This programme contains scenes which some viewers
may find upsetting.
Syria, long celebrated for its breathtaking beauty.
For centuries, people of different faiths lived here, side by side.
Then, in 2011, Syrians took to these streets
to protest against decades of oppressive rule.
And Syria spiralled into one of the worst
human disasters of our time.
It was an imminent danger, that's it.
This is the story of Syria's war, told by people who lived through it.
When I heard the helicopter sound I start to say prayers, God, please
protect us.
The war drew in so many foreign powers, it stopped
being just Syria's war.
They would pursue their political ends, they were selfish and inhuman.
They killed a lot of Syrians.
They killed a lot of Syrians. Then Putin came in and then the whole
game changed. For Russia it is not our war, it is a common war against
terrorism.
I've been reporting from Syria, throughout this most brutal war.
What happened here?
How did peaceful protest for change
spiral into such unspeakable savagery?
Half a million people killed.
Millions of lives shattered.
And so much of Syria in utter ruin.
Torture had turned him from protester into a fighter, he set out
to take revenge.
Nearly two years since the protests erupted, Syria was being torn apart
by war. At least 60,000 people killed. More than 1 million have
fled their country. From the start, Bashar al-Assad betrayed those who
fought him as terrorists. -- portrayed.
Some blamed the president for fuelling the very extremism he
condemned.
condemned. The rebel Free Syrian Army who first took on the
President's forces was being eclipsed by more radical Islamist
's, some are linked to Al-Qaeda.
Now this array of disparate rebel militia was seizing large parts of
Syria but they had yet to take full control of a city.
Free Syrian Army fighters and more radical war swept into Raqqa. --
more radical Islamists. A city in the north-east, a provincial
capital. They come from the East and they start coming, liberating the
city without any fighting.
city without any fighting. This pro-democracy protester watch the
rebel advance from his home in the centre of Raqqa.
They are suddenly in the main square in Raqqa.
in Raqqa. Then I go out because the people start to come to this public
area to destroy it.
area to destroy it. What did it feel like to be part of it? All my dreams
have become a reality now and the whole city, the first city liberated
from Assad.
But for the government Raqqa was not a priority. One of the Army's most
senior generals says they let it fall.
The army pulled back leaving Raqqa to the rebels.
So what was the first thing you did? Celebrate, first. For a week
actually, everyday in the public square at night. Mohammed wanted to
build democracy in Raqqa so he set up a campaign group to campaign for
it. We did not know about elections but we started to Google about it.
We chose to call it, our rights movement, focusing on elections. We
are believing in democracy and our country. But the Islamists had a
very different vision. Groups involved wanted strict sharia law.
He wanted to impose his rule in Raqqa and by now this man had joined
their ranks.
He was now at the heart of the Islamist takeover of Raqqa.
In the spring of 2013 as Islamists gained ground in Syria, Britain
decided to step up its abort a more moderate groups, but within limits,
they did not send weapons stash step up its support to more moderate
groups. We did send assistance by it could not be under our laws in this
country, legal assistance, we send them land Rovers which were armoured
but not Biggles from which you could send offensive operations. -- but
not vehicles. Then the United States launched its first direct aid, small
arms and ammunition, not the advanced weaponry that the rebels
wanted. There were many people in the administration who had a variety
of concerns about providing assistance. We can't be sure that
every single bullet, every single anti-tank rocket is going to be used
by the fighters that we give them to, and we can't be sure they are
not going to sell them. But in the Syrian desert a new force was
gathering. A force that would change the West's calculations and push
Syria into even greater violence. So-called Islamic State had gained a
fearsome reputation in Iraq. Now they headed to Raqqa.
Mohammed was on the streets of Raqqa handing out leaflets about human
rights and democracy. I found a lot of people standing in the public
square so I go there to see what will happen there. And three people,
they were putting bands on their eyes, lying on the ground.
I run. What has happened here? What has happened in my city? The group
calling itself Islamic State had arrived.
arrived. That day Mohammed made a decision that would change his life
forever.
The next day he and his friends held a protest against IS in the same
square where they staged the execution.
From this day we start having the fighting between us and Islamic
State of Iraq.
IS began to tighten its grip on Raqqa.
Khalid shifted his loyalties again. To a jihadi group linked to
Al-Qaeda. Now the newly trained assassin turned his sights on IS.
Raqqa was rapidly turning into one of the most dangerous places in the
world. Mohammed's response was to help organise more public protests.
