All language subtitles for Secret.Wars.Uncovered.S02E02.1080p.WEB.h264-BAWD_Subtitles01_Unnamed

NARRATOR: Every day, thousands of
Syrians risk their lives trying to

flee the war that has ravaged their
country for more than a decade.

With more than six million Syrians
seeking refuge in other

nations, one of the most devastating
humanitarian crises in modern

history has unfolded... and one
image perhaps more than any other

has come to symbolize that crisis.

In 2015, the body of a
three-year-old Syrian boy,

Aylan Kurdi, was found
washed-up on a Turkish beach.

Aylan, his mother and brother had
drowned trying to reach

Greece from Turkey.

The image spread around the world,
making the true desperation

of the Syrian conflict visible.

- A decade of civil war, an
intervention from multiple

foreign countries has devastated
Syria, and has had a chilling

effect upon its civilians.

- Only the top 2% are living
a good life in Syria.

- Life in Syria at the moment is
really, really tough for

ordinary people.

NARRATOR: But what are the interests
of foreign powers behind this

war that has devastated
the lives of Syrians?

- The Syrian war can be seen as a
war against the people,

against their freewill, against
their vision to have the

state that they envisage, and
they want themselves.

And this is not a new order.

This is a 100 years old war.

(tense music)
(indistinct radio chatter)

(crowd ambience)

NARRATOR: Syria: a country home
to fertile plains, high

mountains and vast deserts.

Nestled in Western Asia, the region
is home to some of the oldest

continuously inhabited
cities in the world.

After decades of existence under a
French mandate, in 1946,

Syrian independence was
internationally recognized

under the government of Arab

nationalist, Shukri Al-Quwatli.

The following year, in 1947,
the Ba'ath Party - the

Arab Socialist Renaissance Party
- was born.

This was a secular political
grouping steeped in the

doctrine of pan-Arab
socialist values.

It coexisted in the 1940s with other
political parties such as the

National Party, to which
Al-Quwatli belonged, and the

Syrian National Socialist Party.

In time, however, it would
out-grow them all.

During the first years of its
independence, Syria seemed to

be beginning a new democratic era
crowned by a new constitution.

But it was short-lived.

- That was beautiful.

The sad part is, it was only

empowered for three years, because

very quickly, Syria fell into an
endless cycle of military coups.

NARRATOR: In 1949, a coup d'etat
put an end to the democratic

government of Shukri Al-Quwatli.

For the next two decades, political
instability would reign in

the country.

- Sadly, there was a lot of elite
struggles during that period

in Syria. One coup d'etat after the
other, after the other.

So, we had 11 military
coups in 21 years.

- The Ba'ath Party had come to

power initially in 1963, but in

1966, a left leaning group which
Hafez Al-Assad was part of,

had taken power, and they had

orchestrated quite a few

radical left wing policies
including land redistribution,

nationalization of industry, and
that was unpopular in many

quarters, it was seen as too
extreme and too fast.

Certainly, the most left wing
government that Syria had

ever experienced.

NARRATOR: In need of a patron and
protector, Baathist-led Syria sought

to establish ties with new, hardline

Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

The support was instantaneous:
Moscow reached out to the

Syrian government to strengthen the
position of the USSR in the

Middle East as a bulwark
against US-backed Israel.

- The Soviet Union, indeed, helped
building the Syrian army,

equipping, funding the Syrian army
and they tried to build it

around the Red Army model.

NARRATOR: The main beneficiary of
this Soviet patronage was

Syria’s Minister of Defence,

Hafez al-Assad.

Throughout the 1960s, as tensions
escalated within the Ba’ath

party, Al-Assad was carefully
positioning himself to take

power when the time came.

The tensions at the top of the
Party finally exploded at the

beginning of the next decade.

- In 1970, the most two important

men in Syria were Nureddin al

Atassi, the Syrian President,

and Salah Jadid, the Deputy
Secretary of the Ba'ath party.

They had a very big fallout with
Hafez Al- Assad, who was back then

the Minister of Defence, and with

his Chief of Staff, Mustafa Tlass.

