Heartbreaking
Times for Syrian Kurdish Refugees
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Originally published under the title "Heartbreaking
Times."
A
refugee camp in Suruc near the Turkey-Syria border, photographed by the
author
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SURUC, Turkey – Kobani refugees faced a bitter winter on the
Turkish-Syrian border, yet there was one bright spot: The fight to rid
the Kurdish Syrian town of Islamic State jihadists was officially
declared over on January 27.
The Kurdish YPG militia, with the vital assistance of the US Air
Force's 9th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron and additional coalition air
power, drove the last of the jihadists out and planted the Kurdish flag
once more over Kobani.
They have kept up the momentum; more than 160
additional villages in what once formed the Kobani enclave have been
liberated. The Kurds are now pressing up against Tel Abyad to the east of
the city, and Jarabulus to its west.
Yet for the civilian residents of Kobani, the story is far from over.
Around 200,000 displaced people remain on the Turkish side of the border;
they form the overwhelming majority of the families who fled Kobani last
autumn, before US air support began, when it looked like the city was
doomed. Concentrated in and around the border town of Suruc are 67,200 of
the refugees, where a number of makeshift refugee camps have been
established.
Around 200,000 displaced Kurds
remain on the Turkish side of the border.
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Refugees have also taken up residence in any available space, swelling
the population of the town. Many of the structures are exposed to the
elements, and lack even the most basic facilities. It is an acute
humanitarian crisis – one largely ignored now that the fighting fronts
have moved elsewhere.
Last week, this reporter visited Suruc and the border area, seeking to
gain a clearer picture of the reality facing both refugees and returnees.
For the 4,000 or so who have returned to Kobani and environs, the main
problem beyond the sheer physical destruction visited on the city is
booby traps. Islamic State forces, before leaving, wired explosives to
much of what remained intact in the city – including furniture, doorways
and toys.
"We need experts to come in and remove the unexploded
bombs," Mustafa Alali, a Kurdish activist who was among the first to
return to Kobani, tells me, "and then we need a humanitarian
corridor for helping the people as they begin to return, with food, water
and electricity."
Most of those who have returned were formerly residents not of Kobani
town itself, but of villages surrounding it. The villages were rapidly
abandoned by the jihadists once Islamic State ceded the goal of
conquering the urban area. As a result, houses in the rural points of
settlement were less badly damaged in the fighting than those in the
city.
In Kobani town, little remains. Yet impatience to return is growing
among the refugees.
" Just yesterday, a seven-year-old girl here
in my office was asking her father why they haven't gone home yet to
Kobani," says Mustafa Dogal, head of Kurdish relief efforts in
Suruc, speaking in his cluttered office there. "And of course, he
doesn't know how to tell her that their home simply doesn't exist any
more."
Hope for a "humanitarian
corridor" from Turkey into Kobani runs up against the political
reality of Turkish-Kurdish conflict.
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"People are running out of patience to return to their
homes," Dogal continues.
"There is an urgent need
to rebuild houses, schools and hospitals, and for clean water and
electricity; Kobani now has none of these. We are living in heartbreaking
times."
But Alali and Dogal's hope for a "humanitarian corridor"
from Turkey into Kobani runs up against the political reality of
Turkish-Kurdish conflict.
The Turkish government appeared content to allow Kobani to fall to
Islamic State; Turkish forces assembled to the north of the enclave
during the battle made no move to intervene. This is because the Kurdish
cantons in Syria are controlled by the Syrian franchise of the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) – which has been engaged in an insurgency against
the Turkish government for over 30 years.
The conflict has left a legacy of extreme distrust between the Turkish
authorities and Kurds on both sides of the border, and this is having a
direct impact on the plight of the refugees. In January, AFAD (the
Disaster and Emergency Management Organization of the Turkish republic)
opened a new camp, offering accommodation for 35,000 refugees; thus far,
only around 4,000 people have taken up residence there.
"People are worried about going to the government camp,"
says Ferzad Daniel, an Iranian Kurdish relief worker in Suruc. "You
need to remember that many of the refugees are Kurdish activists on one
level or another; they're worried about retaliation from the government
after the 'foreigners' leave."
The absence of facilities for education in Kurdish under AFAD auspices
is another reason given for avoiding the government camp. Lack of food is
the main problem facing the refugees who prefer to remain outside of
Turkish jurisdiction, says Ferzad. "Food not controlled by the
government isn't reaching the camps; so the refugees live on a meager
diet of just rice and beans. There are urgent health issues, too – flu is
everywhere; 40 percent of the children have diarrhea; and there are skin
diseases too, brought on by lack of nutrition."
Despite the shortages, the camps maintained by the Kurdish relief
organizations offer basic but adequate facilities – tents, washing areas,
schooling in Kurdish for the children.
Disused houses in Suruc have also been occupied by some refugee
families, seeking shelter from the elements. Conditions here are
primitive in the extreme. In one structure I visited, four families – 40
people in total – were living together in one large room, with just a
blanket placed over the open doorway.
One of the families, the Shaikhos of Sheran village, are still
mourning the loss of their eldest son, 19-year-old Mahmoud, who was
killed when he stepped on a land mine while crossing the border to escape
the advance of the jihadists last October.
Mahmoud's younger brother, Fadel, 13, was with him when he was killed;
Fadel survived the explosion, but lost both legs. Now he lives with his
family in the large, empty shell of a house in Suruc, a
thoughtful-looking boy who tries but does not quite succeed in smiling.
The plight of the Kobani refugees is just one element of the vast
problem of people displaced by the Syrian war. No end to the war appears
in sight, and spring looks set to bring little respite to the refugees on
the Turkish- Syrian border.
Heartbreaking times, indeed.
Jonathan Spyer is a senior
research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA)
Center, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the
Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).
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