Date: Nov 16, 2018 Source: The Daily Star U.N. still sees big risks in Syria Reuters GENEVA: Thousands of Syrians are trapped by battles or face hard choices about returning home even though relative calm has held in the northwest for two months, the United Nations said Thursday. Seven and a half years of war have left most remaining rebel forces boxed into Idlib province. Turkey and Russia agreed on a de-escalation plan for Idlib that stalled a Syrian government offensive which the U.N. said would have caused a humanitarian catastrophe. The past two months in Idlib have been the quietest in five years with no air raids, said U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland. But there is still shelling along the Idlib perimeter, and the 3 million civilians and 12,000 humanitarian workers there did not know if the lull would hold. “There are many signs that bad things will happen unless there are further breakthroughs in the negotiations with the numerous armed groups inside,” Egeland told reporters after a regular U.N. humanitarian meeting on Syria. “The worst case scenario is still horrific war across enormous areas but the way that Russia and Turkey tell us of their plans ... makes me a cautious optimist. I don’t see the big war coming any time soon to Idlib.” Both Russia and Turkey had said they would go to great lengths to avoid military action if their own positions were not attacked. But thousands of rebels, including fighters listed by the U.N. as terrorists, remain in Idlib and Egeland said there are few signs of them negotiating or laying down their arms or seeking amnesty. Another 40,000 civilians are trapped, with a few thousand armed men, in Rukban, a desolate camp on Syria’s border with Jordan. A 78-truck convoy reached them with aid this month and Egeland said another is planned by mid-December. Millions of Syrian refugees are also facing the challenge of reclaiming their homes within a year, under a law promulgated Sunday. “Imagine being a single mother in a tent in [Lebanon’s] Bekaa Valley how do you do that?” Egeland said there should be a new version that did not take land from civilians, an awareness campaign, and suspension of implementation in the meantime, and Russia supported that work. Some Syrian cities were smashed like Stalingrad or Dresden, and there was not much to return to, Egeland said.