SIX YEARS AFTER REVOLT first broke out in cities and villages across Syria, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has rolled back the fractious opposition to its rule and regained control of almost every major population center in the country — except one, the northwestern province of Idlib.
Once famous for its olive groves and archaeological ruins, Idlib is now the last redoubt of Islamist opposition to Assad. The capital, Idlib City, has been under Islamist control since 2015, and today the two million people living in the province — many of them refugees from other parts of the country – could be caught up in a disastrous final confrontation between jihadists and the Assad regime.
Ahmad Awad, a civil society activist, was deported to Idlib by the Syrian regime as part of a brokered agreement earlier this year, when government forces retook his rebel-held hometown of Madaya. Awad, who became an activist during the revolution, had survived a years-long starvation siege and initially, he told The Intercept, “comparing to the circumstances I went through in Madaya, I was very happy when I reached Idlib.