BBC Two

Syria: The World's War (2) (2018x3)

Air date: May 04, 2018

Lyse Doucet tells the story of one of the biggest humanitarian crisis of our age, the Syrian civil war - seven years of brutal conflict, surpassing the length of World War II. In this two-part series, Lyse Doucet, who has reported on the conflict from the start, explores how peaceful protest for change spiralled into unspeakable savagery - half a million people killed, millions of lives shattered and so much of Syria in utter ruins. The series tells the inside story of the war from multiple perspectives. It hears accounts of the experiences of Syrian people from different sides - civilians and fighters who stayed loyal to the government of President Assad as well as those who rebelled. This second film in the series picks up the action as Raqqa falls to a mixture of Islamist and moderate forces. The story of the extraordinary events of the following months is told by two characters. One is a protester who aims to build a new civil society based on democracy, the other is a torture victim who joins the Islamists as a hired assassin. Within a few weeks of the fall of Raqqa, a new, even more extreme Islamist group arrive - ISIS. The civil society activists ends up being tortured in an ISIS jail, the other ends up joining ISIS and working his way through a kill list they have given him. Each tell their story with extraordinary candour. As Raqqa descends into chaos, arguably the most important battle of the war is entering its second year - Aleppo. Lyse meets the militia leader who was a key player in the government fightback against the rebels who had occupied a large part of the city. On the other side we meet the bomb-maker who takes us inside the Islamist forces as they dig tunnels underground to blow up government buildings on the other side of the frontline. To gain greater understanding of how this catastrophe unfolded, Lyse also speaks to politicians and soldiers from within Syria and also from western and regional powers. She asks difficult questions of