Nearly two weeks after Bashar Al Assad declared victory in Aleppo, foreign correspondent Zouhir Al Shimale – who reported from the rebel-held east of the city for The National – describes the fear and chaos that surrounded the evacuation of civilians. Now in the relative safety of rebel-held Idlib province, Zouhir reflects on his final days in eastern Aleppo and his sadness at having to abandon the city in which he grew up
IDLIB PROVINCE, SYRIA // As we waited to leave eastern Aleppo, every hour felt like a year.
Plans for an evacuation would surface and then disappear – raising our hopes that we would escape, only to crush them again.
On December 16, I left my home and office and walked through the city’s destroyed streets for what I thought would be the last time. Days earlier, there had been a deal to evacuate the tens of thousands of civilians and fighters who remained in rebel-held areas, but it collapsed before it could even begin. Now there was a new agreement, and we thought we might finally get out.
I arrived at the evacuation point in the morning to find a huge crowd of civilians already waiting in the rain, cold and mud. Some lit fires in the street to try to stay warm, but there was little they could do to protect themselves from the elements.
Vehicles evacuating civilians and fighters finally began departing. But even as they did, rumours swirled and nerves were jittery among the exhausted crowds who were still afraid they might not make it out. After we’d been waiting there for five hours, a rebel fighter ran to the gathering point shouting that the regime had launched a new offensive. Women and children began crying, but it turned out to be just another false alarm.
Their fears were realised later, however, when one of the convoys leaving the city was stopped by pro-government militants. Witnesses said the militants killed several of the convoy’s passengers, kidnapped others and turned the rest back to eastern Aleppo. Meanwhile, the government said rebel forces had attacked a crossing point for Shiites being evacuated from besieged government-held towns in Idlib province. Once again, the evacuation deal was off.
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More from Zouhir
■ Staying alive inside besieged Aleppo: a reporter's notebook
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I went home dejected; death seemed to be the only option we had.
Two days later, Russia and the rebels agreed to resume evacuations. Once again, I headed down to the gathering point early in the morning. After two hours, the buses arrived. It was complete chaos, with people running towards the vehicles. Red Cross and Red Crescent workers tried to organise the crowds but were useless against the thousands of desperate people who didn’t know if they would have another chance to escape the city and death.
I stood by and waited, giving others a chance to leave. I ended up waiting for 12 hours for a bus, only boarding at around 8pm. We thought we would move right away, but we ended up sitting on the bus overnight. We only had our clothes to protect us from the cold and there was no food or water. If you left, you would lose your spot. So I stayed in my seat and just tried to be patient.
Outside the windows of the bus, there were people who weren’t as lucky as us. They were spending another night in the cold, with the temperature dipping below freezing and a light snow falling. I thought about whether children would die in the cold that night, but there was nothing I could do to help.
As I sat on the bus, I worried negotiations would collapse or that we would be stopped at a checkpoint. Maybe we’d all end up dead. It was the worst night of my life.
We started moving at around 8am on December 19, driving slowly towards government-held territory.
The first checkpoint we hit was run by men with Lebanese accents – their uniforms did not identify them, but I imagine they were Hizbollah. One boarded the bus and told us that if we wanted to go to government areas, we would be welcome and would not be harmed. We sat in silence while he spoke, waiting for him to leave. Some of those on the bus had been in the convoy that was stopped days before and knew how dangerous these checkpoints could be.
The Lebanese fighters let us pass and we moved through checkpoints manned by Russian and Syrian troops without incident. The buses dropped us off in rebel-controlled territory in the countryside west of Aleppo. Taxis were waiting to take passengers to their final destinations, but a friend picked me up and brought me to Idlib province. People were hugging one another and crying. Some were reunited with relatives who they hadn’t been sure they’d see again.
Now in Idlib, the realisation is starting to set in that I’ve left my hometown and have no way to return. Here, I am a stranger in a place I do not know.
But there are good things here too. After arriving in Idlib, I showered for the first time in more than a month. We have enough food to eat – and different choices! We are returning to the luxuries of everyday life we had forgotten about.
Not everybody who left eastern Aleppo is living this way though. Thousands who fled the city did not have anywhere to go but one of the displacements camps spread throughout Aleppo and Idlib provinces. They don’t have running water or electricity. And, most importantly, they lack any source of heat in this freezing weather.
In Idlib, there is no bombing or fighting – for now.
But we don’t know what will happen next. Now that the regime has gathered its enemies here in the north of the country, something is bound to happen. If a peaceful solution to the conflict isn’t reached, there will be a big battle here eventually. And once again, we will face a situation like we did in eastern Aleppo.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae