A Camp in the Desert

Hello and welcome back to Syria's last generation, a podcast about young people displaced by war. This show is a production of foreign policy in partnership with the Humanitarian Group's World Vision and the Syrian American Medical Society. I'm your host, Liam Cunningham. In the first two episodes of the show, we spoke with young people in Lebanon, where more than one million Syrian refugees have spread out across the country, many in small informal tent camps. Lebanon's approach to the crisis has been largely to prevent Syrians from forming big settlements, as Palestinian refugees did decades ago, and to prevent refugees from developing a sense of permanence. In Jordan, meanwhile, the government has taken a somewhat different approach, corralling many Syrians into a pair of large camps in the country's barren, northern desert. Zatteri, the main camp, holds about 80,000 people. It's the single largest Syrian refugee settlement in the world, and the world's second largest refugee camp. We're joined once again by David Enders, an American journalist who is based in Beirut and covers Syria. David, what can you tell us about the Syrian refugees in Jordan? Well, Liam, the situation for Syrians in Jordan is somewhat better than it is in Lebanon, but still less than ideal. They've better access to services and more rights to employment than they do in Lebanon, but they remain marginalized and their movement is often restricted. Yes, I remember from my visits that refugees who want to leave the camps need a permit, and a permit is usually denied. So if these countries aren't happy to have so many refugees, why do they take them in? Well, at this point they don't. Jordan was the first country to close its borders to Syrians, and even now there are more than 10,000 people stuck in the No Man's Land between Jordan and Syria. The rest of Syria's neighbors have closed their borders now as well after taking in millions of people in the initial years of the war. As far as the initial refugees, there are lots of reasons people took them in. The first is at the beginning, nobody really expected this to go on as long as it has, and from a humanitarian standpoint, there wasn't much else to do. Local populations were also often sympathetic toward those freeing or openly supportive of the uprising. Lots of Lebanese hate the Syrian government. The Syrian military occupied the country for 30 years, and they were openly supportive of overthrown Bashar Assad. And many of those freeing were doing so on foot with what they could carry and turning them away would have been heartless, tantamount to a crime. And the border was also quite porous. Lebanon and Syria have a long history, and actually until the war began, lots of the border was barely marked, and you could kind of, in some places, just walk back and forth as far as you felt like it. And you've crossed these borders yourself, accompanying refugees, haven't you? I have. At one point, I crossed from Syria to Iraq with a group of refugees, and we were stopped at gunpoint by the Iraqi military, and the soldiers had orders not to let anyone cross. I was just trying to get back to Iraq. I'd been reporting in Syria for a few weeks, and my goal was simply just to get out of the country and get home, and these people were trying to leave their homes very, very desperately with just literally whatever they could carry. And they were people who were obviously civilians, elderly people, people who were carrying small children. This was August in Iraq, so the temperature was well over 100 degrees, and we were led to a certain point between the borders by a group of smugglers, and then just left to navigate on our own, and we walked for some hours, and when we were stopped by these soldiers, the refugees just sat down in front of them, and one of them said, "You can go ahead and shoot us. We're not going back to Syria." It's one of those moments as a journalist where you stop documenting, and you become a participant. I was just preoccupied with getting across the border like everyone else was. Eventually, we made it across. The soldiers actually waited until their commander had gone to a different part of the border and defied their orders, and let us pass. It's extraordinary when you think about it that it's ironic to say the least that a group of people would be relieved to be arriving in Iraq. It's saying something. On another occasion, I was with a similar group crossing from Syria to Turkey, and we were again led by smugglers. In this case, in the middle of the night through a minefield, and it was the same thing. Older folks, people carrying small children, and just try to imagine that level of desperation, to attempt crossing a minefield in the dark, carrying an infant, and running toward heavily armed Turkish soldiers. It was a war zone, and there was no guarantee that these soldiers on the other side were necessarily going to react well to a bunch of people running toward them. I suppose there's a sense of safety about it. It's extraordinary to tend to stress on these people, especially when you've got your children with you. These countries, they took in refugees in part, you're saying, because they had sympathy for the refugees. But there was a political angle as well, wasn't there? There's a political angle, and there's also a potential economic benefit. In the case of Turkey, at least the government there was publicly supporting the uprising, so it would have been hugely hypocritical not to accept the refugees fleeing the very government Turkey was publicly demonizing. But also some governments siphon off portions of aid meant for refugees. Other governments have effectively weaponized them. Turkey and Lebanon have both at times openly threatened to allow refugees to travel freely to Europe, if demands for