Jan Egeland on the Human Catastrophe in Syria

It is a major mistake to believe that this, the greatest war of our generation, is over.

Is not over in two senses.

There is fighting in many places in Syria, even against the Islamic State in the far east of the country.

There is a place called Idlib with 3 million civilians and they are under armed opposition control and people there fear a major attack any moment now.

It could be a battle again similar to Aleppo or Damascus but also, it's not over in the sense that the place is in ruins.

I traveled around Damascus just a few weeks ago.

I haven't seen such devastation over so large urban areas anywhere in the 30 armed conflicts that I have visited.

Wow that is quite a comparison.

In 30 armed conflicts you've never seen anything like Syria?

Not anything.

Of course, I mean Grozny was as much level to the ground, Vukovar in Bosnia, you know that, Christiane from the Bosnia War, parts of Sarajevo, parts of Beirut, but in Syria, you travel for three four hours continuously in car and you only see devastation so it's over much larger areas.

So I just want to ask you to reflect on after all the efforts, your efforts, Staffan de Mistura's efforts, he's also leaving, Kofi Annan's efforts, Lakhdar Brahimi's, you can name all these distinguished U.N.

officials and yet, I would say that perhaps the world has lost and Assad has won.

How would you assess?

Well I would say humanity lost in this war.

There were too many bringing fuel to the fire and we were too weak, those of us who tried to do our best to shield civilian population, to get humanitarian relief to besieged areas and to get armed men to not fight civilians.

We were too weak and those who fuel the fire, those who believed they were fighting terror.

You know everybody was fighting terror in Syria.

And when you believe you're fighting terrorism you seem to be able to wage indiscriminate war.