Our special envoys explain their departure from the Kurdish region after the intervention of Damascus.
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Since 2015, northeastern Syria, controlled by the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was the last place in the country where it was possible for foreign journalists to work in relative freedom and without major security risk. . During the last years, The world has been able to go there many times, covering the fight against the Islamic State (IS) organization led by the SDS, the evolutions of the political project led by their civilian leadership and the problem of foreign jihadists who are detained or detained there . This situation rocked completely in the evening of Sunday, October 13, with the military deployment of the Syrian regime in the region, operated at the request of the FDS due to the inability of the Western powers to protect populations in areas under their control in the face of the invasion led by Turkey and its Islamic auxiliaries.
Since the beginning of the Turkish intervention, working in the North-East of Syria was already returning to sailing by sight in a sea of fog. "No clear front line, no precise idea of what is happening outside the combat zones, false information from all over the networks … We do not see anything anymore," summed up Thursday, in Kamechliyé, a Kurdish fixateur, distraught by a troubled situation and, above all, dangerous. Reporting, as we have done so far, a conflict like the one that Kurdish forces and their allies have been opposing since 2014 to ISIS does not carry the same risks as coverage in the field. , of an asymmetrical war like that which the FDS delivers today. Following the fighters dressed in civilian clothes in the open steppes of northeastern Syria against the second army of NATO in number of men, its planes and its artillery, is drastically reduce its chances to leave the living country.
Take the measure of the disaster
In the early days of the offensive, however, we were able, a few tens of kilometers from a moving front, document the calvary of the population, interview fighters on this new war, the latest in the long list of conflicts in the world. Syrian conflict. We were able to take stock of the humanitarian disaster ahead of time, to probe local politicians about their perception of the ongoing crisis. We were also able to start investigating the very serious allegations of abuses against the Islamist groups sent to the front line by Ankara.