assistance or political concessions go unmet. But back to Jordan, Liam, you've visited some of the camps there, right? The sheer size is staggering to me. It is, it's extraordinary, and bizarrely, when I got to, I think one of the camps when I was there was 160,000 that had grown in a really short amount of time. But I remember thinking the sides were similar to Galway. There's an annual film festival and all that's why it's one of our larger cities in Ireland, in our small country of Ireland. But this town, the city that had grown in a tiny amount of time, it's like a city appearing in your country from now where it's a most bizarre strange thing. And I also remember in one of the camps I brought some art materials, colored pencils, crayons for the kids, and they were being used psychiatrically because a lot of these kids come in and they wouldn't speak because of the horrors they had seen. And they gave, they took the art supplies so that these kids could make drawings of what they seen. And it was a forced attempt to get them to communicate about the horrors that they saw. That kind of thing really plays on one's mind. That's one of the things we're going to focus on in this episode. In addition to the need for basic necessities, there's also a massive need for psychosocial support. The violence that people have endured is almost unimaginable and the results in terms of mental health issues are evident in the camps. All right, then let's hear more from Azraq Camp in Northern Jordan. My dream is to become a football player. I like to root for Barcelona and I would like to be like Messi. He's one of tens of thousands of kids growing up among the rows of white trailers and tents that sprawl across a rocky tan to blow in the Zaatari and Azraq Syrian refugee camps in Jordan's northern desert. The Zaatari camp in Jordan, home to nearly 80,000 Syrians, displaced by civil war. I live in how six, block four, neighborhood 14. There are seven of us for siblings, my parents and me. If I don't have school, I train for football and I go play football and then I come back home and I do my chores and then I go play football again but the ground doesn't help us. We hurt ourselves when we fall. I would like to be a famous football player in the Arab world. As soon as from Raqqa in eastern Syria, his family fled in 2015 after the city was taken over by the Islamic State. The center of the battle today, Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State, and his father Omar, says that life in Azraq is manageable but often difficult. He worries about the opportunities his children will have for their futures. I hope that our country will be back like it was before and all the people will be back together and here in the camp we hope for the kids to have programs to help them succeed in the future. If you see them how they play with their rocks and their hands are all bloody, your heart will break. Those are the ones who like sports but the ones who don't, they just said so we hope that they create academies and take care of the children and the schools and make the educational choices better. That's the most important thing for a child to succeed. There is a lack of services for children. That shortage extends to mental health services as well. Most of the refugees, young people like Hassoon and adults like his father experience terrible trauma in Syria. As a result, millions have experienced psychological trauma. Many lost family members. Processing all that trauma without incurring lasting emotional damage requires psychological support. But the provision is lacking. For those who do seek treatment, less than one person of aid is dedicated to their mental health. Mariam Asalajat is the mental health and psychosocial support coordinator in Jordan for the humanitarian group World Vision International. An NGO that provides aid to Syrians across the region. The refugees she sees deal with everything from war-related trauma to gender-based violence, which is a significant problem in the camps. Actually, when they hear a plan on top of their heads, they do not think about traveling. They think about war and what happened with them, the pump being, whatever. So they are not having like normal life. They have a traumatic life actually. And we need to stop all this. And I believe that psychosocial interventions helps a lot to manage all the stress and fears and to keep them going, to reach out their hopes and dreams. Because some of them, they forgot even the word of hope or future. She says that the services that are available fall short of meeting the need. Psychosocial support needs follow-up up to one year. So to make sure that these children are stable and they can like continue their lives without support. If we do so, I think we can guarantee a much stability in the children and well-being. And the children can be more able to focus on their dreams, their hopes, because they can deal with difficulties, they can gain like problem solving. But I think with the limited budget, we just have the intervention like five to ten sessions maximum. We do not have the ability to continue working with them up to one year. Jordan has been a haven for refugees for most of its life as an independent country. First, for millions of Palestinians, then for more than a million Iraqis escaping their country's decades of war. And now Syrians. Before she worked with Syrian refugees, Mariam provided support to Iraqis. It takes a toll. I'm working with refugees since 14 years. I can see how much they suffered. A lot of terrible cases, a lot of like sad stories, a lot of fears between children. They saw sometimes some of their families dead in front of them. And all of this makes traumas and bad memories in their minds. And they will never forget all children have the right to be safe and to get