Then, early one morning, IS kidnapped him and two friends. They
put a band over my eyes. He knew me from my childhood, he started
talking about my house, my car, the details of my life. So you think it
was someone you grew up with? Yes. Then, the torture began. The fighter
of Isis, he was in jail before, Guantanamo Abu grave bust up he
knows professionally what hurts you, what makes you tell him what you
want. He asks you the question and you answer. Two of my friends, I
heard the interrogation.
What did you hear? I heard his voice and I heard when he put the
electricity, I heard everything.
200 miles to the south, Damascus, Syria's capital. The black plumes on
the horizon signal fighting not far away.
I'd been reporting on Syria's uprising from the start. And now I
saw how close the rebels were.
The battles rage, even here, in some neighbourhoods of Damascus where
they fight street to street. Government troops on one side,
rebels firing from the other.
But the Syrian army needed more men. The national defence forces were
born.
Thousands of civilians joined a new volunteer army, with training from
Iran and Lebanon's has Boller.
This businessman joined the MDF in Damascus. A decision made after
rebel fighters stopped him and his family at a checkpoint.
He became the commander of his NDF unit.
By now, the rebels controlled neighbourhoods on the edges of
Damascus. Firing mortars into the capital almost every day. Their
firepower far outweighed by the Syrian army, but there was a human
cost.
In this attack, a school bus was hit. Killing the driver and four
children.
hit. Killing the driver and four children.
In rebel areas, the Syrian's military firepower was devastating.
This is just five miles from the centre of Damascus.
centre of Damascus. Under intense bombardment by Syrian warplanes.
It seems the Assad regime don't want the people who live in the area to
survive.
This teacher saw her neighbourhood turn into a war zone.
We used the basement for a school because it's the safest part of the
building.
During lessons, she always listened out for one particular sound.
When I hear the helicopter sound, actually, I took the children and I
started to say some prayers, like "God, please protect us".
With munitions in short supply, the Syrian military was using improvised
bombs.
Barrels, packed with metal fragments and explosives. Push out of
helicopters.
These barrel bombs were crude but deadly.
Usually, the helicopter dropped four barrels each time. When the fourth
barrel fell, we used to get a deep breath and go back to the class.
You started to use any weapon.
It's called barrel bombs -- a new weapon. Why was that necessary?
But there are so many videos showing the barrel bombs being dropped from
the sky, landing in civilian areas, frightened residents on the run. How
can you deny that they don't cause indiscriminate damage?
Pressure mounted on Western leaders to step up their military engagement
in Syria.
An horrific chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus that summer
marked a turning point. The United States and its allies decided
against running Syrian army positions. The rebel Free Syrian
Army saw it as another betrayal. We talked with the Americans, our
friends, the Europeans, please help us. And give us what we need to be
strong enough. But they have their own interests. But, really, really,
and sadly, they didn't support us. When it was clear that Western
nations weren't going to become involved themselves, Arab nations
stepped up further.
Because they really got the message that if the west isn't going to do
anything, we need to do more. Or we're going to be defeated in Syria.
Hundreds of millions of pounds a year were flowing to rebel groups in
command centres in Jordan and Turkey. 11 countries, from the west
Arab states and Turkey were involved. But the flow was hard to
control. There's been a concern that the Saudi funding had a huge impact.
An e-mail from Hillary Clinton was leaked in August 2014, "We need to
bring pressure on the governments of Canada and Saudi Arabia which are
providing financial and logistical support to Isis and other groups in
the region. -- government of Qatar. We disputed this. There is no
evidence. Our policy was to support moderate opposition, not radical
groups. In those early years, did you ever say to Arab and Turkish
allies of the opposition, be careful, you are sending arms in and
they are reaching the groups we do not want to support? Yes, we did, we
had many conversations about that. But the leveraged of Western nations
was pretty limited. -- the leveraged. We were doing our
diplomacy, we were urging the sensible things. Unless you take
some physical stake in what is going on, you ability to influence it is
very small. -- your ability.
