What to do about 10,000 al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Idlib?
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham stymies Turkey’s bid for cease-fire, welcomes Syrian assault.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed last week to get his Russian and Iranian counterparts to support his desperate bid for a cease-fire in Idlib, the stronghold of the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as well as other radical Salafi and armed gangs based in the northwestern Syrian province.
The UN estimates that there are nearly 3 million civilians in Idlib, about half of them displaced from other parts of Syria, and that 900,000 civilians will be affected by a government assault. UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said Friday, “The Security Council cannot accept that the civilians of Idlib must face this type of fate. Efforts to combat terrorism do not supersede obligations under international law in the moral conscience of humanity. We must put the sanctity of human civilian life above everything else.”
“If it’s a slaughter, the world is going to get very, very angry,” US President Donald Trump said Wednesday. “And the United States is going to get very angry, too.”
Turkey, which already hosts some 3.5 million Syrian refugees, seeks to avoid another massive inflow of Syrians displaced by conflict, but has been unable to convince non-terrorist armed groups to withdraw and distance themselves from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
