ISTANBUL: Disagreement between Turkey and Russia over how to tackle the Syrian rebel stronghold of Idlib seems to have deferred a looming regime offensive on the province, analysts say.
Russia and Turkey are on opposite sides of the conflict, but key global allies.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Russian and Iranian leaders Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani in Tehran on September 7 to discuss Syria, just as a major assault by Russia-backed regime forces on Idlib appeared imminent.
But discord at the summit between Erdogan and Putin, in a rare scene captured on camera, may have prompted Russia to postpone the Idlib strike so as not to provoke Ankara, which is fiercely opposed to a military option.
“I believe an offensive, if there will be one, will not come before several weeks,” a senior Turkish official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Turkey, which backs rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad’s regime, co-sponsors — with regime allies Russia and Iran — the so-called Astana talks launched in January 2017 in the quest for a lasting cease-fire.
To date, the dialogue has resulted in the creation of four pre-cease-fire “de-escalation zones” in Syria, including in Idlib.
Idlib is the last major opposition stronghold in the war-torn country. Sixty percent of the area is controlled by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) extremist group, an Al-Qaeda branch operating in Syria.
Intense negotiations have taken place between Turkey and Russia since the failure of the Tehran summit, to hammer out a compromise in a bid to avert an assault which Erdogan has cautioned would ignite a “bloodbath.”
Such a compromise could include neutralising the HTS — officially designated as a terror group by Ankara. Erdogan and Putin are expected to discuss the issue when they meet in the Russian resort city of Sochi on Monday.
For Turkey, the stakes are high.
Ankara fears a large-scale assault on Idlib, which lies on its southern border, could trigger a massive flow of refugees onto its soil. Turkey is already home to more than three million Syrians who have fled the conflict.
Abdul Wahab Assi, an analyst at the Syria-based Jusoor Studies Center, said disagreements at the Tehran summit “rule out a possible offensive in the short run, at least until the end of the year.”
He said a possible compromise from the ongoing talks could take the form of a “limited military operation or surgical strikes” targeting the HTS, or modifying the borders of the de-escalation zones to keep armed rebels from certain sectors.
Russia may be open to such a plan, Assi said, as long as it would secure the Idlib section of the Aleppo-Damascus highway and put an end to drone attacks launched from Idlib against Moscow’s main military base of Hmeimim in the neighboring province of Latakia.
Some three million people live in Idlib province and adjacent areas, the United Nations says, around half of whom have already fled their homes in other parts of Syria.
Regime forces and Russian warplanes resumed airstrikes on Idlib in September but the strikes fell in intensity this week.
Turkish media reported Ankara has sent reinforcements, including tanks, to beef up its border with Syria and its observation posts in Idlib.
Turkish military analyst Metin Gurcan, judges these measures to be of a “defensive” nature, aimed at protecting Turkish observation posts against any possible threat.
Gurcan said the lack of an agreement with Ankara could push Moscow, and thus the Syrian regime, to stage an “incremental operation that will last months” rather than a full-fledged attack.
“Russia is trying to keep Ankara in the game,” he told AFP, saying any confrontation between the two countries was “highly unlikely.”
“Moscow needs Turkey as a Sunni power to balance Shiite militias’ presence in northern Syria,” he said.
Turkey-Russia discord over Idlib defers regime offensive, for now
Turkey-Russia discord over Idlib defers regime offensive, for now
- Idlib is the last major opposition stronghold in the war-torn country
- Intense negotiations have taken place between Turkey and Russia since the failure of the Tehran summit
WEF panel told grassroots aid workers keep Sudan afloat even as conflict puts them at risk
- Speakers warned that without urgent action to protect humanitarian access and support local responders, Sudan’s crisis will continue to deepen and destabilize the wider region
LONDON: Grassroots Sudanese aid groups are filling critical humanitarian gaps left by limited international access, but their volunteers are facing hunger, arrest and deadly risks as the conflict enters its fourth year, speakers warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.
More than 20 million people in Sudan are facing acute hunger, while more than 11 million have been displaced, making it the largest displacement crisis in the world. As fighting continues and access for international agencies tightens, community-led networks have become a primary lifeline for civilians across the country.
“We need to strengthen local capacity and support community-led solutions like Emergency Response Rooms and mutual aid groups, with a more localized and decolonized humanitarian response,” said Hanin Ahmed, a Sudanese activist and Emergency Response Room leader.
Ahmed described how volunteers were delivering food, medical support and protection services in areas that international organizations struggled to reach. However, she warned that these efforts came at immense personal cost.
Volunteers are often displaced themselves, facing food insecurity, arrest, kidnapping, and in some cases, killing by the warring parties. Famine, she said, was no longer confined to traditionally affected regions.
“There is famine not only in Darfur, but also in Khartoum, the capital,” Ahmed told the panel, pointing to widespread unemployment, disease outbreaks, and rising cases of gender-based violence across multiple states.
Despite the scale of the crisis, Ahmed emphasized that Sudanese communities retained both the willingness and capacity to recover if adequately supported.
“Sudanese people are willing to resolve this war if supported,” she said.
Panelists stressed that hunger in Sudan was not driven by a lack of aid, but by deliberate barriers to its delivery.
“The story of Sudan’s war is a story of impunity,” said David Miliband, president and chief executive officer of the International Rescue Committee.
“To tackle impunity, we need to challenge restrictions on humanitarian access, end sieges, and address the profiteering that fuels the conflict,” he added.
Miliband said that while humanitarian funding remained critically low, access constraints were the primary factor preventing life-saving assistance from reaching civilians. Only 28 percent of the UN humanitarian appeal for Sudan had been funded, he said, compounding the effects of obstruction on the ground.
Meanwhile, where assistance was available, needs continued to outstrip capacity. Barham Salih, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, described visiting refugee-hosting areas along Sudan’s borders, where people arrived after experiencing extreme violence, deprivation and trauma.
“Ten liters of water per person per day is far below emergency standards,” Salih said.
“Only 16 percent of those who need mental health support are receiving it, and only one in three families in need of shelter actually have access,” he added.
Salih stressed that statistics failed to capture the scale of human suffering. “Behind every number is a human life,” he said, recounting testimonies of abuse, rape and killings from refugees who had crossed the border only hours earlier.
As humanitarian systems inside Sudan continue to falter, the consequences are increasingly felt beyond its borders.
Neighboring countries including Chad, Kenya, Egypt and Uganda are hosting large numbers of Sudanese refugees despite limited infrastructure and resources.
“What starts in Sudan does not stay in Sudan,” Miliband said. “This is a crisis with regional implications.”
While host governments have kept borders open and adopted inclusive policies that allow refugees access to services and livelihoods, panelists warned that generosity alone could not sustain the response without stronger international support.
The discussion in Davos highlighted that Sudan’s humanitarian crisis was shaped not by a lack of solutions, but by who is allowed to deliver aid, where, and under what conditions.
