Fear of another earthquake grips millions in Syria’s last rebel-held province, even the lucky few who managed to find new homes after theirs were destroyed. Many began pitching tents as the anniversary approached, wary of having to flee their houses once again.
When the earthquakes struck in the early hours of 6 February last year, people in Idlib said they thought the ground violently shaking meant airstrikes ordered by the government in Damascus. Now the rumble of airstrikes makes them fearful that another quake is happening.
Tremors, whether from an aftershock or airstrike, are enough to send six-year-old Jinan running fearfully into the tent where she now lives alongside her younger brother, Abdullah, their grandparents and 18 other orphans. The earthquakes changed Jinan and Abdullah’s lives and their frightened faces, trapped between layers of rubble, came to symbolise Idlib’s suffering when footage of their plight was widely circulated.
“We can deal with bombings, but not another earthquake,” said their uncle, Omar Rahal, who shot the video, offering a little gallows humour. “This is our reality.”
Reconstruction has been slow in an enclave where Rahal and others complain about being forgotten by the world. As those in Idlib attempted to recover from deadly earthquakes that killed an estimated 8,000 people across Syria, more than half in the north-west, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus scaled up a deadly bombing campaign in the enclave.
One particularly vicious campaign of strikes early last September killed 45 people in Idlib and devastated multiple pieces of civilian infrastructure, adding to the destruction wrought by the quakes, which damaged thousands of schools, medical centres and homes.
The UN said late last year that the violence in northwestern Syria had returned to levels not seen for four years. Around 3.4 million people are now internally displaced after fleeing fighting, some of them for a second or even third time due to the earthquakes; 43,000 people forced to move by the earthquakes are yet to return home.
“Many families came here as they thought it was safer, but after they lost their home here, they decided to go back to their villages, as they simply had nowhere else to go,” said Dalal Albesh, who runs the Zumoruda women’s centre in the town of Salqeen in Idlib. The town welcomed many fleeing the bombardments before it was badly hit by the earthquakes.
“They went back to their old homes and risk their lives to live near the frontlines,” she said. “A few of them who used to have lands with olive trees decided to deal with the risk of being near the frontlines, so they could at least have an income. If you go to the camps, there’s very little to do there, and people have very few choices in this situation.”
Jinan and Abdullah are attempting to heal from their injuries, sustained when their family home crushed them, while living in a tent. Rahal is haunted by the experience of rushing to his cousin Mahmoud’s house in the Idlib town of Al Haram after the earthquakes struck, only to hear Jinan’s voice calling to him from under the rubble, begging him to rescue her and her brother. He could hear their mother, Sara, imploring him to save her children before she was crushed to death by the layer of concrete that had been their ceiling.
Rahal tunnelled through the rubble to speak to Jinan and Abdullah, promising that he would either get them out or die trying. He recorded a video of the trapped children for his colleagues in the local police force, to help them figure out how to bring the right equipment, but it soon reached millions of viewers online.
He eventually managed to pull both children from under the rubble of their home, their mother’s limp arm outstretched towards the pair. Jinan’s leg was impaled on a piece of metal, leaving her with deep nerve damage that has required seven surgeries and a course of physiotherapy. Rahal had to fight to find doctors willing to forgo amputating her leg.
Her recovery, he said, has been made slower and harder in the tent; they face brutal heat during the summer and cold rains in winter. Jinan started school last September, limping to attend class with the other children.
Abdullah suffered burns from battery acid, leaving deep wounds that still require surgery on his feet. Not yet two, he is still trying to understand what he lost.
“He’s young, but you can see that when he looks at the burns and scars on his leg, these symbolise that overnight he lost most of his family,” said Rahal. “He had a mother, father and five other sisters just a day before. In one night they lost it all.”
Reconstruction efforts in Idlib are also deeply intertwined with diplomatic struggles over the lone crossing into the territory, with the UN now dependent on Damascus’ authorisation to bring in vital aid. The UN has also warned that a drop in donations has jeopardised their ability to provide services in Idlib; its funding for northwest Syria is running at a third of its target amount.
Then there are the rising prices for even the most basic goods. Rahal pointed to the food baskets containing items such as sugar and bread that used to come as part of the aid packages, where “we would receive enough for the whole house, but it’s halved”.
Others working in aid in the north-west said that local authorities, linked to the deeply conservative militant group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of the jihadist Nusra Front, keep a close watch on humanitarian organisations operating in Idlib, implicitly warning them against working on any issues that might challenge their authority.
Rahal mulled the feeling among his extended family as the anniversary of the earthquake approached, recalling how Jinan began to cry on seeing videos of her deceased sister and mother that her grandmother played on her phone recently.
“We are all too aware of what we lived through and what happened, and the huge impact it had on our lives,” he said. “Hopefully the kids will forget with time.”