Aleppo, Syria's second city. A city now mostly in rebel hands. They were
forcing their enemy into a -- an ever shrinking space. People inside
said the situation was dire. Aleppo was, like, suffocating, just
literally got smaller and smaller. At the end of it, it was, like, so
small, coupled with streets, that was Aleppo. This man set up a
paramilitary group to support the army. Everybody wanted to fight. It
was a matter of life and death. We didn't have water, electricity,
food, no bread, no nothing. Yeah, it was horrible. It was living in a
nightmare. For us, it was an imminent danger. You saw it as an
existential batter? Yes, either we live or we die. -- existential
battle cost of this video from one have his fighters shows how the
battles were wage, building to building -- and one of his fighters.
We heard rumours they were going to surprise attack. They were
accumulating in a certain point.
So, what we'd done, we swept them through to that point, where they
were congregating.
You fire one bullet, maximum two bullets from a home, then we move
another one. And then the RPG did its job, stopped them in their
tracks. It wasn't just a Syrian war. Iran backed militias supported the
army. Foreign fighters swelled rebel ranks, too. There were all kinds of
nationalities fighting. Chechnya ands, Moroccans, Tunisians,
Egyptians, Saudis -- Chechnya
This man fought with the rebels.
He says he left the Free Syrian Army to join Islamist fighters with
better weapons, funding and training.
In early 2014, his militia began to plot an audacious attack.
Their target, the Carlton Hotel.
He was using it as a base. Basically, we had small ammunition
as a reserve. Food, drinks... And if somebody got hit or fired, we would
take them there.
The soldiers who stayed there, like a guard in the food, whatever, they
said we can hear. The soldiers thought there was something going
on. -- like, guarding the food.
Tonnes of explosives were in place.
We thought everything is gone.
It was a massive explosion. It shook everyone.
It was a scary moment, yeah. A lot of us thought that was the end,
everybody was dead.
The hotel partially collapsed. Three months later...
The rebels finished the job.
Even colossal attacks like this did little to change the course of the
war in Aleppo.
The front lines would keep shifting for years. In this city, civilians
on both sides suffered.
In the desert of northern Syria IS were still on the rise. In Raqqa,
Mohammed had spent four months in one of their prisons. I don't
remember the torturing and Dido's
remember the torturing and Dido's -- I don't remember... It is something
not very clear in my mind, but I remember something they said, that I
will die. But the prison was attacked and he escaped. The hardest
thing was when I take off my shirt and show my father and mother my
back. It's horrible to show parents, to show that their kid has been
beaten and tortured. What kind of feelings do you have? Feeling
guilty. About what? About don't completing... I don't know. About
everything. About drinking, water, smiling, enjoying life, everything.
Mohammed fled Syria shortly after. But the people of Raqqa were now
entirely at the mercy of so-called Islamic State. The trained assassin
Khalid joins them. -- joined.
He was given a special job killing anyone IS wanted to eliminate.
One of them was an Islamic scholar.
In the chaos of Raqqa he worried he's name would be next on the kill
list. He slipped out of the city and went into hiding.
IS went on the offensive. Capturing large part of desert in northern
Syria including oil and gas fields. Raqqa became its de facto capital in
Syria.
Syria. For three years the US held back from air strikes in Syria, but
now they felt they had to act against a more dangerous threat. We
had a terrorist group that was well entrenched in Syria, that was
already plotting attacks against the West,. There was a policy decision
to prioritise the fight against the Islamic State. The US and Arab
allies launched their first air strikes against IS in Syria. The
target, Raqqa.
target, Raqqa. Syria's war kept escalating. By the beginning of 2015
more than Syrians were dead. -- more than 200,000 Syrians were dead. How
would you describe the war that you saw unfolding on the ground in human
terms? Chaotic horrendous, an insult to the humanity of this planet. I
mean, it was what motivated me, it's why I kept going back, it's why I
kept trying to negotiate. Millions of people were fleeing Syria in the
biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War, many fear for this
war would never end. Millions were in neighbouring countries including
Jordan.
Jordan. And by the summer Syrians were heading across Europe's
borders.
It focused minds in Europe on the need to end Syria's war.
need to end Syria's war. But the battlefield was growing ever more
crowded.
crowded. President Assad was relying on Russian and Iranian support.
And backing from Turkey and Gulf states meant Islamists were making
rapid gains an earlier that year they captured another city, it
lived.
lived. -- Idlib. The support for some of these more radical is to
ideological entities that proved to be better fighters than the moderate
opposition created a situation where Assad was in fact in some trouble.
