DERIKE, Syria — A desolate and unforgiving patch of land in northeastern Syria is now home to 12,000 Yezidi refugees so desperate for safety they sought refuge in a country torn apart by its own civil war.
Aid workers are desperately trying to assist the refugees, who are sick and injured after escaping persecution by Islamic militants in Iraq. Many became malnourished on Shingal Mountain, where they were hiding from Islamic State (IS/formerly ISIS) militants before being evacuated by Peshmerga and US forces.
Nowruz camp, on the outskirts of the city of Derike in Syrian Kurdistan, was built in November to provide shelter for 20 internally displaced Syrian families but swelled to 12,000 people after Yezidi refugees began pouring into the camp on August 10.
NGOs and local authorities have been scrambling to meet the basic needs of refugees in the camp by providing medicine, food, water and supplies.
Over 200 doctors and nurses have been called in to help treat the sick and injured. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is treating up to 400 patients a day, mostly for dehydration, fever and exhaustion.
The IRC reported that many patients are suffering from chronic diarrhea because they were forced to eat shrubs while stranded on the mountain. Many are still struggling to get properly hydrated.
Protected and controlled by the People’s Protection Units (YPG,) the armed wing of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which helped rescue the Yezidi Kurds in Iraq, Syrian Kurdistan has seen relatively less conflict than the rest of Syria since the war began.
While they are protected from violence, however, there is little respite from the elements on the scorching plains of this de facto autonomous Kurdish region, known as Rojava. Daytime temperatures soar to nearly 50 degrees Celsius under the unforgiving August sun and the arid wind that howls through the camp coats everything in a thick layer of dust.
As a truck distributing supplies inched its way through the crowd, chaos ensued as people pushed their way to the front to try to secure the most basic items — pots, bowls, pillows — for their new makeshift homes.
Children scrambled and fought over the last remaining pairs of cheap plastic sandals. Forced to flee their homes as militants invaded Yezidi and Christian communities in northwestern Iraq, some walked the entire journey, over 60 kilometers, without shoes.
Ghazal Kassal is one of them. Along with her husband, their family of five left everything they owned behind when they heard that IS was rapidly advancing on the town of Shingal.
Her face, still burnt from the week she spent besieged on the mountain, was creased with fear and sorrow as she explained that three family members were still trapped in the town of Shingal, surrounded by IS on all sides and without a vehicle to help them escape. They have only been able to talk to them once and their fate remains unknown.
For many Yezidis, the YPG became heroes after they established and safeguarded an escape route into Syria from Mount Shingal, where up to 40,000 people fled in fear of their lives. Islamic extremists consider Yezidis, who are ethnically Kurdish but practice an ancient religion, apostates. IS has killed and kidnapped hundreds of Yezidis in recent weeks.
Shivan Khader Saleh’s oldest son has joined the YPG forces and he said others should as well.
“We (Yezidis) have lost everything to IS – our money, our houses, our cars, our girls. So why shouldn’t we join the YPG?”
Saleh, 52, and his 12 family members crowded together as he described their journey from Shingal to Nowruz. When IS surrounded the town on all four sides and Iraqi Arabs turned on them and joined the attacks on Yezidis, they fled to the mountains.
The mountainous terrain was so difficult to navigate that Saleh was forced to leave two of his daughters behind while the rest of the family continued on to Syria. When they arrived at Nowruz, they managed to find a car and returned immediately to pick up his daughters.
Saleh’s family knows they are fortunate to have all made it out alive. Others were not as lucky and lost family members while they were stranded on the mountain, or during the perilous journey on-foot afterwards. He said that many families — too weak to carry their own children — were forced to leave them behind.
Their physical wounds are healing, but the emotional scars the Yezidis now bear will not fade anytime soon. Deeply traumatized by what they have seen and experienced, the IRC said after getting people physically stable, their priority is to help them deal with the loss, fear and violence they have suffered.
