After 18 years of war, the USA and the Taliban insurgents decided to conclude an agreement that many analysts considered as having a historical dimension and significance. It is meant to pave the way for the withdrawal of the US and NATO troops, as well as for the start of a peace process between the insurgents and the government in Kabul led by the president Ashraf Ghani – who wasn’t present in Doha for the negotiations, as it is seen by the Islamist Taliban as a “US and Western puppet”.

In the history of wars – whether large or small – there is a stylistic and methodological tendency to overstate some of their episodes, most of the times subjectively chosen. Remembered as such either after the names of enemy commanders or the locations where confrontations took place, many of these martial actions were ennobled with epithets such as “historical” or “memorable”. Those labelled as “historical” especially, being scarcer, remained in the collective and historical memory as defining landmarks of the entire war.
Starting late 2019, we have been witnessing a new “historical episode” in Syria, where everybody is involved whether they want it or not, and if they want it they do it away from the spotlight and the public eye – whether Syrian, Arab, regional or international. And this episode is called Idlib, where for a few weeks now there has been a real war, which has already produced around one million refugees.