Temporary refuge becomes permanent exile for Syrian refugees as new conflict rages back home

DOMIZ CAMP, Kurdistan Region – Younis Mahmoud measures and cuts a blue and white patterned tile into shape, scrapes cement onto the back, and carefully puts it in place on the facade of a new home he is helping to build. The house on a corner lot has views up and down a dusty lane that is peppered with small, vibrant green gardens and bright reds and oranges of bedding hung to air in the sun until it ends at a barbed wire-topped fence. 

This is Domiz refugee camp, home to more than 32,000 Syrian refugees, many of whom fled their towns and villages seven or eight years ago as Syria erupted into a civil war that drew in the international community and gave space for the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). 

“We thought maybe one month and the war would finish and we could go home. We’re still waiting,” said Mahmoud. He fled his hometown of Qamishli in 2012, fearing conscription into the Syrian army. 

Now the residents of this camp are watching a new wave of refugees arrive as yet another front in the convoluted Syrian conflict creates more devastation and chaos. Turkey launched a ground incursion, dubbed Operation Peace Spring, on October 9, aiming to push Kurdish forces away from the border and establish a so-called “safe zone” where as many as two million Syrian refugees can be resettled from Turkey.

Before Turkey’s offensive, the Kurdistan Region was hosting 226,399 Syrian refugees. That number is growing every day. “More than 7,140 Syrians have crossed into Iraq since Turkey started its military operation,” the Norwegian Refugee Council announced on Tuesday. 

“In the last 24 hours, around 1,736 refugees crossed into Iraq according to Kurdish authorities – the highest number to cross in one day, since the beginning of the military operation.”

The families living in Domiz camp have resigned themselves to a prolonged stay. What was once a tent encampment, the camp is now a permanent fixture with proper houses. Rows of shops sell everything from bathroom sinks to freshly baked bread, from shoes to lingerie. Satellite dishes crown the roof of nearly every house.  

Eight-year-old Wasila Sadoun was just learning how to walk when her family fled Syria. The shy, dark-haired girl has no memories of life outside the refugee camp where she attends school and dreams of being a teacher. 

Her older sister Nasmeen can recall grainy flashes of life in Syria. “I remember jets bombing. We sat in the kitchen. Our dad went out. We were scared and hid in the house,” she said. Now 12, she was four when the family decided to flee their home in Qalamoun, an hour north of Damascus. “I remember taking a bus,” she said. 

Though the memories of Syria she recounts are grim, she associates the country with a feeling of love and connectedness to her family and friends, something she doesn’t have in the refugee camp. “Syria is better,” she said. 

The girls’ mother Laila Ali bounces her youngest – a boy born in the camp less than a year ago – on her lap, sitting under a TV in the carpeted living room of their home. 

“We were tired of moving house so built this so our children are comfortable. There is war so we can’t go back,” she said of their fate, simply. 

As Kurds, she said they have no idea what will happen to them if they return to Syria. Kurds were persecuted under the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his father before him. The safety they have carved out in northern Syria is now under threat from Turkey, which considers the armed Syrian Kurdish forces terrorists. 

With every new outburst of violence, Ali loses a little more hope that she can ever take her children home. She longs to be reunited with family and friends still in Syria, but always at the back of her mind is the thought, “if we go, there could be another war.”

Grape vines are weaving their way over a trellis in the entryway of their house in the camp and Ali is trying to create the best life for her children in the Kurdistan Region, “but in our heart, that was our home,” she said of Syria. 

Ali says she would accept life under the Syrian army if it finally brings peace. “If they are the solution for this problem, this war, why not? We are happy if they are there for peace,” she said. 

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) made a deal with Damascus, mediated by Russia, for regime troops to bolster security at the border with Turkey and in key towns. Government forces began a gradual deployment early last week. 

While Ali thinks that deal might be good news for her and her family, it will keep construction worker Mahmoud and everyone who dodged the Syrian draft out of the country. “We’re still refugees. We can’t go back,” he said. 

With translations by Rediyar Hassan

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