Exodus from Syria’s Idlib province
Fearing fresh fighting as troops advance, tens of thousands are fleeing, including the previously displaced.
BEIRUT — Before civil war devastated Syria, the northwestern province of Idlib was known for its olive groves and the abandoned but well-preserved archaeological remains of the socalled Dead Cities.
In the years since fighting erupted in 2011, Idlib became the largest rebel-held territory in the northern part of the country, and it remains home to many of President Bashar Assad’s most implacable foes.
Now, with opposition forces facing defeat in other parts of Syria, the Assad government has turned its sights to Idlib.
The estimated 2 million people living there face a grim choice: Stay and risk being killed in the fighting, or flee toward the Turkish border to the north in the brutal Idlib winter with no shelter.
More than 130,000 people have opted for the latter, according to figures provided this week by the Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation. The exodus came as the government’s elite Tiger Forces, backed by a ferocious barrage of airstrikes and shelling, advanced hundreds of square miles in recent weeks and stormed dozens of rebelheld villages.
Government forces appeared poised Tuesday to take Abu Duhur, a strategic military air base where more than 56 government soldiers were executed by the Al Qaeda affiliate formerly known as Al Nusra Front when its fighters overran the base in 2015, according to Syrian state media and other pro-government outlets.
“We’ve been seeing hundreds of vehicles on the road, all of them leaving their areas and heading northward,” Ahmad Barakat, a 50-year-old cowherd living near Idlib city, said in a phone interview Monday.
Pro-opposition activists uploaded videos and images of trucks with piles of furniture teetering as they drove past. People clung to the sides of vehicles or rode under a tarpaulin cover with their livestock.
For many in Idlib, this is not the first time they have been uprooted. Faced with crushing government sieges, the rebels who once held sway in Aleppo and other opposition enclaves throughout the country acquiesced to so-called reconciliation deals, which allowed them to stay in their areas on condition of laying down their arms, or leave for Idlib.
The United Nations believes 1 million people in Idlib are among Syria’s internally displaced.
Those people “left their homes in other parts of Syria and came to Idlib looking for safety. Now they’re displaced again, and when they arrive at settlements, the capacity is limited and services are overstretched,” said Rula Amin, a spokeswoman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, in a phone interview Tuesday.
Turkish charities such as IHH have been building new shelters and providing food, but Abdulsalam Shareef, IHH’s Gaziantep Office coordinator, said refugees were running out of space, even as aid organizations face donor fatigue after a nearly seven-year crisis.
In the early years of the civil war, Idlib became the site of fierce anti-government resistance, with much of the province’s majority Sunni Muslim population participating in uprisings.
Rebel factions flourished, taking advantage of Turkish authorities’ carte blanche to cross to ferry men and materiel, supplied by Turkey or the opposition’s Western allies, to fight Assad’s troops.
By 2015, a loose coalition of Islamist groups known as the Army of Conquest, and which included Al Nusra Front, had driven out remaining government forces.
Since last year, however, the once-powerful Islamist factions have fallen prey to infighting, while the Western arms support dried up for fear of weapons getting into the hands of extremists.
Al Nusra Front — which rebranded itself as the Organization for the Liberation of Syria, or Hayat Tahrir al Sham — emerged as the top authority in Idlib and did away with its Western-supported rivals and its onetime jihadi allies, such as the hard-line Islamist group Ahrar al Sham.
Pro-opposition activists and other rebel groups accused Hayat Tahrir al Sham of allowing government troops to enter Idlib virtually unopposed.
“The regime’s rapid advance in Idlib is due to the behavior of Hayat Tahrir al Sham, which dismantled the factions and weakened them,” said Ahrar al Sham in a general call to arms issued Sunday.
But the group’s leaders denied any collusion, posting photos on its Telegram channel that show attacks on government troops.
Opposition leaders and activists suspected the weak resistance was because of a joint de-escalation agreement forged by Russia, Iran and Turkey in the Kazakh capital, Astana, in September.
Russia and Iran are Assad’s most ardent international supporters, and Turkey has emerged as the rebels’ top backer. The deescalation agreement had reduced the intensity of government and Russian airstrikes on Idlib.
It was unclear how the recent advance by government forces fit into the deescalation agreement.
The push by the Tiger Forces appears aimed at consolidating the government’s grip over areas south of Aleppo and reducing rebel presence near the M5, the backbone highway that links the country’s major cities, according to pro-government and pro-rebel activists.