The war in Syria has now been going on for six years: here are the ten watershed dates of a conflict that has claimed 321,000 lives and driven almost five million people to flee.
The war in Syria began six years ago. Over these 72 months, it has claimed – according to information reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 321,000 lives and left 145,000 people missing. The non-governmental organisation Médecins du monde has added that at least 12.8 million Syrian citizens are currently in need of medical assistance: a figure significantly higher than a year ago, when the total did not exceed 11.5 million.
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"Since the fall of Aleppo last December – Françoise Sivignon, president of the NGO, told the French daily Le Monde – we have the impression that the international community has forgotten about Syria. And yet the tragedy continues here." The same organisation noted that 338 attacks on healthcare facilities were recorded in 2016 alone, which caused, among other things, the deaths of 53 patients and 15 members of medical staff.
To all of this must be added the refugee crisis from the Middle Eastern nation: according to figures released in February by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the total number of people forced to flee their homeland since the start of the war stands at 4.9 million. The majority have chosen to cross into Turkey (as many as 2.9 million), while 1.5 million have sought refuge in Lebanon and 630,000 in Jordan (although the latter puts the figure at 1.4 million). Others have taken refuge in Iraq and Egypt. The UNHCR itself estimates that 90 per cent of this immense mass of men, women and children now live in conditions of poverty. This is despite the efforts of numerous international organisations, as well as local volunteer groups, among them the White Helmets: around three thousand volunteers who, risking their lives, have spent months and months rescuing the victims of bombardments.
Here are the main stages that have marked the conflict from 2011 to the present day.
On 15 March 2011, a protest movement begins to take shape in Syria, a country governed for 40 years by the Assad family. The first organised demonstrations in the capital Damascus calling for "a Syria without dictatorship" are violently suppressed. But in the south of the country the Arab Spring refuses to relent, despite approximately one hundred deaths recorded during the marches. A month later, the opposition 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.
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Following a victory by the regular army, which in March 2012 retook 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 pass into the hands of the opposition.
From April 2013, Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of the Lebanese Shia paramilitary organisation and political party Hezbollah, enters the war in Syria. The group fights alongside Assad's government and is allied with Iran, itself the principal Shia backer of Damascus.
On 21 August 2013, a chemical weapons attack is launched 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 supporter of Damascus) on the destruction of Syria's chemical arsenal averts the bombardment.
During 2014, Islamic State militants appear on the Syrian battlefield, invading the north of the country and seizing control of a particularly vast territory. Raqqa becomes their stronghold, in part thanks to the groundwork previously laid by another jihadist group, the al-Nusra Front (later renamed Fateh al-Cham).
In September 2014, then US president Barack Obama assembles an international coalition whose stated objective is to fight Isis. Kurdish fighters, who since 2013 have established an autonomous territory in the northern regions of Syria, manage – thanks to allied bombardments – to wrest from the Islamists a number of particularly important centres, among them Kobane, liberated in 2015.
A year later, in September 2015, it is Russia's turn to intervene. Moscow launches an aerial bombing campaign, claiming it wishes to target terrorist groups — that is, not only Isis but the rebels too. The Russian airstrikes will prove decisive in Assad's recapture of several key areas of the country.
In August of last 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 a lengthy 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 makes it possible to evacuate (not without innumerable difficulties) 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 begin a phase of partial ceasefire. In the north of the country, however, fighting against Isis continues, particularly in the city of Raqqa, the Islamists' stronghold, which since November 2016 has been under siege 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 considers terrorists on a par with Isis.