Assad, although he didn't have the
full control of the Ba'ath

party, he and Tlass had
control of the army.

So they launched a military coup
d'etat against Nureddin Atassi.

They put him and Salah Jadid in
prison with all their allies.

NARRATOR: The rise of Hafez Al-Assad

marked the end of the

Ba’ath Party’s infighting and

instability within the country.

He would rule with an iron fist
and establish a network of

alliances within the army, his
party, and the Syrian wealth

creators, that would allow him to
remain in power for three decades.

A strong opposition to his secular
rule began to emerge in the

shape of The Muslim Brotherhood, a
radical Islamic fundamentalist

movement with origins in Egypt,
which determined to take a

stand against apostate secular
regimes in the region.

In 1976, they took up
arms against Assad.

- They launched a series of

events, what they call the

Muslim Brotherhood uprising,

and these operations were,

of course, met by violence by the
civil regime and violence was used

by both sides against civilians
and against armed factions.

And the epicentre of this was in
the city of Hama; that was

culminated with the
massacre of Hama in 1982.

- A massacre of 10 to 20,000 people
which very much was the moment

of shift under Hafez Al-Assad;
after this point, a much darker

Hafez Al-Assad regime emerged, one
where everyone was very aware

that if you step out of line,

you could be killed,

your family could be killed,

you could be detained,

life won't be worth living.

NARRATOR: The regime interrogated
those they thought were

behind the Brotherhood’s attacks.

But despite some people falsely
admitting their guilt to try

and save their families, Assad’s men
would not spare their lives

and invariably executed entire
families as a warning to any

who dared to challenge the regime.

- My grandmother was watching,
she saw all of this with her

daughter in law and all the other
women in the family and at

the end, they just killed them all.

So my grandmother was watching her
husband, her two sons, her

other relatives just being shot at
and they were all screaming,

you know, collapsing, but there's
nothing they could do...

And they were not the only ones.

There are so many others who just
died because the regime

couldn't take the idea that
someone could say, ‘No’.

NARRATOR: Having brutally suppressed
the Muslim Brotherhood in 1980,

to further cement its hold on power
and ensure a supply of armaments,

the Al-Assad government signed a
treaty of friendship and cooperation

with the USSR, further strengthening
its ties with the communist giant.

As long as it had the patronage of
the Soviet Union, Al-Assad

could keep his power base together.

But in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and
Assad spied an opportunity.

He began to pivot towards new
friends in the West.

- He saw the winds of change blowing
and he knew the Soviet Union

is going to collapse.

So, he started turning to the west.

And indeed, the Gulf War was
the opportunity.

NARRATOR: Supporting the Americans
and sending troops to fight

alongside them in the 1991
Gulf War, would help the Syrian

government improve its
relations with Washington.

But it would be Hafez Al-Assad’s
last roll of the dice.

With the arrival of a new
millennium, a new era began

in Syria.

On the 10th of June 2000, at the age
of 69, Hafez Al-Assad died.

A month later Bashar Al-Assad, the
dictator's third son, took

over the Syrian leadership.

He was the sole candidate
in the election.

It was a coronation, rather than
anything remotely resembling

a democratic process.

But many onlookers were surprised
that the softly-spoken third son

had supplanted his older brother and
uncle to become his father’s heir.

Bashar had studied in Damascus and,
in his 20s, went to London to

specialise in ophthalmology.

After the death of his eldest
brother, Basil, in a car

accident in 1994, Bashar came back
to his country and started a

military and political career.

The international community believed
that the new president would

break with his father's
authoritarian tradition.

He was young, educated, and had
close ties with the West, due

partly to his studies there and

partly due to his Anglo-Syrian wife,

Asma, whom he had met in London and

married shortly after taking office.

But those hoping for a more liberal
and enlightened regime in

Syria were to be disappointed.

The government of Bashar Al-Assad
repressed all activism for

political reform.

- That was because of the realities

of the old guard still being

in power, all his father's main
people were still there and

they all advised him against it.

And he came to realize that maybe
their approach was better.

