Saturday 21 / September / 2024
GAZIANTEP: Five years ago, Mohammed Sherzad, all of 12 years of age, with a thick mane of blonde hair and deep blue eyes, sought shelter at the Nizip Container City 2 in Turkey, some 160kms from his war-torn Syrian town of Aleppo, along with his parents and brothers.
Today, he still struggles with the reality of being a refugee and misses his homeland, even though he is safe from the many dangers that lurk in Syria.
“I feel I am a caged person here. My movements are restricted. I don’t want to be here. I miss my hometown. I miss my cousins and friends. I will go back,” Mohammed, who lost his cousin in the war, said.
“I agree that we are safe here. I am not threatened by any blasts or firing, but I want to play freely. Here, the guards stop me from going here or venturing there,” Mohammed, who struggled along with his family to reach the Nizip camp, said.
Mohammed and his family had approached a different camp in Gaziantep, the southern Turkish province bordering Syria, but were refused entry and had to trudge a risky route to Nizip.
“Some of my family members managed to get a medical report stating the urgency for us to get an entry into some refugee camp. That helped us to be accepted into this camp. But it is five years now. Now, I am a grown up, and I want to be free. I want to go back,” Mohammed added.
Abdis Esmail, an 18-year-old Syrian boy who is in charge of the camp library, being one of the educated and grown-up refugees, had his own story of fleeing and struggle but he also wants to go back one day and rebuild his town.
“I did my pre-university course in Syria, and am preparing for a degree course while being here in the camp. I want to be an engineer and return to my country to help rebuild it,” Esmail, who narrowly escaped a woman suicide bomber attack in his locality, said.
Amar, another Syrian boy who lost his cousin in an attack, also expressed his wish to return.
“We have classes here. We have computer labs here. We have a playground, too. But can all of these replace my hometown? I miss my hometown playground and friends. After coming here, I even miss that freshly-baked Syrian bread’s aroma,” Amar added.
According to the United Nations, more than half of all Syrian refugees are under the age of 18 and most of them have been out of school for months, if not years, undoing 10 years of progress in education for Syrian children.
Nizip Container City 2, managed by the government’s emergency and disaster arm, was opened in 2013 and shelters 2,579 children in the camp. That number was around 50 per cent of the total refugees in the camp, as of April 12, 2016.
The camp has learning and recreational centres.
However, one cannot but help notice that Syrian children are getting Turkishised as they learn Turkish songs, listen to Turkish stories.
Rita Sefir, a Lebanese journalist, who noticed Syrian children learning to dance to the tunes of Turkish songs, expressed her worries of a race losing its own culture.
“Getting Syrian teachers is a hurdle for us. However, we try our best to provide education to the children. There are few Syrian teachers in the camp,” an official from the camp, who declined to be named, said.
An official from Gaziantep province headquarters, which hosts 10 refugee camps, said they are planning to open more schools for the refugee children.
“Providing them better education is our priority. We see them as guests, not as refugees,” added Halil Uymaz, vice governor, Gaziantep Province.
Gaziantep, which was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize this year for its humanitarian initiatives, hosts more than 50,000 Syrians in local refugee camps set up by the government. Hundreds of thousands of refugees live in the province and its surrounding towns.
Last week, shells fired by rebels hit southern Turkey, the fourth such cross-border incident in less than a week, which raises concerns of more people fleeing Syria.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said following the renewed fighting between the IS militant group and armed opposition groups in Northern Aleppo, at least 30,000 people have been forced to flee.
According to the HRW, Turkey’s border remains firmly shut a year after the authorities started rejecting all but the most seriously injured Syrians.
International aid workers in Turkey say IS advances on April 13 and 14 have forced out at least half the camps’ 60,000 residents.
Reportedly, they have fled to other camps, to the Bab Al Salameh camp on the Turkish border and to the nearby town of Azaz. Three of the camps – Ikdah, Harameen and Al Sham – are now completely empty of the 24,000 people previously sheltered there.
Quoting the head of Ikdah camp on the Turkish border, the HRW said IS had taken over the camp, which sheltered just under 10,000 people, early on April 14, fired shots in the air, and told residents to leave.
“The whole world is talking about fighting the IS, and yet those most at risk of becoming victims of its horrific abuses are trapped on the wrong side of a concrete wall,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at the Human Rights Watch.
An op-ed page editor at Sabah said they can’t say how the unrest will be resolved and the influx of migrants be handled.
“We expected the unrest to last for two years only, but it has been five years now. We have been urging the global community to set up a no-fly buffer zone inside Syria, but nobody is listening to us,” the editor added.
Turkey is home to more than 2.5 million refugees from Syria, making it a country that is hosting the largest displaced Syrian population in the world, being the nearest destination for millions fleeing the war.
Only a small fraction of them – 269,672 according to the Prime Ministry's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) – live in refugee camps, while others live in cities all across the country, from border cities like Gaziantep to Istanbul in the northwest.
“Funds are not the biggest problem while handling the incoming migrants’ issues, it’s the manpower. We try our best to provide the best care for migrants,” said Dr Fuat Oktay, AFAD President.
On the streets of Istanbul near the Grand Bazzar, Syrian families asking money for food is now a common sight.
Inside Syria, the United Nations estimates there are 6.5 million displaced people in besieged or hard-to-reach areas, of whom many live in dire need in abandoned buildings, open spaces and in informal camps mainly in the north near the border with Turkey, where there are few or no services available.
The United Nations data also reveals that currently, more than 4.7 million registered Syrian refugees have fled the violence in their home country, just like Mohammed, Amar and Abdis.
Those who remain in the Middle East face bleak conditions, lack access to critical services and have no right to work. Some families are resorting to very negative strategies to cope with limited resources, such as eating less, marrying off girl children and sending children to work as exploitative labourers.
According to the UN, it will take $7.7 billion to meet the urgent needs of the most vulnerable Syrians in 2016 and it predicts that there could be 4.7 million registered Syrian refugees by the end of 2016 — the worst exodus since the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago.
Last December, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that supports international efforts to seek a political solution in Syria.
No one wants such efforts to succeed more than, perhaps, Mohammed Sherzad. It's young like him that Syria will need the most when bombs stop exploding. "I look forward to that day, every day. That's what gives me the courage to live through all this," said the strapping young man, ruffling his blonde mane, his blue eyes shining with hope.
