After 7 years, Syrians despair over their shattered country

BEIRUT — For Syrians marking seven years of war, their country has never looked as helpless or fragmented.

President Bashar Assad has decimated the rebellion, thanks to massive military aid from Russia and Iran, but foreign powers have carved out zones of influence across the country. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are trapped in besieged areas, and heavy fighting is underway in the suburbs of Damascus and in the north, where alQaida-linked militants are clashing with rival insurgents and Turkish troops are battling a Syrian Kurdish militia.

The violence has accelerated even as the United States, Russia, Iran and Turkey worked diplomatic tracks to broker local truces and freeze the lines of conflict over the last year. Those efforts now appear to have been aimed at mapping out areas of influence.

“I don’t anymore,” even see Syria said Zaina Erhaim, a Syrian journalist who left the country in 2016 and now lives in London. “It’s called Syria on the map. But if you can think about an ordinary Syrian who wants to go from Daraa to Idlib, can you think about how many countries or nationalities he’s going to be passing to reach there?”

A short list would include the remnants of Syria’s Western-backed opposition, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other Iran-backed Shiite fighters from as far away as Afghanistan, Syrian troops, Russian pilots, al-Qaida-linked jihadis, U.S.-allied Kurdish forces and Turkish tank crews.

Nearly half a million people have been killed in Syria since Arab Spring protests erupted in 2011, after security forces arrested a group of teenagers who scrawled anti-Assad graffiti on a wall in the southern city of Daraa.

A demonstration calling for reforms in Damascus’ Old City on March 15 is now widely seen as the start of the uprising. Three days later, security forces opened fire on a protest in Daraa, killing four people and drawing first The protests spread the country.

Around 5 million Syrians have fled the country.

The defeat of Islamic State over the past year raised hopes of a broader resolution of the conflict. Instead, the fall of a common enemy has reignited older rivalries.

Syria has redeployed its elite forces to the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, where they hope to eliminate the last rebel bastion on the edge of the capital with the aid of Russian air power.

In northern Syria, Turkey is battling a Syrian Kurdish militia that it views as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency within its own borders.

At least 10,000 civilians streamed out of eastern Ghouta to governmentheld territory Thursday, following a night of massive bombardment. Thousands more fled the Kurdish-held Afrin enclave in northern Syria, after Turkish forces tightened their siege around the town.

“Syria has been swallowed up,” said novelist Dima Wannous. blood. across