The Islamists now joined the fight against the government in Aleppo,
and victory in Syria's second city could change the war.
could change the war. It was scary for a fighter because I thought we
were going to lose Aleppo. Syrian forces were close to collapse on
other front lines. Assad's opponents felt victory was in sight. I do
remember thinking, for the first time he is actually under real
pressure. For the first time in this war, and then Assad made the
speech...
The government was giving up parts of Syria. The collapse of the Assad
regime was no longer hypothetical and by the summer it was a high
probability. With his army under pressure and Islamists gaining
ground, President Assad turned to the Russians. If the terrorists get
support from abroad they become a very strong power and obese are
prized that Mr Assad -- don't be surprised that Mr Assad had got into
a very difficult situation in the summer of 2015. Our military
operation was about giving the people of Syria back the possibility
and right to steer the country and determine their own fate. They had a
very clear real concern about the disintegration of the country in the
absence of Assad, a sense that he was the only person who could hold
it together for any kind of transition that was budgeting that.
-- that was the De Smet. And then Putin came in and the game changed.
In December 2015 Russian planes were in the skies and in October they
bombed Aleppo. I was beyond happiness and optimistic. Very
optimistic. It's time. We thought, it's late, you should have come from
day one.
The alliance between Syria and Russia now unshakeable.
Russia now unshakeable. Britain had been slow to join the fight in Syria
but now the pressure was intense to act against IS, the legacy of the
Iraq war made many MPs opposed to military action. Public opinion is
moving increasingly against what I believe to be an ill thought out
rush to war. Do we go after these terrorists in their heartlands where
they are plotting to kill British people or sit back and wait for them
to attack us? The ayes to the right, 297. So, the ayes have it, the ayes
have it. Just hours later British jets were bombing IS. Britain joined
more than 70 nations now involved in Syria's tangled wars.
The rebel held areas Damascus saw the bomb is still falling, the area
had been under bombardment for more than three years.
And it was besieged. Short of food and medicine. Across Syria around
half a million people were suffering under siege. Some imposed by rebels
but most by the government. The situation there was the worst of the
worst, this was a community that had political significance to the
revolution and the government clearly was punishing it. That was
very cynical from the regime. Just a collective punishment. I always had
an impression, if it was Stalingrad at the end of the Second World War,
people are starving, kids dying, no one cared. But for people inside the
area, life had to go on. My son was born on the 25th of November, 2015,.
The label was difficult and she needed surgery. -- labour was
difficult. There was a shortage of medicine. I had a painkiller but it
wasn't enough. So I woke up during the section and I felt when they
were selling up my wound.
The local council said 8000 people were in desperate need of aid. The
government said the figures were exaggerated and denied people were
going hungry.
going hungry. She made a series of videos to tell the world about the
plight of the people. Here there are more than 8000 children and women
and old men, all of them have been under siege for three years. All of
our babies need milk and medicine and vaccines. A la message to the UN
is, you have got to do your job and break the siege -- our message to
the UN. Five days later a UN assessment team was allowed in. The
descriptions of the suffering by the children, of their physical
appearance, but almost more important, their stairs, where these
children had forgotten how to interact with other human beings.
They were living in bombed out basements, they never went out
during the day. And somebody had come to talk to them and ask them
what it was like.
After weeks of negotiation between aid agencies and the government, a
convoy set out for Darayya.
I was sleeping when my husband came to me and woke me up. The aid is
coming, the aid is coming.
The convoy left Darayya in the early hours of the morning.
EXPLOSIONS
At 9am, they started shelling, as usual.
Shelling was started in the basement, which the aid was stored
in.
And then the barrel bombs started. We were just incredulous. It was a
terrible day. And our celebration, turns out, was so short lived.
Activists say more than 20 bombs were dropped on Darayya that day.
The government said it was only acting in retaliation, after its
positions came under attack. Darayya was bombed, so the food aid could
not be distributed, what happened there?
We... I don't remember, frankly speaking, to be precise. I don't
remember the developments in Darayya. I think Darayya, in
particular, has seen a lot of big lies and exaggeration. All of us
have suffered, all of us, in Syria. This is a war on terrorism. Syria
was under attack. And we have to defend ourselves. But not to the
point where we starve people, no. Nobody died out of starvation. Does
it worry you that there are cases being built in Western capitals,
cases being built, by international human rights bodies, for possible
war crimes trials in the future? I think they should not waste their
money and resources. They want to implicate the government, by all
means. They don't care for the tragedy is committed by the armed
groups, by the terrorist groups. -- tragedies, did. If there will be
possible trials to investigate the allegations against one side of the
war, should there also be, for the other side, your own site? I think
it is the business of the Syrian people, not of the international
community. -- your own side.
