Middle East

How a center of US – Israeli Imperialism is viewing the situation in Syria

19/02/2020

A disaster in Syria as Russia and Turkey clash

By Ishaan Tharoor
Feb. 19, 2020

Almost a decade into its ruinous civil war, Syria is experiencing perhaps its single biggest humanitarian crisis. An offensive by the Syrian regime in the last remaining rebel-held enclaves in the country’s northwest has sparked an exodus of more than 800,000 civilians, mostly women and children, since Dec. 1. For some of them, it’s the third or fourth time they have fled bombardments in a war that has claimed close to 400,000 lives and displaced more than half of the country’s population.

For years, Syria’s besieged province of Idlib has served as a final haven for those escaping forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. But they are now running out of places to go. Turkey, which already hosts upward of 3.6 million Syrian refugees, has closed its border, even as it threatens to launch a retaliatory campaign against Assad’s regime.

Convoys of civilians have snaked their way out of Idlib’s cities as regime artillery and Russian aircraft pounded what they say are rebel positions. Hundreds have been killed since the offensive began, while eyewitness reports suggest the regime and its allies have indiscriminately targeted schools, health facilities and mosques in a “scorched earth” advance that has ravaged dozens of towns. The current movement of people is the largest human exodus since a 2017 campaign carried out by Myanmar’s military forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to seek sanctuary in neighboring Bangladesh.

Then there’s the brutal cold. Last week alone, more than a dozen refugees died of exposure. Aid workers, mostly operating from across the border in Turkey, say they are overwhelmed and warn of a dire shortage of tents. Potable water is in short supply and sanitation facilities are mostly nonexistent as fleeing civilians set up ramshackle camps in the depths of the Syrian winter.