The EconomistSeptember 7th 2019 211E
ight yearsinto a savage war, the im-
ages still numb. Near the village of
Haas, a headless child lies amid the rubble
of bombed homes. In the town of Ariha, an
infant dangles several stories up from the
wreckage of another building while her fa-
ther looks on in horror. There is smoke and
dust and blood, gnarled metal and
smashed concrete, and the vacant stares of
people who have endured almost a decade
of violence.
This is the start of a protracted battle for
the province of Idlib, a swathe of scrubland
in north-western Syria which contains
dozens of towns and villages like Ariha and
Haas as well as the city for which it is
named. Lying between Aleppo and the
coastal province of Latakia, it is the last big
chunk of territory held by rebels.
All summer long Syrian and Russian
jets have bombed Idlib, destroying homes,
hospitals, schools and bakeries. The Un-
ited Nations sought to protect medical fa-
cilities by sharing their co-ordinates withRussia (“humanitarian deconfliction”, in
unjargon), but after dozens of air strikes
on hospitals and clinics, doctors came to
believe that the no-strike list was in fact be-
ing used as a target set. They have stopped
sharing their locations.
On the ground the Syrian army has re-
taken Khan Sheikhoun, the site of a vicious
chemical-weapons attack by the regime in- The biggest town in the south of the
province, it occupies a strategic position
along the m5, the motorway that connects
Damascus to Aleppo. It will thus be a for-
ward base as the army moves north in the
coming months, fighting what remains of
the opposition for one battered village after
another while bombers roar overhead.
There have been desperate attempts to
halt the offensive. As The Economistwent to
press, a Russian-brokered ceasefire had
temporarily halted the regime’s bombing.
It will not last. Syria’s president, Bashar al-
Assad, ever the revanchist, is determined
to retake the last bit of rebel-held land. The
Syrian dictator’s opponents can do little to
resist him, while his allies are unwilling or
unable to restrain him.
It is tempting to think that, for all its
ghastliness, this campaign at least marks
the end of the war. But it marks at best the
end of the fighting: not of the damage. It
threatens to send a new exodus of refugees
to Turkey, where hundreds of thousands of
newly displaced Syrians have massed on
the border, and perhaps beyond. And it will
leave Mr Assad in control of a depopulated,
ruined country, ruled through fear and be-
holden to allies busy squabbling for spoils.
Syria will be suffering and unstable for
years, possibly decades.
Mr Assad had long telegraphed this of-
fensive. Until this summer, though, he was
in no position to launch it. His army, never
much of a fighting force to begin with, was
badly depleted after eight years of war. Iran
wanted no part of the battle for a province it
saw as peripheral and unimportant. Most
of all, he was restrained by a deal Russia
and Turkey made in 2018. The Sochi agree-
ment, as it is known, put the onus on Tur-
key to enforce a buffer zone up to 25km
deep between the rebels in Idlib and the re-
gime. Extremist groups like Hayat TahrirWings over prayers
In Idlib a deceitful near-decade of war is grinding towards a close.
But the suffering will go onBriefing The Syrian civil war
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