NARRATOR: Following his father’s
example, Bashar Al-Assad

tightened relations with Russia and
Iran; countries that would

help guarantee his permanence in
power a decade later.

Tunis, December 2010.

A young fruit seller sets himself
on fire in protest at the

confiscation of his goods and
mistreatment by the authorities.

(chanting)

His death sparked a wave of
demonstrations that led

Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine

Ben Ali to resign in January 2011.

The protests would ignite the fire
of freedom in other Arab

nations and in February,
long-time Egyptian dictator,

Hosni Mubarak, was forced to resign.

Demonstrations spread against
the governments of

Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen and
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

The Arab Spring had begun and the
Syrian government was waiting

for it to arrive on her shores.

Secret Syrian government documents,
leaked through a former

senior official, confirm that
Al-Assad had a strategy ready

to deal with the protestors.

- What these documents reveal is

that the regime's plan was to

meet protests head on with force

with the aim to disperse the

crowds and prevent the sort of
fate that Assad had witnessed

occur to his fellow strong men in
Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

NARRATOR: By the time the protests
arrived, Al-Assad knew what

their tactics would be and from
whence the threat would come.

Al-Assad gave orders to crush the
demonstrations and prevent

them from reaching
Damascus at all costs.

But whilst initially successful,
this crackdown would not

entirely extinguish the
flames of revolution.

(shouting)
(dramatic music)

- Eventually, all of this led to

very genuine spontaneous

series of uprisings in
Syria in March 2011.

They started in Daraa, then Homs
echoed that, and then other

Syrian cities.

And then in April, they called for
the (speaks Arabic),

‘the Friday of Anger’.

(chanting)

- I was in the country when the

first deaths were announced

and I remember thinking, my

goodness, that is now going
to- that's the turning point.

Each week that went by more and
more people were shot just for

peacefully protesting because the
regime was frightened, and

the only way it knew how to
react was to squash it.

NARRATOR: Assad was determined to
meet fire with fire and to

deploy military force at the
least excuse or provocation.

The killing of demonstrators sparked
the desertion of many members

of the armed forces, who together
with mercenaries and other

rebel groups, formed the
Free Syrian Army.

Their main objective was to
overthrow al-Assad and they

were well supported by allies in the
region and further afield.

The Free Syrian Army began training
in Istanbul, which was the

base of the Syrian opposition in
exile, and was advised

by Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait and Qatar.

- In August 2011, a lot of Western
leaders, most importantly,

Obama, Cameron, the French
president, the German, the

head of EU, all of them, including
with the Saudi King, in one day

in an orchestrated move, they came
out and said, Assad lost legitimacy.

He should step down.

NARRATOR: But Bashar Al-Assad’s
government had a powerful

ally, eager to flex his muscles and
to contest American influence

in the region.

- Bashar Assad turned to the
historical ally, to Russia.

And this time, they found great
opportunity to have a strong

comeback to the Middle East, to
institutions they built, they

knew more than anyone else.

It was their territory, they
considered Syria as their

territory, the country that was
built alongside their model.

And of course, they didn't want this
model to be defeated or to collapse.

- They were unwilling to see their

man in Syria overthrown.

Syria is a major purchaser
of Russian arms.

It's also a key anti American ally.

But particularly important for the
Russians is their strategic

placement of the Tartus naval
base, which is Russia's only

Mediterranean port and the home
of the Black Sea Fleet.

NARRATOR: In its efforts to crush
the Free Syrian Army, the

Syrian regime was also supported
by Iran and Hezbollah.

- There are key geopolitical reasons
for Iran to want the Assad

regime to remain in power in Syria.

Iran has a major regional rivalry

with Israel.

It has supported the creation of
Hezbollah in Lebanon since

the 1980s, and it uses Hezbollah to
pressure Israel militarily by

launching attacks on Israel.

Hezbollah gets its rockets and
its weaponries from Iran

through Syria.

So losing Syria from that supply
line would be absolutely

catastrophic for Iran's
relationship with Hezbollah and,

by extension, its ability to put
pressure on Israel.

