Syria – internally displaced people in Idlib: trapped in war

One tent lines up with the next, stretching over kilometers to the horizon. In between: people. Women, children, the elderly, the sick. Some only wear rags on their bodies. Many are dozing off.

Idlib was once a prosperous province in northwest Syria, right on the border with Turkey. Today, after almost ten years of civil war, Idlib is a single, huge refugee camp. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled here before the regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad, in one of the last regions controlled by rebels. According to estimates by aid organizations, two million people live in camps, tents or wooden crates; a total of around four million are in the province.

Men pose by the roadside with guns

 The  world community has largely forgotten the Syrians.

 The  US and EU are doing almost nothing to stop the killing. Russia, Turkey and Iran divide Syria among themselves.

 The  EU countries are not even ready to help internally displaced people. Europe doesn’t exist in Idlib. Aid comes, if at all, from Turkey and, to a very limited extent, from the UN.

Anyone who makes their way to Idlib from Turkey has the feeling of entering a lawless area. Men pose on the side of the road with guns, children beg for food.

 The re is no electricity and no running water in the tent camps.

Rashel, 34 years old and mother of four, has been in a wheelchair since she was seriously injured in an air strike by the Assad regime. She fled from the south of Idlib to a camp in the Syrian-Turkish border area. “We just had to leave,” she says. One of her sons made it across the border to Gaziantep. Rashel’s dearest wish is to follow him.

 The  Turkish government, however, blocked the way with a concrete wall.

Turkey has taken in almost four million civil war refugees, more than any other country. In recent years, however, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has changed course. Like the Europeans, he is increasingly sealing off his country from refugees.

Erdoğan wants the Syrians to stay in their homeland.

 The  Turkish disaster control agency Afad has started to build concrete houses for the refugees in Idlib. According to the Turkish authorities, 300,000 people will be housed in these dwellings by the summer.

According to their residents, the conditions in the Afad camps are significantly better than in the informal tent camps.

 The re is a kitchen and a bathroom in the houses, some even have a small terrace.

 The  Turkish government is proud of its commitment in Idlib. She regularly organizes press trips to the province. So also in this case.

 The  freedom of movement for journalists is restricted on these trips. SPIEGEL nevertheless decided to take part in order to be able to take at least a limited look at a region that has been largely forgotten by the global public. SPIEGEL bears the cost of the trip itself.

Life in Idlib is depressing for the refugees.

 The y can neither go back nor forward and must fear at any time that the ceasefire that Turkey and its allies of the Free Syrian Army agreed with Assad and Russia will be terminated and that Assad will attack the province. People have no perspective for the future, they are caught in the war. “Europe is no longer a place we can reach,” says the Syrian Rashel.

Erdoğan increases the pressure on the EU

In addition, the UN’s aid supplies only reach Idlib to a very limited extent. Diplomats fear that Russia has blocked deliveries to Syria in the United Nations Security Council, and the Putin regime could soon stop them entirely. Medical care is poor and people are vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Erdoğan meanwhile increases the pressure on the EU. He wants the Europeans to contribute more to the costs of housing and caring for the refugees in Turkey.