Foreign Correspondent: Mar 10

This week on Foreign Correspondent, is “Trapped in Idlib,” a story on Syria’s last opposition holdout against Assad and his Russian allies.

Before Ukraine, there was Syria.

Now in its 11th year, this ongoing conflict is Russia’s forgotten war. Since Putin got involved in 2015, Russian military support has helped the dictator Bashar al-Assad turn the tide and take back control of most of the country.

The intense aerial bombardment being felt now in Ukraine is all too familiar to the Syrian people.

In 2016, Syrian journalist Yaman Khatib lived through the brutal Russian bombing campaign which left the city of Aleppo in ruins and delivered it into Assad’s hands.

Khatib fled to neighbouring Turkey, but he’s come back to Syria to see how the people who stayed are faring.

Khatib visits the embattled province of Idlib in the northwest, the last opposition holdout against Assad and his Russian allies.

More than three million people live there, two thirds of them displaced from other parts of the country.

He meets families who’ve just arrived, families who’ve lost everything and the brave people who help them.

Khatib meets Ahlam, a mother and herself a refugee. She and her family have lived in Idlib for a decade.

Every day Ahlam heads out onto the streets seeking out people who’ve just arrived, offering them help. She blogs about the situation on social media, hoping to draw attention to their plight.

“We never imagined that one day, in our country, in our own homes, that someone would come to us and say, ‘Leave! Get out! Go live in a tent!”’says Ahlam. “That’s why I can truly relate to the pain of others. I’ve experienced it myself.”

Khatib says that the world’s indifference to Syrians’ plight continues to surprise them.

600,000 dead. More than six and half million refugees outside the country, and six and half million citizens internally displaced. No meaningful international help.

Khatib meets Abu Medien, a farmer and father of 8, their belongings all crammed into their truck.

The family has been on the road for three years and have moved 15 times. He wants to go home. “That would be the best thing for us. We don’t want anything, not even a house.”

But with international borders now closed, the people here are stuck, Khatib says, ‘like ghosts’.

Despite the ceasefire in Idlib agreed to by Russia and Turkey in 2020, bombings have continued.

Both Russia and Syria are guilty of war crimes, says the UN, but neither have been held accountable.

8pm Thursday on 10.