NARRATOR: Military support for the
Al-Assad regime meant that,

by February 2012, the death toll in
the conflict had exceeded

7,500 civilians and
continued rising.

- Foreign powers became involved in

the Syrian civil war because

in the West, at least, they wanted

to support moderate rebels in

their fight against
President Al-Assad.

But when it came down to the broader
intentions in the area, then

you start to see that a
proxy war emerges.

The Russians and the Iranians on one
side supporting Assad, and on

the other, you have the Turkish, the
Israelis and the US and their

coalition, which is seeking to try
and stop that Russian and

Iranian interference in the area.

(shouting)

NARRATOR: With armed opposition
groups multiplying throughout

Syria and foreign powers
becoming more involved in the

conflict, Bashar Al-Assad was facing
his toughest challenge yet.

By the second half of 2012, several
of Syria’s main cities were

under siege and Assad’s regime was
under ever greater pressure.

Advancing inch by inch, some
opposition factions managed

to take part of Aleppo, the second
most important city in the country

and by far their biggest strategic
gain yet, if they could hold it.

- It looked like they were going
to be very successful.

However, they were a newly formed
group, they did not plan as

effectively for capturing
the whole city.

And pretty quickly, their lines of
supply ran out and they

weren't able to complete
the conquest.

NARRATOR: The more territory the
opposition gained, the more

divided they became.

Lacking a unified leadership or
sense of common purpose,

opposition forces stalled.

- As that infighting grew,

the outside world started to see

the splintering and the fragmenting

as well, then other
funding evaporated.

And that, of course, left no
effective opposition to the

Assad regime.

- In the meantime, the Assad regime
fought back, and they fought

the rebels to a standstill.

Effectively, what happened at that
point was the city of Aleppo

was divided.

NARRATOR: At this critical
juncture, another force entered the

fray, known for its divisiveness and
brutality, which was every bit

as dangerous to the opposition as it
was to the Syrian dictatorship.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria, was a branch of

Al-Qaeda born in Iraq.

- It's very important to understand
that only nought point naught

nine percent of the Syrian
population joined ISIS.

ISIS has nothing to do with Syria.

It's just grown there as the perfect
environment for like a germ

put into a dish of agar jelly at
the perfect environment in

which to multiply.

And it's used Syria, as that
perfect environment, the lawless

vacuum that it needed to
get started.

NARRATOR: In 2011, with opposition
forces advancing on all

fronts, Bashar Al-Assad made a
highly dangerous and deeply

divisive decision.

Into this cauldron of military
conflict, he released

jihadist prisoners from Syrian jails
to play a destabilizing role

against the opposition forces.

- Bashar Al Assad released these

people knowing that they

would cause a bit of dissension and

that would feed his narrative

of all these opposition
people are terrorists.

But I think even he never dreamt
that they would go on to form

the monster that became ISIS.

Nobody foresaw what would become.

NARRATOR: According to US

intelligence, ISIS had around 5,000
militants by 2013, many of

them foreigners.

The organization chose Raqqa as
their capital, an area

considered by many to be a
provincial backwater in the

country but which, in fact, was a
vital strategic resource hub.

- ISIS by sitting there in Raqqa on
the Euphrates River, that

gave it control of the entire water
network of Syria, with the

Assad dam, and all the hydroelectric
power that came with that.

So, they had a kind of stranglehold
and Syria’s oil and gas fields are

in that part of the country as well,
so they could put a stranglehold

on that, which is how they then
started to sell the regime's

own oil and gas to the regime
because they controlled it all.

NARRATOR: The agricultural wealth
of that part of the country

meant ISIS had a monopoly on
wheat production, too.

Unable to feed its population, the
Assad regime had to turn to

Russia for large quantities of
bread and wheat, which took a

further toll on its resources.

With its grip on the country’s
resources and allegiance to

no-one but itself, ISIS became
the enemy of all sides.

But, for the moment, they were
not Assad’s main concern.

Instead, he continued to take the
fight to the moderate

opposition groups in central
and northern Syria.

- It did make sense to actually

leave the radical Islamists

alone for a while, while he was
taking on the more moderate

forces, because that would
justify his narrative.

