Nine-year-old Cihan Hassan fled Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) with her family when Turkey and its Syrian proxies attacked Kurdish forces in their hometown and neighboring Gire Spi (Tal Abyad).
“We went to school for a little while, around one week,” in 2019, she said. “But it ended and they [Turkish-backed forces] came and took over.”
Ankara considers Kurdish forces in Rojava a threat to its national security and has conducted two major military operations against them, one in Afrin in 2018 and the second on Sari Kani and Gire Spi where it wanted to push Kurdish forces back from its border. The offensive ended with ceasefires brokered by the United States and Russia that ceded control of the two towns to Turkey.
A school is under construction in the camp, but work is proceeding slowly and it is not expected to be completed in the near future.
According to United Nations figures, there are 2.5 million Syrian children who are not in school after a decade of conflict.
Translation by Zhelwan Zeyad Wali
Video editing by Sarkawt Mohammed
