‘I feel everything has ended, and this is a final migration, not displacement. This week’s 10th anniversary of the Syrian war finds the city still experiencing a Russian-Turkish ceasefire which has temporarily stopped the remorseless advance of regime forces on this final battlefield. They are not wanted in Turkey, which already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees, nor among the country’s other internal and external displaced people, some 50 per cent of its population in all. A world suddenly preoccupied with the coronavirus pandemic as an existential threat must not forget this other imminent threat to its civilised values in Idlib. The Russian-Turkish ceasefire symbolises how the war became internationalised along with its national intransigence.

Source: The Irish Times March 18, 2020 00:00 UTC