If he could get rid of the more
moderate forces and the only

people that were left were these
radical Islamists, then he did

have proof that actually he was
fighting a radical Islamist

jihadist organization.

So, ISIS did certainly serve a
purpose for him.

NARRATOR: With most of the country
devastated, the economy

destroyed, poverty widespread and
in the midst of a wave of

violence, the likes of which
they’d never seen before, the

Syrians still had yet to face
their worst nightmare.

On the 21st of August 2013, Ghouta,
an area near Damascus controlled

by the opposition, was attacked by
government forces with sarin gas.

- At least 1,400 people were
killed, many of them civilians,

rather than rebel fighters,
including many children.

When this happened, fingers
immediately pointed to Assad

and everyone said, this must be
Assad who has done this, he's

the one that has the
chemical weapons.

NARRATOR: Assad never acknowledged
responsibility for the

attacks and continued to
blame the opposition.

The attack gave the governments of
the United States, France and the

United Kingdom the perfect pretext
to intervene in the conflict.

For President Obama in particular,
there was every reason to get

involved in the conflict, to
demonstrate the effectiveness

of his much praised humanitarian
foreign policy.

- I've spoken to the leaders of two

of our closest allies, France

and the United Kingdom, and we will

work together in consultation

with Russia and China to put
forward a resolution at the

UN's Security Council requiring
Assad to give up his chemical

weapons and to ultimately destroy
them under international control.

- First, is that there is an

international prohibition on

the use of chemical weapons,

they are an illegal weapon of war

and therefore any employment of
them is in itself a war crime.

Secondly, however, they triggered a
particular national security

response from the United States
known as the 3 Ts Nexus,

a term coined by

Bill Clinton's National Security

Adviser Anthony Lake in the 1990s.

The three Ts are terrorists,
tyrants and technology.

And the idea that once you have a
tyrant unbound by international

law, and the will of his people in
control of the technology of

weapons of mass destruction, in
an area where non state

terrorists are functioning, the
ultimate fear of the United States

is that that tyrant might provide
that technology to those terrorists.

NARRATOR: The senseless slaughter
of hundreds of innocent

civilians through the use of
expressly prohibited chemical

weapons should have been more than
sufficient to incite a major

military intervention by the West.

Ultimately, however, despite the
tough talk and moral outrage,

America and the West were
found wanting.

- They weren't going to repeat those

same mistakes as they saw it

of getting involved in
Afghanistan and Iraq.

NARRATOR: Instead, without a UN
resolution in place or even

the approval of the US Congress,
Obama was forced to fall back

on covert interference by his
intelligence agencies and

military to try and achieve his aims
and topple the Assad regime.

The US put in place a clandestine
CIA effort codenamed

Timber Sycamore.

- Timber Sycamore was a multibillion
dollar CIA-Pentagon operation

under the Obama administration,
aimed at the vetting and

arming and deployment of rebels to
fight both the Assad regime

and also to combat the spread of
ISIS that was moving across

the border from Iraq and capturing
large swathes of territory in Syria.

- Timber Sycamore was approved by
President Obama in 2013.

This involved the supply of funds,
of weapons and of training for

those forces so they can continue
to battle and take on Assad.

- But the problem was how to

identify which groups within

the Free Syrian Army

deserved support.

And it was a genuinely difficult
problem to work out.

NARRATOR: With chemical disarmament
unresolved, tensions between the

United States and Russia escalating
and no suitable alternative

to the Syrian government in sight,
in September 2013, it was Vladimir

Putin who would make the first move

to try and diffuse the situation.

- What then happened was a slightly

controversial affair whereby

a deal was cut between Russia and
America, whereby rather than

Assad be attacked as a punishment
for using these chemical weapons.

He would agree, under Russian
supervision, to give up his

chemical weapons arsenal in exchange
for America not attacking him.

NARRATOR: For Obama this was a
potentially ideal face-saving

solution: it meant that he could
claim a win without having

had to intervene militarily.

For the oppressed Syrian peoples
and their supporters in the

region, however, it was an
unmitigated disaster.

