Television news channels have been full of dramatic pictures of a city in Canada, Fort McMurray, which was engulfed by forest fires. The whole population of 88,000 was evacuated along the sole motorway out of town, with great columns of smoke and flames on either side of the road. Amazingly, there were no deaths, apart from two people killed in a traffic accident. It had been feared that the whole city would have to be rebuilt, but closer examination shows that 90 per cent was saved, including all the schools and hospitals.
This is a very Canadian story – of being prepared and organised and everyone pulling together. It has blotted out the far less uplifting news from Syria where the war is now in its sixth year and the scale of misery is beyond comprehension. An average of 50 Syrian families have been forced to move out of their homes every hour of every day of the conflict. Some have moved two or three times, as their places of safety have come under attack.
The plight of five million Syrian refugees – those who have crossed the border to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon – is well known, as are their attempts to find safety by trekking north to Europe, where the traditional welcome for people fleeing for their lives has worn thin.
But there is another class of people on the move who are largely neglected. These are people trying to find safety inside Syria, known to the aid community as internally displaced persons (IDPs). There are now 6.6 million of them, according to a new report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Unlike refugees, they are often out of reach of deliveries of food and medicine, and are not offered any kind of protection.
They are trapped inside a war zone. The neighbouring countries have effectively closed their borders, with the approval of the European countries who fear that further migration north will provoke a tide of xenophobia and topple governments all over the continent. There is no escape.
Last week an encampment for IDPs in Idlib province was bombed – presumably by the Syrian air force – killing up to 30 people. The Kammouna camp is close to the Turkish border, which facilitates the delivery of some aid, but does not offer any defence. And this attack took place during the so-called cessation of hostilities, agreed in February but widely broken.
The question has to be asked: why would the regime bomb the tents of the homeless? It can only be to force them to flee. The rebel side is convinced that the aim is to force the majority Sunni Muslim population to leave, thus reducing the ranks of the rebels and making it easier for the Assad family, which is drawn from the Alawite minority, to rule the ruins of their country.
There is certainly no attempt to spare civilians. In Aleppo, the regime is bombing the hospitals and killing doctors in the rebel-held part of the city as part of a blatant attempt to clear the civilian population ahead of a final assault to retake it.
The number of displaced people is staggering. In Aleppo province alone there are 1.25 million, more than the total number who fled last year to the EU countries, which have a total population of more than 500 million.
Those living unprotected in tents are far from the worst category. There are hundreds of thousands of people living in areas besieged by the regime, its Hizbollah allies or by rebel factions, with no freedom of movement and no access to humanitarian supplies. Maybe half of them have fled their homes in search of safety, and now find themselves facing starvation.
The UN lists 18 besieged areas with a population of 480,000, but these figures are compiled with input from the regime and official Syrian organisations, so the true figure is estimated by aid agencies at double that.
Given the level of need, it is not surprising that getting aid to civilians is a key element of the Syrian peace talks, which are due to resume in Vienna on Tuesday. Experts are not optimistic.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of Norwegian Refugee Council, said that conflict had descended to the level of the Napoleonic wars 200 years ago, when blockades and sieges were the norm.
“It is our collective shame that we let the peace plan put forward by Kofi Annan [in 2012] decline,” he said at the launch of the IDP report. “It is far harder now to make progress and to return the displaced to their homes.”
The world is on the move and migration is going to be a feature of the landscape for the future. Last year it is estimated there were close to 70 million people uprooted from their homes across the globe, due to both conflict and disasters such as earthquakes and droughts and storms, which are becoming more common as the climate heats up.
It might seem that there is no connection between Fort McMurray and Aleppo. There is one: in Canada, forest fires are a natural phenomenon, but they have grown more frequent and widespread in northern climes due to rising temperatures, which dry out the wood.
In Syria, it was a five-year drought forcing destitute farmers off the fields and into the cities, combined with the incompetence of the regime, that set the scene for the current conflict.
Disasters test weak states to destruction. In strong states they can bring people together. Already nine of out 10 people who flee their homes do so in or to poor countries, despite the impression in Europe that the rich are bearing the burden of global migration.
The contrast between Canada and Syria leads to only one conclusion: the rich will have to do a lot more to help the rest of the world, not only in Syria but also everywhere where disaster is likely to strike.
Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs
On Twitter: @aphilps
