“There’s nothing now. Nothing at all,” said Yasser Aboud, as he looked away from his family’s few remaining belongings, dumped on the floor of the bare single room that would now be their home in the northwest Syrian city of Idlib, The Associated Press reported.
It was a far cry from the house, the farm, and the job that he, his wife and three children left behind two months ago, fleeing their hometown just 15 kilometers (9 miles) down the road as it was overwhelmed by Syrian government troops in furious fighting. He managed to salvage some jerrycans of olives, a few rugs, cushions and pots and pans, and his motorbike. They sold their washing machine and some of his wife’s gold.
Now they were moving into an apartment in a district full of buildings shattered by government bombardment. He and his wife and three kids will share the place with over a dozen relatives. They’re jobless in a city teeming with thousands of others displaced like them — and they are hardly out of danger.
The city of Idlib is the last urban area still under opposition control in Syria, located in a shrinking rebel enclave in the northwestern province of the same name. Syria’s civil war, which entered its 10th year on Monday, has shrunk in geographical scope — focusing on this tiny corner of the country — but the misery wreaked by the conflict has not diminished.
A bloodier and possibly more disastrous phase is on the horizon if government forces, backed by Russia and Iran, go ahead with threats to recapture Idlib city and the remaining rebel-held north, crammed with over 3 million people.
Over the past three months, government troops recaptured nearly half of Idlib province and surrounding areas, forcing nearly 1 million to flee their homes, around half of them into other parts of the province, including Idlib city. During the advances, government forces neared Idlib city outskirts, bombing parts and sending thousands fleeing north.
“I feel everything has ended, and this is a final migration, not displacement,” Aboud said. “I feel let down by the world.”
The government offensive has been paused by a Russian-Turkish cease-fire deal, leaving residents of the rebel enclave, including Idlib city, in a state of terrifying limbo. They are skeptical that the cease-fire will last and well aware they are likely the next target of the government’s assault.
Though government airstrikes have hit it regularly, the city has suffered far less violence than other places since 2015, when rebels seized it from government forces. Over the years since, multiple waves of displaced people flowed in, from other opposition areas further south retaken by the government, and now more from other parts of Idlib.
The Associated Press traveled to Idlib on a trip arranged through Turkish authorities. Its team, like other journalists who have been into the enclave recently, was escorted by members of a media outfit linked to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an al-Qaida-linked group that dominates the area.
Driving into Idlib city, the AP team witnessed the scale of the displacement. Dozens of tents lined the main road into the city. Other families were crammed into bombed out buildings, the city’s stadium or unfinished construction sites. Shops have sprung around the enclave bearing the names of different cities and towns in Syria — a testimony and a token to the homes they left behind.
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