Syria’s war is drawing to a close. But the pain will go on

EIGHT YEARS into a savage war, the images still numb. Near the village of Haas, a headless child lies amid the rubble of bombed homes. In the town of Ariha, an infant dangles several stories up from the wreckage of another building while her father looks on in horror. There is smoke and dust and blood, gnarled metal and smashed concrete, and the vacant stares of people who have endured almost a decade of violence.

This is the start of a protracted battle for the province of Idlib, a swathe of scrubland in north-western Syria which contains dozens of towns and villages like Ariha and Haas as well as the city for which it is named. Lying between Aleppo and the coastal province of Latakia, it is the last big chunk of territory held by rebels.