IDLIB, Syria – Among the millions of Syrians who fled while the government bombed their cities, destroyed their homes and killed loved ones, 150 families are occupied in a football stadium in the northwestern city of Idlib, housed in rickety tents beneath the stands. or in the rocky courtyard.
Work is scarce and terror overwhelms them whenever jets fly overhead: new air strikes can occur at any time. But fear of government retaliation prevents them from returning home. More than 1,300 similar camps dot the last bastions of Syria under rebel control, consuming agricultural land, extending along irrigation canals and filling lots near apartment buildings where families of refugees are occupied in damaged, windowless units.
“People will stay in these places with all the catastrophes before they live under the Bashar al-Assad regime,” said Okba al-Rahoum, the camp manager at the football stadium.
On a rare visit to Idlib province, examples of shocked and impoverished people abounded in a cloudy and often violent limbo abounded. Trapped within a wall to prevent them from fleeing across the border with Turkey and a hostile government that could attack at any time, they struggle to provide for basic needs in a territory controlled by a militant group previously linked to Al Qaeda.
In the decade since the start of the war in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces crushed communities that revolted against him, and millions of people fled into new lives of uncertainty – in neighboring countries, Europe and Syria’s pockets outside Al- Assad’s grip, including the rebel-controlled northwest.
The Syrian leader made it clear that these people do not fit his conception of victory, and few are likely to return as long as he remains in power, making the fate of the displaced one of the most thorny parts of the unfinished business of the war.
“The question is, what is the future for these people?” said Mark Cutts, the United Nations deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria. “They cannot go on living forever in muddy fields under olive trees beside the road.”
Throughout the war, the rebel-controlled northwest became the destination of last resort for Syrians with nowhere else to go. The government took them here by bus after conquering their cities. They came in with trucks full of blankets, mattresses and children. Some arrived on foot, with few possessions other than the clothes they wore.
Last year, an offensive by the Syrian government, supported by Russia and Iran, pushed nearly a million people into the area.
Some 2.7 million of the 4.2 million people in the northwest, one of the last two strips of territory controlled by a rebel movement that has already controlled much of Syria, have fled other parts of the country. This influx transformed a pastoral strip of agricultural villages into a dense conglomerate of improvised settlements with difficult infrastructure and displaced families huddled in all available spaces.
After the fighting consumed his hometown, Akram Saeed, a former policeman, fled to the Syrian village of Qah near the border with Turkey in 2014 and settled on a piece of land overlooking an olive grove in a valley below. Since then, he has seen waves of his countrymen reaching the valley, where the olive trees have given way to a densely packed tent camp.
“Last year, all of Syria ended up here,” said Saeed. “Only God knows what will come in the future.”
Humanitarian organizations working to curb hunger and infectious diseases, including Covid-19, have struggled to get enough help in the area. And that effort could become more difficult if Russia, al-Assad’s closest international ally, blocks a United Nations resolution to be renewed this summer to keep a northwestern border crossing open for international aid.
Further complicating the international dilemma about helping Idlib is the dominant role of the militant rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS
The group evolved from the Nusra Front, a jihadist organization that declared its loyalty to Al Qaeda at the beginning of the war and stood out for its abundant use of suicide bombers against the government and civilian targets.
Turkey, the United States and the United Nations consider HTS to be a terrorist organization, although its leaders publicly distanced themselves from Al Qaeda in 2016 and have since downplayed its jihadist roots. These efforts were clear around Idlib, where flags, insignia and graffiti announcing the group’s presence were absent, although residents often referred to it with caution as “the group that controls the area”.
Unlike the Islamic State, the terrorist group that fought both rebels and the government to control an extension of the territory on the border between Syria and Iraq, HTS is not pushing for the immediate creation of an Islamic state and does not place police officers from morality to enforce strict social codes rules.
During a visit to the frontline positions of the group, a military spokesman known by the war name Abu Khalid al-Shami took reporters up a dirt ladder hidden in a bunker to a long underground tunnel that leads to a network of trenches and firing points manned by fighters.
“The regime is like that, this is how the Russians and the Iranian militias are there,” he said, pointing across the green fields to where the group’s enemies were buried.
When asked how the group differs from its predecessor, the Qaeda franchise, he classifies it as part of a broader rebel movement that seeks to overthrow Al-Assad.
To manage the area, HTS helped establish the Syrian Salvation Government, which has more than 5,000 employees and 10 ministries, including justice, education and agriculture, the head of administration, Ali Keda, said in an interview.
It is not internationally recognized and struggles to meet the overwhelming needs of the area.
Critics consider the administration to be a civil facade that allows a banned group to interact with foreign organizations; they accuse him and HTS of detaining critics and ending activities seen in conflict with their strict Islamic views.
Last month, Rania Kisar, the Syrian-American director of SHINE, an educational organization, asked a group of women at an event in Idlib to refuse polygamous marriages, which are permitted under Islamic law.
The next day, armed men closed SHINE’s office and threatened to arrest their manager, Kisar said.
An administration spokesman, Melhem al-Ahmad, confirmed he had closed the office “until further notice” after considering Ms. Kisar’s words “an insult to public sentiment and morals”.
A spokesman for HTS said aid and media organizations were free to work within “a revolutionary structure” that respects the rules and does not go beyond what is allowed.
An advance by government forces last year has increased pressure on Idlib’s already tense services.
At a maternity hospital in the city of Idlib, Dr. Ikram Haboush remembered the birth of three or four babies a day before the war. Now, as many doctors have fled and there are so few facilities, she usually supervises 15 deliveries a day.
The hospital is full and lacks the means to deal with difficult cases.
“Sometimes we have babies that are born prematurely, but we have nowhere to put them, and when we can transfer them to Turkey, the child is dead,” she said.
Since last year, a ceasefire between Russia and Turkey has stopped direct combat in Idlib, but in one day last month there have been three attacks. A projectile hit a refugee camp; an air strike detonated a fuel tank on the border with Turkey; and three artillery shells hit a village hospital in Al Atarib, killing seven patients, including an orphaned boy who had been vaccinated, according to the American Syrian Medical Society, which supports the facility.
While the homeless in the area struggle to survive, others try to provide simple pleasures.
In the city of Idlib, the Disneyland restaurant invites visitors to eat salads and grilled meats, and to forget their misfortunes with video games, bumper cars, air hockey and stuffed animal claw machines.
The basement deposit doubles as a shelter when the government attacks nearby, and the terrace is surrounded by a plastic cover instead of glass so it won’t shatter in cafeterias if something explodes nearby.
The manager, Ahmed Abu Kheir, lost his job at a tourist restaurant that closed when the war started, he said, then opened a smaller place that was later destroyed by government bombings.
He opened another restaurant, but left it behind when the government confiscated the area last year and he fled to Idlib.
Like all displaced people in Idlib, he longed to take his family home, but he was happy to work in a place that spread a little joy in the meantime.
“We are convinced that normal life must continue,” he said. “We want to live.”