Syria's struggles are far from over – this is what's next

It seems an age ago now that Colvin died alongside French photographer Remi Ochlik when the building they were in was shelled.

Famed war correspondent Marie Colvin was killed in Syria

Paul Conroy, who was the Sunday Times photographer and a long-time reporting partner of Colvin, was seriously wounded in the same attack that the Washington court has now ruled deliberately targeted the journalists. In other words, they were murdered.

While the court’s decision awarded some $302.5 million in punitive damages to relatives of Colvin, no one expects the Assad regime to put the cheque in the post any time soon.

The decision, too, will not bring back one of the finest war reporters of recent times, but is nonetheless a victory of sorts, sending out as it does an unequivocal message that murdering journalists has consequences.

For this reason alone, it’s understandable that the story made headlines. That Marie Colvin’s life and times is also the subject of a newly released feature film, A Private War, and the subject of a memorably insightful biography entitled In Extremis, by friend and fellow journalist Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News, only added to world interest in the story.

But ask any war correspondent who knew, met or worked alongside Marie Colvin – myself included – and they will tell you that she herself, while looking out for colleagues, would have been just as concerned about other stories emerging from Syria right now, especially those involving the plight of civilians.

Just like her great American journalist predecessor, Martha Gellhorn, best known for her dispatches from the Second World War, Colvin’s reporting focused on ordinary people caught up in war’s maelstrom.

Had Colvin been alive today and still working in Syria right now, she no doubt would have drawn attention to the dire humanitarian situation currently gripping rural areas of Deir Ezzor in the east of the country.

As families have made the long, frozen, sometimes barefoot trek out of the last territory controlled by the jihadists of the Islamic state (IS) group to a refugee camp in north-eastern Syria over the past two months, at least 29 children and newborn babies have died before reaching help, mainly from hypothermia.

At least 18 of them died over the past week, a toll that added to the hundreds of thousands killed over the course of Syria’s civil war, now approaching its eighth year.

Last week the United Nations appealed for unhindered access to some 33,000 people living in bitterly cold winter conditions without tents, blankets or heating.

In that same time, more than 10,000 people have fled fighting in Hajin in eastern Deir Ezzor governorate, says Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

“Since fighting escalated in Hajin in early December, more than 23,000 people have fled to al-Hol camp, effectively tripling its population,” he said. “Many more are expected.”

About 80 children were separated from their families during the journey to al-Hol, and came to the camp unaccompanied – while almost a third of those displaced are younger than five years old, say aid officials.

“The situation in the camp is now critical,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned in a statement.

“The authorities are overwhelmed and struggling to cope with the sheer numbers of people. Many new arrivals are malnourished and exhausted following years of deprivation living under the control of IS,” the UN health agency confirmed.

Those fleeing Hajin described fierce fighting, and said they were blocked from leaving by IS extremists, who used to control large swathes of northern Iraq and Syria.

“Families fleeing the Hajin enclave and surrounding areas have also told us of a harrowing journey to safety,” Mahecic explained.

“They travel at night with barely any belongings, often having to wade through the minefields and open fighting.”

On reaching positions controlled by US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the hungry and cold civilians, mainly women and children, face long delays and security checks in the open countryside before being herded into trucks and transported northwards to al-Hol camp.

ELSEWHERE last month, the UN health agency expressed concerns over the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the Rukban refugee camp, situated near the border with Jordan. WHO said that approximately 40,000 people, mainly women and children, had been stranded in the settlement, with harsh winter conditions leading to several deaths.

Winter diseases associated with overcrowding and indoor air pollution had left young children vulnerable, as health care facilities inside the refugee camp continue to be poorly resourced.

Back in Deir Ezzor for months now, on a remote stretch of land on the Euphrates river in eastern Syria, IS has been fighting its last stand.

A realm that once stretched from western Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad is, according to senior SDF commanders, now a mere few square kilometres.

The offensive to recapture this last pocket of IS-controlled territory began in September last year. Having lost all the major Syrian cities and urban areas under its control to the SDF, the jihadists, many of them foreign fighters, have retreated to a string of villages along the eastern bank of the Euphrates.

But the collapse of its self-declared caliphate has been accompanied by a chaotic and complicated fallout, with coalition fighters trying to sort civilians from extremists, and foreign powers grappling with the question of whether to take back fighters from their countries.

US officials now estimate there are 800 IS prisoners who need to be dealt with at a series of Kurdish-run prisons and holding facilities across northern Syria.

Ilham Ahmed, a senior official with a Kurdish group that fought IS alongside the US, says the number of family members of captured fighters may top 4000.

One thing is clear, Ahmed told Bloomberg news: “No one wants to take them.”

