Syria Notebook

In order to avoid the Labour conference and yet more predictable media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, I escaped late last month to Syria, where children were returning to school after the summer holidays. Large tracts of the country have recently been liberated from the control of jihadi groups, meaning that in some places children are going back to school for the first time in five years. At Sinjar elementary school in Idlib province, I found the local headmaster painting the school sign. Five years ago rebels gave him the choice of closing down or being killed. He was confined to his house while the school buildings were converted into an arsenal. He took me into a room where an alert, motivated, mixed class of about 25 children spoke of their dreams of becoming doctors, engineers and teachers. Just 150 yards away, the jihadi emir, known as Al Yemeni, had forced people to watch public beheadings. We walked over to the railway track where they took place. Part of the axe lay on the ground. I ruminatively ran the blade across my thumb. It was sharp as a razor. Locals said there had been 80 beheadings during half a decade of jihadi rule.

Schooling did not cease in all rebel areas. A 35-year-old headmistress in the south Damascus suburb of Douma told me her school had continued to operate under the control of the Saudi-backed rebel group Jaish al-Islam. However her students, girls between 13 and 16 years old, were forced to wear the hijab and banned from clapping their hands and taking public exams. Lessons in music, art and sport were banned. Outside the headmistress’s office was the entrance to one of the many deep tunnels dug by fighters in order to avoid detection and protect them from attack. She said that she had refused offers from Jaish al-Islam to double her modest government salary if she agreed to teach at its own Islamist schools.