News Agency
Syria
A new flare-up in the Syrian civil war is taking place in Idlib — the landlocked northern province that is the last holdout against the Assad regime.
More than 27,000 were displaced in just a few days last week, and as many as 400,000 civilians in total in the last month alone. This is out of a population of about 4 million. Over the ongoing crisis, the region has accumulated about 1,150 internal refugee camps, to say nothing of the close to 4 million Syrians who have made their way into Turkey or the other millions who fled to Jordan, Lebanon or toward Europe.
But the most remarkable thing about Idlib is the sheer brazenness with which the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are committing war crimes. More than 60 civilian hospitals have been bombed since last May just in Idlib, with hundreds of medical workers killed. Starvation sieges are once again the go-to tactic for the Syrian regime and Russia, just in case there was any doubt that this war is being waged against an entire civilian population, and not some alleged “terrorist elements.”
Access to the region by UN humanitarian bodies or other international community actors is once again being restricted, close to being shut down entirely. Indeed, the Assad government is now insisting that all humanitarian aid to the region must go through the very armed forces that are carrying out these sieges, which are illegal under international law.
The play is the same as we have seen throughout the Syrian civil war since Russia joined the fray: The aim is the complete submission of the entire population — men, women and children — to the Assad state apparatus. This is the same state apparatus that is now carrying out reprisals for previous resistance in the areas of Syria where the rebellion has already been suppressed.
