In ten years, the war in Syria has upended the country's economy, demographics and social fabric. Today, anyone returning home after years away would no longer recognise it.
The red T-shirt, the short blue shorts, the small black shoes. Face down, arms along his body. Lifeless. Ten years have passed since the beginning of the war in Syria and, for five of them, that atrocious conflict has had a "face". An image, a symbol. That of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy from the Kurdish region of the Middle Eastern nation, washed up on a Turkish beach while trying to reach Europe. Today Alan would be eight years old.
The brutality of the Syrian conflict is laid bare in the photograph of that poor child. Alan had fled a country — Syria — that today is as if it no longer exists. Torn apart by an atrocious internal (and international) conflict. Reduced to rubble by opposing fundamentalisms that have turned it into a theatre of unspeakable atrocities. Ten years of war that have upended its economy, its demographics and its social fabric. So much so that, today, a Syrian returning home after so many years would struggle to recognise the houses, the streets, the cities, the shops, the people. Above all, the people.
In the United Nations Human Development Index, Syria fell from 111th to 151st place between 2010 and 2020. Around 80 per cent of families live below the poverty line. Prisons are overcrowded. Refugee camps, both inside and outside the country, are still full. International sanctions have not worked. The collapse of Lebanese banks, the true lifeline for Syrian businesses, has translated into a disaster. As a result, society is now largely in the hands of gangs, in those places where the regime of Bashar al-Assad does not yet hold sway.
The war in Syria thus enters its eleventh year. Leaving behind more than 388,000 deaths, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a non-governmental organisation based in the United Kingdom. Of these, more than 117,000 were civilian victims. Despite a de-escalation of the conflict in 2020, brought about by the ceasefire in the north-western part of the country and by the pandemic.
According to Unhcr, there are 5.5 million Syrian refugees in more than 130 countries around the world. Seventy per cent of them have no access to food, water or basic services for survival. Forty-five per cent of refugees are under 18, and 1.6 million children are under 10 years old. One million were born in exile: an entire scarred generation that, in addition to suffering hunger and cold, is frequently denied even the right to education.
It all began in March 2011, with the crackdown by the Damascus government on pro-democracy demonstrations. A wave of the Arab Spring that had swept across much of the Maghreb and the Middle East. Despite the government's response, the rebellion does not relent. On the contrary, a month later, the protest becomes more radical. In July, a colonel who had taken refuge in Turkey announces the creation of the Free Syrian Army, made up of civilians and defectors. Several Islamist groups join the rebels.
After a victory by the regular army, which in March 2012 retakes control of the rebel neighbourhood of Baba Amr in the city of Homs, on 17 July of the same year the rebels launch an assault on Damascus. The government retains control of the city, but some outlying areas fall into the hands of the opposition.
From April 2013 onwards, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Lebanese Shia paramilitary organisation and political party Hezbollah, enters the war in Syria. The organisation fights alongside the Assad government and is allied with Iran, itself the principal Shia backer of Damascus.
On 21 August 2013, a chemical weapons attack is carried out against two rebel strongholds on the outskirts of Damascus. According to the United States, the operation claimed no fewer than 1,429 victims, including 426 children. Washington threatens to launch airstrikes against Assad, but a last-minute agreement reached with Russia (a backer of Damascus) on the destruction of Syria's chemical arsenal averts the bombardment.
During 2014, jihadist militants from Islamic State appear on the Syrian war scene, invading the north of the country and seizing control of a particularly vast territory. Raqqa becomes their stronghold, partly thanks to the groundwork previously laid by another extremist group, the al-Nusra Front (later renamed Fateh al-Cham).
In September 2014, then-US president Barack Obama organises an international coalition whose stated objective is to fight Isis. Kurdish fighters, who since 2013 have established an autonomous territory in the northern areas of Syria, manage — thanks to allied bombardments — to wrest from the Islamists several particularly important towns, among them Kobane, liberated in 2015.
A year later, in September 2015, it is the moment of Russian interventionism. Moscow launches an aerial bombing campaign claiming it wants to strike terrorist groups — that is, not only Isis but also the rebels. The Russian raids will prove decisive in Assad's reconquest of several key areas of the country.
In August of the previous year, Turkey enters the fray directly. The Ankara government backs the rebels and launches a military operation from its own border, targeting Isis militants but also Kurdish fighters.
On 22 December 2016, after an extremely long and particularly bloody siege, Assad's army manages to wrest the eastern districts of the city of Aleppo from the rebels. An agreement signed by Iran, Russia and Turkey allows the evacuation (not without countless difficulties) of the civilians and fighters still present in the urban centre.
A peace agreement signed at the end of December between rebels and the Damascus government (along with their respective backers, but without the United States) makes it possible to enter a phase of partial ceasefire. In the north of the country, fighting against Isis continues, particularly in the city of Raqqa, the Islamists' stronghold, which since November 2016 has been besieged by an Arab-Kurdish coalition backed by Washington. Turkey, however, opposes the idea of the city, once liberated, being handed over to Kurdish forces, which Ankara regards as terrorists on a par with Isis.
The Ghouta, an area of cultivated land on the eastern outskirts of the capital Damascus, controlled by rebels, falls. At the beginning of February, the Syrian army launched a violent attack. Assad's soldiers surrounded the area, with the support of the Russian air force. Exactly as happened during the recapture of Aleppo, the military used hunger as a weapon against the 400,000 civilians and rebel groups present in the zone.
Thanks to an offensive lasting around ten days, Islamic fighters affiliated with the al-Qaeda group seize several territories in the province of Idlib, until that point controlled by the rebels of the National Liberation Front, backed by Turkey. Ankara does not react. On 6 May, Assad, once again with Russian support, launches an attack on the area. Fighting continues until the summer: only on 20 August do the jihadists announce their withdrawal from the city of Khan Shaykhun.
On 17 June the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, passed by the United States Congress, enters into force. The text provides for harsh new sanctions against the Assad regime and introduces, for the purposes of their application, an extraterritoriality regime. Anyone, of any nationality, who "provides significant support to the Syrian government, whether financial, material or technological, or has concluded significant transactions with it" may be targeted by the sanctions. A provision that is also intended to apply to the oil, military aviation, finance and construction sectors.
And so we arrive at 2021. Damascus currently controls just over 60% of Syrian territory. What remains outside its grasp is a last rebel enclave in the province of Idlib, the areas controlled by Turkey (whose objective is to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state along the northern border), and the north-eastern portion of the country, currently under the control of Kurdish forces.
A situation that remains chaotic. The price of which is paid above all by the most vulnerable, starting with children. Unicef explains that around 12,000 minors have been killed or wounded: "But these are the official figures," explains Andrea Iacomini, spokesperson for Italy at the United Nations agency. "I am convinced that the real numbers are far higher. Perhaps even five times as many.
To that must be added an unprecedented exodus of civilians. And yet the spotlight on Syria has long since gone out. The last time I personally went on television to talk about the situation was a year ago. I was recounting that there were 500,000 families in the north-east who had nothing, not even to wash their hands, and that an outbreak of Covid-19 there would have been a massacre. It was and remains a tragedy."
Assad, meanwhile, is 55 years old. And he is still in power. Every attempt to topple the regime has failed. He will almost certainly stand again for a fourth seven-year term in power: elections are scheduled for the coming summer. In all likelihood he will be re-elected. His face will continue to represent that of Syria: that of an immense landscape of ruins.