- For the other regional powers
involved, it changed their

calculus of what was
happening in Syria.

For a lot of countries like Turkey
and Qatar and Saudi Arabia,

who for a long time had supported
the anti-Assad opposition on the

presumption that eventually America
would come in to topple Assad

in the same way they had topped
Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein

in Iraq, they realized actually
Americans weren't going to come.

And that changed their approach.

They began supporting slightly more
radical groups, for example,

because they hadn't supported them
before because they knew the

Americans wouldn't like them.

NARRATOR: Whilst the violence in
Syria was escalating

day-by-day, Putin and the Russians
now had the greenlight to

funnel arms and support to Assad
to their heart’s content.

The fate of the Syrian opposition
and the Free Syrian Army was

now sealed.

Assad had what he wanted, for now.

But he still had ISIS to deal
with...

In June 2014, ISIS declared
itself a caliphate.

Putin’s Russia had helped Assad
destroy the moderate

opposition, but he now needed new
allies to drive out the

Islamic extremists... and
he found them.

Three months later, in September
2014, the United States and a

coalition of Arab countries came to
the rescue of Assad and began

a bombing campaign against their
common enemy: the Islamic State.

In May 2015, ISIS outraged the
entire world as it seized the

historic Syrian city of Palmyra.

The world watched the cold-blooded
execution of more than 300

people and the destruction of the
city’s priceless cultural heritage.

As a consequence, another foreign
power entered the conflict

militarily - the United Kingdom.

- The UK's official involvement in
the Syrian war is known as

Operation Shader and on paper, this
involves logistical support

for American forces and other NATO
allies, as well as airstrikes

conducted by Typhoons and Tornadoes
and remote drone strikes

using the RAF’s Reaper drones.

In addition to this, covertly,
British special forces have

been operating on the ground in
Syria; but have also been

tracking down jihadi networks and
arms exchanges between the

likes of Libya and Tunisia as well.

NARRATOR: For the first time in
history, a British Prime Minister

officially authorized the killing of

British citizens on foreign soil.

These were British citizens who
had chosen to fight for the

Islamic State.

- The official reason given for
the strike was to pre-empt a

terrorist attack that the two
individuals, both known members

of ISIS, were trying to orchestrate
remotely in British territory.

The controversy comes from the fact
that at that point, Britain

was officially at war in
Iraq, but not in Syria.

The problem with this method is that

it lacks transparency, it is

on the fringes of legality and it

also locks the country into a

cycle of violence where suspected
threats emerge and lethal

force is used to nullify that.

It's essentially a whack a mole
game that has no clear end.

NARRATOR: The open involvement of
foreign powers in the Syrian

conflict and the dangerous advance
of ISIS in the country,

intensified the fighting between
the remaining factions.

After more than four years of civil
war, Syrians still saw no

hope of peace and the West’s failure
to act decisively had played

into Assad’s hands.

In 2015, following the ISIS
siege and massacre at

Palmyra, Russia decided to
re-engage in the Syrian conflict.

Her munitions and support had
helped Assad gain ground in the

fight against the moderate
opposition and the Free Syrian Army.

(chanting in Arabic)

But Putin had been happy to let
America and the West take the

lead in the fight against ISIS.

Now, however, he decided the moment
was right to re-enter the

fray to ensure Russia’s post war
influence in the region.

He ordered airstrikes on
opposition-held areas and

despite having publicly pledged not
to put boots on the ground,

the Russians instead sponsored
mercenary groups to go and

fight alongside Assad’s
forces and Hezbollah.

- The Wagner Group are not quite

your textbook military

contractors or private military

contractors, PMCs.

PMCs are all about doing a nation
state's bidding for them and

being brought in to perhaps help
with some behind the scenes

and logistics work or in some cases
to take on a frontline fight.

But when it comes down to the Wagner
group, well you start to see

how directly linked they are to the
Russian state, to Russian

intelligence and to the fulfilment
of Russian

national security objectives.

Put simply, wherever you see the
Wagner group, you see Russian

state interests.

