She has no name, no face. She fears that by telling her story, her family will be targeted. She fled the Shahba canton north of Aleppo at the beginning of December, facing the advance of the jihadist coalition of the Syrian National Army (ANS), supported by Turkey. This offensive, somewhat overshadowed by that of the HTS which led to the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, threw her onto the roads, like a hundred thousand other people, mainly Kurds. The story of this refugee woman in Raqqa closely relates that of these 100,000 to 150,000 displaced today in the Syrian North-East.
From our special correspondent in Syria,
His energetic and agitated gait reflects the chaotic flow of his thoughts. Crossing the courtyard of the small school in Raqqa where she has been staying for more than two weeks, this little woman in her forties talks pell-mell about the lack of food, the absence of light in their makeshift apartments. , the three-day journey from Shahba canton and the additional difficulties linked to her daughter’s severe disability.
“ Do you want to come see how we live? “, she suggests more than she asks, before heading towards the side entrance of the building. Three small steps. A long, dark corridor opens. The ground is flooded with water that beads up from upstairs. At the back, the school benches and tables were piled up hastily to make room for around ten families, all from the north-west of the Syria.
She stops at the second door in the hallway and enters, still in a hurry. Children run laughing towards the upper floor. She takes off her shoes and puts down her red handbag matching her vest and hijab, and sits on her knees on the thin blankets spread on the ground to insulate from the cold. Under a mountain of blankets, her 20-year-old daughter, who has suffered from cerebral palsy since childhood, is curled up.
“ Because of the steps at the entrance, we can’t take it outside to sunbathe, explains this worried mother. So she stays there. She doesn’t speak but I understand her. » She fears that her daughter will catch a cold since two days before, the last reserves of fuel oil were consumed in the small stove, installed in the center of the room. Outside, temperatures barely reach 10 degrees at night.
The entire autonomous region is saturated
In this fifteen square meters, lit by large poorly insulated windows, a few meager belongings are piled up in a corner, alongside loose kitchen items. Everything comes from donations from residents of the city of Raqqa. “ We don’t have a real kitchen, all we have is bread and mortadella, she says, miming the preparation. My daughter can’t chew so she has to drink milk from a spoon, and it’s hard to get enough milk to feed her. What we receive is not enough. »
She emphasizes, however, that she was luckier than others. She, at least, has “ a roof over your head “. In this school, one of the 74 emergency units made available to displaced people in the province of Raqqa at the beginning of December, families benefit from a distribution of food and bread, brought by a small pick-up, “ as often as possible », According to Sabah Abdulaziz, head of social affairs in the province.
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But for everyone, the situation is becoming more and more complicated. The entire territory placed under the control of the Autonomous Administration of the North-East of Syria (AANES) is saturated. In the Raqqa region alone, 9,462 people had to be housed in improvised shelters. These solutions are temporary. Soon schools will have to reopen to students. And if the authorities hope that the displaced will return home, the next step could be the creation of a new camp north of Raqqa.
This uncertainty weighs on the shoulders of this anxious mother. Her daughter would require permanent medical monitoring. “ She saw a doctor at Raqqa hospital, but we can’t leave her there, she regrets. We don’t have any medicine either. » Forced to live from day to day, she cannot leave her daughter for very long, in case the family has to be relocated again.
War and exile, again
At the prospect of living in a tent, she is dejected and the expressions on her face become frantic. “ We have already been displaced from Afrin [en 2018] by the same groups [pro-turcs]. But at least at the time, when we arrived in Shahba [un canton au nord d’Alep], we were well settled, she remembers. Everyone had their own house. We had a garden and a few sheep. » « It was good at Shahba, interrupts his 15-year-old son, crouching in a corner of the room. I could go to school. Because yes, we want to go to school. But they decided we wouldn’t have a future », he concludes, exasperated.
Next to him, a small, disheveled white kitten, curled up on a blanket that followed them as they fled. “ He jumped into my arms, so he came with us, said the mother, touched. He came while we ourselves only took what we had on our backs, before spending three days on the roads. » Thinking about it, she gets agitated again. From Shahba to Raqqa, the family slept outside, in the cold. Her severely disabled daughter, placed on the floor at night, and carried by her mother during the day. “ They came, they took our house, our sheep, she said with a sigh. And here we don’t know anyone. »
The future worries him. She cannot hope, like others, to be hosted by relatives in northeast Syria. Her family and that of her husband were scattered around the world after the invasion of Afrin by pro-Turkish forces. Where will they be able to go? This question torments all displaced people. It is already not uncommon to come across small trucks overloaded with bags, mattresses and children wandering from town to town to find shelter.
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