“They want to empty the country,” he said, sitting with his wife and two children as he described how government soldiers had bombed the village of Jdeidet al-Fadel and then executed residents in their homes, suspecting them of rebel sympathies. Some, he said, were “beheaded like chickens.” After helping with the burials, he snuck his family into Turkey.

The refugee crisis isn’t just a by-product of the brutal civil war in Syria, according to many of those fleeing, as well as Western officials and analysts tracking the conflict. It’s part of a concerted effort by the Syrian government, which has killed the vast majority of civilians in a war that has left more than 200,000 people dead.

Assad has lost control over more than three-quarters of the country, and targeting civilians in those areas has been part of his strategy from the start of the four-year-old civil war. His forces work to make opposition-held areas unlivable for rebels and civilians alike — a tactic guaranteed to create masses of refugees. “The rationale behind [the government’s military] strategies is to leave no other choice to the populations: Either you come back to us and recognize our authority, or you will die,” said Pierre Desbareau, the emergency coordinator for Syria at Doctors Without Borders. “In many besieged zones, you really can see the level of brutality rising year after year. So, at the end there is no choice for the population in opposition areas. They have to leave the country.”