Residents in Syria's isolated Rukban camp react as Assad regime loses ground

Under blockade and preparing for winter, residents see hope in opposition victories

Residents of the remote Rukban camp show solidarity with opposition fighters after the re-launch of the campaign against President Bashar Al Assad's regime. Photo: Syrian Emergency Task Force

Residents in the remote Rukban camp in Syria's isolated southern safe zone say that the resurgence of fighting has reignited hope inside the camp, which is under siege by President Bashar Al Assad's regime.

Syrian rebel forces on Thursday entered the central city of Hama, the latest in an expanding series of sudden victories for the opposition coalition that has already reclaimed the major city of Aleppo. The co-ordinated campaigns launched last week have posed the most significant threat to Mr Al Assad's rule in Damascus in years.

In Rukban, the displaced Syrians who mainly fled from regime territory, are watching the battles on social media and are “simply ecstatic” and “glued to any source of information that they're seeing", resident Abu Mohammed told The National over the phone.

“They're all wishing there was a road away for them to go and help them in liberating the rest of Syria,” Abu Mohammed said.

Abu Saeed, another camp resident, said there was a “happiness that has been contagious across the camp".

“People have for the first time real hope of being able to go back to their cities and towns,” he told The National.

Rukban's residents are in a unique position in Syria, under a regime-led blockade in a remote desert area near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders.

The camp's access to humanitarian aid was first cut by the Jordanian government in 2016 and shifted to Damascus-based agencies under the UN umbrella, but the Assad regime and its Russian allies have blockaded the camp over claims it is harbouring anti-regime “terrorists”.

Under that blockade, Abu Mohammed and Abu Saeed say that the camp is out of medicine and food and, critically, is lacking proper needs for winter as the months turn cold.

Asked about the threats of increased violence as a result of the operations, they “don't see any negative consequences. We are isolated, we are besieged … we are just being very optimistic", said Abu Mohammed.

News of the opposition's lightning expansion this week reached the camp “almost right away” after the operation began spreading over social media, he said.

“Initially people were cautiously optimistic, and they were really thinking that the opposition will do a little limited military operation, and then things will again go back to a stalemate. But in the ensuing hours and days, as towns became liberated, including Aleppo, people just became happy in an indescribable happiness.”

Rukban, 25km from the US Al Tanf Garrison, had for years sat at the crossroads of a war of words between the US and Russia over conditions there – with neither Washington, despite its force proximity, nor the Assad regime and its allies willing to provide relief for the camp.

At its peak, an estimated 80,000 people lived in Rukban, but that number has “dwindled to 8,000" as of last year, according to Amnesty International.

There was reprieve from the blockade with US-assisted private aid deliveries starting in the summer of 2023, in a relief effort known as Operation Syrian Oasis, but the flow has slowed amid escalating conflict in the region as a result of Israel's war in Gaza.