Local administrators, it appears, simply don’t want responsibility for guarding and feeding so many militants, and lack the capacity to stage trials for people on charges of war crimes and other abuses, says Abdulkarim Omar, joint head of foreign relations in the Kurdish-led area in north-eastern Syria.

“It’s a huge number. Some of them are very dangerous people, and we live in a very unstable area,” he said Piled up in prison camps in this remote corner of Syria, wanted by neither their home government nor by their captors, the IS prisoners potentially pose a new threat to the region, where – although the jihadists are being ousted from territorial bases – they continue to operate sleeper cells and will likely intensify an insurgency campaign.

“This is a serious issue that’s got to be addressed quickly,” said Seth Jones, director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, when asked about the IS prisoners.

Deciding how to handle fighters who try to return to their countries of origin has been a concern for many nations throughout Europe and beyond The US preference would be for the countries that IS fighters originally came from to take responsibility for them, but most foreign governments are reluctant to do so. Some fear the returning jihadis could radicalise their cellmates. Housing them separately could strain resources and legal systems. And there’s the question of what to do with their wives and children.

Last week, the French Government confirmed that it’s currently in discussions about repatriating IS fighters and their families, a policy shift prompted by the withdrawal of US troops from Syria.

Washington’s decision to pull out from Syria quickly has left Paris fearing that French jihadists will either disperse or fall into the hands of the Syrian Government if the Kurdish-led forces strike a peace deal with the government in Damascus.

“Given the evolution of the military situation in north-east Syria, American decisions, and to ensure the safety of the French people, we are examining all options to avoid the escape and dispersion of these potentially dangerous people,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll confirmed in a daily briefing last week.

UNTIL now, French government policy has been to categorically refuse to take back fighters and their wives. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has categorised them as “enemies” of the nation who should face justice either in Syria or Iraq, but the American withdrawal has made France think again.

“We are exploring all options in order to prevent these potentially dangerous individuals from escaping or dispersing,” Le Drian told reporters last week.

While France says that in Iraq trials there for detained IS prisoners would conceivably continue, Syria is an altogether different situation “In Syria, the situation is more complicated: a portion of the territory is still at war, in the north-east, and the announcement of the American withdrawal may result in the dispersion of these terrorists,” stressed Le Drian.

“We are therefore preparing for all eventualities in the north-east, including the possibility of an expulsion.”

Many security analysts say France has simply no other option but to take the prisoners.

“We’ve experienced that Syrian Kurds were not organised in such a way that they could put our citizens on trial. It’s a very embryonic organisation,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, the director of the French Centre for the Analysis of Terrorism, in an interview with the Washington Post.

“They don’t have judicial institutions to formally put these individuals on trial, at least in a proper way.”

The US withdrawal, he added, further complicated matters. “The decision has been imposed on us on the ground,” said Brisard.

“We have no other option but to transfer them to France, to be sure that they won’t escape. The main risk is that they will disseminate in the region and plot again elsewhere.”

Excluding families, officials estimate that 250 French jihadists are still fighting in Syria, including 150 in the Hajin area in eastern Deir Ezzor governorate, and 100 in Idlib province. Fighters from other countries, too, are said to be holed up in the Hajin enclave, so the chances of yet more prisoners to deal with remains.

But while the wrangle over what to do with captured foreign IS extremists occupies some minds, it’s the worsening humanitarian crises exacerbated by their last stand in Deir Ezzor that is of immediate concern to humanitarian agencies.

Almost daily, harrowing details continue to emerge, and aid agencies still face enormous logistical and security problems.

“We have approached the authorities who are effectively in control of the area where we need to work”, says UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic.

“We have also appealed to those fighting and those with influence over those involved in the fighting to do their utmost to grant safety for the civilians fleeing and to allow humanitarian access in the areas where we need.”

Amid a continuing surge in arrivals to al-Hol camp and overcrowding, UNHCR and its partners have set up 24-hour response teams to identify the most vulnerable arrivals and provide assistance, especially to unaccompanied or separated children.

As the biting cold takes a grip here in the UK, it’s perhaps worth sparing a moment to consider what it must be like for those across Syria, trapped outdoors in such weather, surrounded by war.

“Millions are living under tents or tarpaulins or in damaged buildings with no power or heating.

‘‘There are severe shortages of all the basics, from blankets to baby milk to bandages,” Mark Lowcock, UN emergency relief co-ordinator told the UN Security Council last week.

Syria might not make the headlines the way it once did, but the pain goes on. Journalist Marie Colvin recognised that it’s always civilians that suffer most in times of conflict.

Last week, a US court ruled that she was murdered for bringing that very point home to the world. We owe it to her and countless ordinary Syrians to make sure we don’t stop taking notice of that.