By the sum of 2016, large parts of East Aleppo lay in ruins. -- summer
of. This rebel held area was besieged. Food and medicine hard to
come by.
Aleppo was now a byword for a merciless war, waged by all sides.
World powers were unable or unwilling to stop it.
Russian and Syrian warplanes pounded rebel areas of Aleppo.
They say their targets were terrorists. The fighters linked to
Al-Qaeda. For civilians, the suffering was immense.
This doctor had smuggled himself and his family into rebel held Aleppo,
months earlier. He knew there was a desperate shortage of surgeons.
Evidence pointed to Syrian and Russian forces using banned weapons.
In sentry bombs, cluster munitions, chlorine gas, in civilian areas. --
incendiary bombs.
On the 3rd of October, the doctor was working at a hospital in the
ever shrinking area of rebel held Aleppo.
At the front gate, the ambulance driver was calling a friend.
Incredibly, the ambulance driver have at it, but three hospital
workers were killed. -- ambulance driver survived.
SHOUTING
The hospital was bombed four times in a few weeks. The deliberate
targeting of hospitals is a war crime.
Not one single government hospital or private hospital, illegitimate
one that has a licence from the Ministry of health that was a
hospital before the war was bombed. The hospital but he visited, there
is extensive footage of the damage that was sustained in those last
month of bombing in 2016. -- that he visited. It means it was not a
hospital at the time. -- that you visited. Any place that Al-Qaeda
guys use as ammunition centre, they put all of these gas canisters and
they put prisoners and they torture people and they have the command
centre, it is a target. It's not a hospital.
There have been hundreds of attacks on hospitals and health centres in
this war.
The majority blamed on government forces.
I will definitely deny any accusations of us as having it as a
policy, as a strategy. You didn't deliberately target medical
facilities? Never. Never. I am absolutely sure that the Russian
military operation in Syria has been conducted all the time, and still
is, within the framework of the international law. By early
December, the long, brutal battle for Aleppo was coming to a close.
Russia's decisive intervention had been a game changer.
The lack of pressure,
The lack of pressure,, the sense of impunity ultimately gave Putin the
opportunity to move in and define the playing fields differently,
according to his terms. At that point, the entire dynamic drifted.
Which is why it is so obvious even today, you cannot settle the future
of Syria, you cannot settle the future of this war and end it
without major engagement with the Russians.
Districts held by the rebels for the past four years continued to fall.
But you can see what having fighting there has been. You can still smell
the explosives in this area, recaptured yesterday. The Syrian
army and its allies are now sensing victory.
The rebels kept fighting, firing volleys of mortars into government
areas, everyday. EXPLOSIONS
At their forces were now in retreat. -- but their forces. The areas under
their control growing smaller.
EXPLOSIONS
Then, the fighting stopped.
A deal was brokered by Russia and Turkey.
Fighters and their families boarded government buses. Thousands of
civilians also forced to leave their homes.
The doctor was among them.
The battle over, government supporters celebrated. Aleppo was a
turning point.
I was so happy that around 1 million people from Eastern Aleppo can go
back home, now. The president and his allies had recaptured Syria's
key cities. It could no longer be defeated on the battlefield. -- he
could no longer. Nobody wanted fighting every day, nobody wanted to
see death every day. I think everybody wanted peace, wanted it
finished and done with. This war has been about the survival of one man.
And President Assad is still standing.
But the war is far from over.
EXPLOSIONS
In the spring of this year, another brutal battle, this time on the
outskirts of Damascus. To retake the last rebel enclaves around the
capital.
President Assad congratulated his victorious troops.
In April, a reported chemical attack in Douma on the edge of Damascus.
The US, Britain and France blamed the Syrian government and launched a
wave of air strikes.
It changed little on the ground.
After seven years, Syria is torn. Half the population displaced, half
a million dead. And now, a theatre for a myriad of dangerous proxy
wars.
Do you think you nick the war? -- do you think
the war? What do you say to the 6 million Syrians who left the
country? I will tell them come back to your country. You are Syrians and
we are determined to rebuild Syria together.
I don't believe that I can go back home.
There were many people from different countries who stand with
us. But it wasn't enough. To stay in our country, safe.
For many Syrians, their country as they knew it is gone.