Observatory. The blast at a weapons depot in Sarmada destroyed two buildings. The cause was unknown.
There has been a heartsinking familiarity to the scenes witnessed in Idlib over the past few days. As regime forces unleashed a wave of airstrikes on civilian targets, the death toll crept up; first in the single figures, then into double digits. By the time the Syrian regime is done with Idlib, that figure will no doubt have climbed into the hundreds, then thousands. Over the course of the seven-year conflict, the northwestern province of Idlib has absorbed many of the six million internally displaced Syrians fleeing regime offensives in Eastern Ghouta, Homs and Aleppo. Wave after wave of the desperate and starving have arrived, some bussed in by the regime amid promises of “reconciliation”, others fleeing for their lives. They have been rounded up and herded in like cattle to what has been termed a “dumping ground” for the displaced and dispossessed so that the regime and its supporters can unleash its very worst, crushing and pounding the very last rebel stronghold into the ground. This is the template that has been moulded and replicated to devastating effect: siege, starve and wait for surrender. The forces of Bashar Al Assad care little that among Idlib’s terrified population of 2.5 million are more than one million children, described by Unicef as “exhausted of war and fearful”. They are, as far as he is concerned, collateral damage as he ploughs on relentlessly towards his end goal of obliterating any dissent.
We saw similar scenes in Eastern Ghouta, where, after a three-year siege, the Assad regime bombarded the area earlier this year with barrel bombs and chemical attacks, ravaging the region over a month and killing 1,600 men, women and children. Idlib is next in its sights and Mr Al Assad, backed by his Russian sponsors, is showing no mercy. For months, observers have been talking about the endgame and the final battleground; of how Idlib, the scene of the first chemical attack in 2012, will be the battle to end the war for good. But there will be no sense of resolution among its population, where food, water and medicine are already scarce. Nor will Mr Al Assad’s planes dropping bombs from Khan Sheikhoun to Alteh distinguish between rebel fighters and innocent civilians; all are fair game for the planes pounding from the skies. On the ground, different factions are at war with each other, as well as with the regime, each with different allegiances, which threaten to pit Turkish-backed fighters against Russian and Syrian. There is a grave danger of clashes driving an explosive wedge in this trifecta of tenuous alliances. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s woes at home as the lira plummets to an all-time low could distract him from carving out a sphere of influence in Idlib, as was previously feared. But for civilians who might have hoped for Turkish protection from the onslaught, it is quickly becoming apparent that any forces present in Idlib are only interested in serving their own purposes. There is a horrifying inevitability to the humanitarian disaster that is about to unfold, with one key difference: Mr Al Assad is confident he will be the last man standing, whatever the cost.