Baytna had an energetic start to 2019 after the excellent results of 2018, and aspired to achieve even better and more impactful results that year. However, the year proved to be more challenging than expected.

The biggest challenge in 2019 remained the continued loss of territory inside Syria, and the accompanying cessation of activities and forced displacements of our colleagues and partners even further north of Syria. The biggest two of these operations were the massive onslaught of regime forces and allies on greater Idlib from April to August 2019, resuming in December 2019, and the Turkish military operation into North East Syria in October 2019. Although both military operations did not have a direct impact on our granting component, as all of our subgrants finished by August 2019 and were in areas not affected by the military operations, they impacted our mapping exercise as we had to delay civil society mapping in NE Syria to December 2019, and had to reexamine results from Idlib given the loss of significant civic centers such as Maaret Al Numan and Saraqeb.

The above challenges came in addition to the ones faced earlier in the year when HTS controlled more than 90 percent of greater Idlib, where we had to suspend operations, evaluate risk, and only resume after prudent due diligence.

However, this year also saw our migration to a new strategy. We now work across Syria with like-minded organizations and initiatives that share the same principles and values, regardless of where they are located in the country.