How this closing chapter of Syria’s war has become its most brutal

Warplanes carried out airstrikes, raising a row of towering gray plumes on the horizon. “This is every day,” Shardan said, as the sound of shelling grew louder. “I sleep with bombing. I wake to bombing.”

In a war with too many terrible chapters to count, the fighting in Idlib and surrounding areas has been singularly brutal, spreading destruction over a large swath of Syria while uprooting nearly a million of its citizens. The violence has been drawn out by seesaw clashes that left towns like Saraqeb wasted and empty.

The nature of the standoff in the province, between emboldened Syrian government forces and die-hard opposition fighters, has made Idlib an especially daunting and tragic riddle to solve.

Not long after Shardan and his neighbors watched the battle for Saraqeb, the fighting slowed. Russia and Turkey agreed to a cease-fire earlier this month. It came after nearly 1 million people in Idlib had been displaced and aid agencies were warning of an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

But the cease-fires here never last.

For Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Idlib is a nuisance, standing in the way of his desire to reassert control over the country and crush the insurrection against his rule. Backed by Russian air power, Syria’s army has attempted a series of blistering offensives, including the latest, which began in December.

Standing in the army’s way are thousands of rebel fighters, among them foreign fighters and other extremists. For many of them, Idlib is a last stand.

Turkey, which supports some of the rebel groups, sent thousands of troops to Idlib in February to prevent a final defeat of the opposition and stop a Syrian advance that could send hundreds of thousands of refugees across Turkey’s border.

Between the combatants are millions of Syrian civilians facing astounding hardship: scrambling for food and shelter, searching for doctors and fleeing relentless Syrian and Russian airstrikes. Those who survive live a miserably nomadic existence, having fled to Idlib from other parts of Syria only to spend their days fleeing one battered town after another.

In overcrowded camps on Turkey’s border, another menace now looms: the novel coronavirus, whose spread through the crowded settlements is a foregone conclusion, Syrians and aid workers say.

Shardan had been trying to outrun the government for months. He fled Maarat al-Nuaman, in southern Idlib, late last year, and settled in Ariha, about five miles south of Idlib city, until heavy shelling on the town sent him and his family back on the road.

Idlib, a bastion of opposition to Assad’s rule in northwestern Syria, has braced for a battle since at least 2015, when two milestones — the capture of Idlib by extremist rebels, and Russia’s military intervention in support of the Syrian government — set the province on a perilous course.

The danger grew as rebel-held territory in other parts of Syria fell to government forces and residents and rebel fighters from those areas were bussed to Idlib, transforming the province into a dumping ground for Assad’s opponents and a frequent target of government airstrikes.

Syria and Russia, determined to recapture Idlib and nearby areas, continued to attack targets in the province, including hospitals and other civilian facilities. Turkey — because it was unwilling or unable — never curbed the influence of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a rebel group that was formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda and dominates Idlib province, said Dareen Khalifa, a senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group who frequently travels to the province.

When Syria launched its first major offensive on Idlib, in April last year, government forces confronted “tens of thousands of fighters that think, ‘This is it — this is the last battle.’ If they surrender it is going to be death,” she said.

It also targeted a civilian population that included people who “haven’t seen the state in eight or nine years,” she said. For many, a return to life under government rule was unthinkable. “They think it’s suicidal to move toward the regime, or at best, it’s unknown,” she said.

The Syrian government made no attempt to convince them otherwise. Rather, as the army advanced on Idlib over the last few months, it seemed determined to drive people from their homes.

The destruction was apparent in the town of Atareb, in the countryside of Aleppo, where rebel fighters on motorcycles zoomed past pummeled gray cinder block houses on deserted streets. Some of its residents had settled in nearby Adana, in tents erected precariously on rocky hillsides.

Elsewhere on Idlib’s highways, its nomads carried tales of sacked cities and towns.

Ibrahim Ahmed el-Saeed drove north on a recent evening from Idlib city with his wife and four children on a three-wheeled buggy, stacked high with what he said were a quarter of all his belongings: mattresses, an oven, a cooler, a toolbox and a motorcycle.

Weeks earlier, he had fled Syrian army forces in southern Idlib and temporarily found shelter further north near Turkey’s border. But as new families arrived, their tent became too crowded, and he and his family drove back down to southern Idlib on the little buggy, which could manage about 24 miles per hour. When he arrived home, he was greeted by an inferno of shelling and airstrikes. So his family, with four young children, set back on the road.

Huda Fathullah, 40, had fled her home, and then a succession of nearby villages in southern Idlib in recent months, before settling in a stadium in Idlib city with seven members of her family. “We left everything,” she said, adding that she had no idea whether they would be able to ever return home.

The fate of Idlib was in the hands of fighters and far-off states. “May God solve it,” she said.