NARRATOR: The retrieval of
Palmyra from ISIS by Syrian

government forces in March 2016,
assisted by the Wagner Group

and Russian airstrikes, turned the
eyes of the world on to Putin

as he staged an extraordinary and
flagrant demonstration of

Russian influence in the region.

- And from that moment,

he really succeeded, Putin,

in taking charge
of the Syrian narrative.

And he was seen at that stage,
obviously, by Bashar Al Assad

in particular, as the
saviour of Syria.

NARRATOR: With Russian help, the
Assad regime was regaining

nearly all its lost territory and
consolidating its control

over most of the country.

And in doing so, they managed to
relegate America and the West

to bit-part players, who had been
suckered in to fight ISIS and

the Islamic extremists whom Assad
had released from his own prisons.

Obama and the West had been well and
truly played by Putin and Assad.

In Aleppo, the fighting
went on for years.

- At one point it did look as if

the rebels were going to be

successful, at the points when

the Assad regime was at its

weakest in 2013, 2014, the rebels
did make a push to capture

all of Aleppo, including
the western half.

And for a long time the western half
was effectively cut off from

the rest of Assad controlled Syria.

But eventually the tide was
turned, and ultimately Assad

was able to recapture all of Aleppo
and expel the rebels from the

eastern half. And this was done with
considerable help from the outside,

from Russia, from Iran, and from the
Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and

by the end of 2016, all of Aleppo
was recaptured by the Assad regime.

NARRATOR: By the time the fighting
finally ended, the country's

previously second largest city and
economic heartbeat lay in

ruins, with more than 35,000
buildings destroyed.

After Obama's departure from power
at the beginning of 2017,

the new US President Donald Trump

announced the cancellation of

the covert program in Syria
implemented by his predecessor.

He declared that the main US
objective defeating the

Islamic State had been achieved
and that it was now time to

retreat and leave the country
to rebuild itself.

In 2018, Washington's new stance on
Syria and Russian support for

Al-Assad allowed the regime to
recapture Damascus and its

strategic suburbs for the
first time in 7 years.

Even without having neutralized
the opposition entirely, the

Assad regime is trying to make a
start on the country’s

reconstruction, a titanic task in an
impoverished country, which

lies in ruins and whose
spirit is broken.

Despite the aid offered by the
international community,

Syria still does not have enough
resources to recover after

more than ten years of war.

The fighting has displaced more
than six million people

internally, and another six million,
a third of whom at least are

children, have moved to neighbouring
countries, where they live in

camps in precarious conditions.

- Syria has been, if you like,

a refuge state where so many

people, other people have come to
find sanctuary in Syria and

it's one of those awful ironies of
history that now Syria finds

itself, you know, half the
population displaced and so

many refugees forced out and
regarded as a pariah state.

NARRATOR: The crimes and horrors
of the Assad regime have

resulted in a humanitarian disaster
of an unimaginable scale.

The pain and suffering of the
Syrians continue unabated to

this day. And even after all the
horrors the Syrian people

have endured, they are left with the
same political dictatorship that

they had when the war started.

- Right now, we have nothing, we
have absolutely nothing.

The economy is in the ruins.

There is no electricity,

most families, including upper

middle class, can't even put bread
on the table for their children.

So there is daily, daily, permanent
suffering, there isn't one

place to escape.

- Over half the population
displaced, a third of the

housing stock destroyed, 90% of the
population below the poverty line.

It was not as bad as that
before the revolution.

- Strategically and tactically,
the other nations that are

involved have achieved their goals.

Russia has maintained its

Mediterranean naval base,

the United States dismantled the
core territory

of the ISIS organization.

Although it still exists there, it
no longer has a clear safe

haven from which it can
regularly project attacks.

Iran was able to ensure that its
ally, Syria, did not become a

pro-American democracy.

And Hezbollah was able to train and
recruit additional recruits

and prepare itself for further
conflict with Israel.

Ultimately, however, caught in the
midst of this, are the people

of Syria who have suffered and will
continue to suffer at the

costs of these other nations' games.

- The society is very weak.

A very weak society means very, very
little hope for a better future.

Subtitles by Sky Access Services