UN observer recounts the hell of the war in Syria

Enora Chame has always had a passion for Syria. It was as a UN observer that she spent three months there in 2012 for a “peacekeeping mission“, decided by the Security Council. A last-ditch mission to prevent the country from falling into chaos. She is the only French soldier deployed by the UN in Syria when the civil war has just broken out. For she and the 300 other observers must uphold the fragile ceasefire between the troops of Bashar al-Assad and the rebels of the Free Syrian Army.The population, trapped in the middle of the violence, is suffering. large crowd mobbed the observers’ car as they arrived.”It was impressive (…) everyone wanted to show their share of suffering. (…) you have to stay very calm“, says Enora Chame.

On the ground, the fighting quickly resumed. She and her colleagues have become impartial witnesses to abuses. Observers had to gather evidence and take pictures of corpses rolled up in blankets. Despite gestures filled with humanity, his team sometimes found themselves the target of strikes and even fell into an ambush by Al-Qaeda. They only had dialogue to get out of it because the UN negotiators were not armed in Syria. In her book, When the Shadow Advances, Enora Chame confides that in other areas of conflict, where she has a weapon, her approach is different. “I made the choice to keep the last cartridge of bullets for me“, she admits. Ten years have passed and today she takes a very critical look at this UN mission in Syria. She hopes that those who will be sent to Ukraine will not experience the same difficulties.