normand educations, to get health services easily and then to be treated well. Nearly everyone in the camp has a story to tell about trauma. For 18-year-old Mahmoud, it begins in the southern Syrian city of Dara where he grew up. When fighting broke out there in the initial phase of the war, he and his family crossed to Jordan. But then attempted to return to Syria in 2014. We went back because we used to speak without cousin and he said the situation was normal, not like it was before. But when we went back there, there was a lot of shelon happening and a lot of problems. And the coast of Levin was expensive. And there was no work. We were in a situation that we might eat today but not tomorrow. So we came back here again. When they attempted to re-enter Jordan, Mahmoud and his family spent 11 days stuck on the border. Mahmoud was sick at the time and was given the wrong medication by a doctor. It caused an infection that led to the amputation of his left leg. Mahmoud says that life in the camp is one more difficulty on top of the trauma that people experienced in Syria. It's really hard to live in the camps. If they stay in the camp 10 years, people don't have patients anymore. The environment is hard and we can't enjoy life. I can't expect anyone staying for 10 years to be in good material. The shortage in services is bound up in part, at least, with donor fatigue. With the war now underway for a decade and another decade of crisis in Syria looming, humanitarian groups are finding it hard to continue raising awareness and money. Most groups, from the United Nations to NGOs, are focused mainly on providing basic necessities. But as the conflict drags on, and many refugees remain trapped in difficult conditions, the need for long-term planning is more significant than ever. COVID-19 and economic crises in the Middle East have further exacerbated the problem. Nina Nepasova is the global director for humanitarian policy and advocacy at World Vision. Ten years on, we still have a huge amount of need and that in fact, the numbers of people in need have increased from last year to this year by, well, a couple of million, really. And so, in essence, for us as World Vision, as humanitarian, some really concerned about the fact that the crisis is continuing and the needs are growing and the world is no longer watching. I remember the first five years it was all over the news. Every day we were hearing about what was going on and the atrocities that were being committed against children, civilians and unfortunately now it's barely in the news. We've first stopped looking at just one-year plans quite a while back, I'm afraid, and indeed for us we are looking at two to three-year planning, especially for young people for whom opportunities continue to be quite short. And I think the trajectory for their future and the hopes that they have for themselves in terms of getting a great degree and education, in terms of getting a job by fairly slim. Serious neighbors, largely Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, are now home to the majority of the more than six million who have fled the country. Politicians in all three countries have criticized the international community for not doing enough to help. Nepisova agrees. The region and the neighboring countries aren't a lot of pressure, so the most important thing to recognize is that they have had the highest burden of refugees. Frankly speaking, the burden sharing by West Nations have really been subbar if you're taking it in its whole totality. I think of course there are countries in Europe that have done much better than others. I think Germany is a fantastic example, but countries like the United States, for example, at least four, five years, have barely done anything at all. And in many ways we can't just expect Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to be hosting these populations on their own and to feel like they're not getting the adequate support from the international community to do so. For 20-year-old Ali, leaving Jordan for a country with more opportunities would be ideal. His family, his parents and seven siblings, came to Jordan three years ago when he was 17 from a town near the city of Hamar that was on the front line. In the area where we live from the East, there were the revolutionaries and from the West, there was the regime so we were in the middle of all the problems. If the people from the revolution were showing we got help and if the regime was showing we got help, we were in the area that was damaged the most although we're not with anyone. For Ali returning to Syria now would mean being drafted into the army. After a 13-year-old you are obliged to be in the military and if you want to serve in the military you will be obliged to do things you don't want to do like killing civilians. Well in Jordan Ali has been taking classes remotely from a university in Switzerland. Currently I'm planning to continue my education in the university and if I had an opportunity to go to another country that can provide me with more then of course I would travel there and I will develop my skills and if I had to opportunity to go back to Syria I would go there and even if it wasn't my home or my area it's okay I would go back. In the future I want to be a teacher because teachers build civilizations and are the base for everything. 12-year-old Malik also wants to be a teacher. She has participated in gymnastics and karate courses in the camp and teaches both to her sisters and other children. I see myself training my friends how to defend themselves like I learned. Child marriage is a problem in rural Syria where many of the refugees come from but the problem has gotten even worse in Jordan as families who are struggling economically marry daughters off even earlier than before. Why would the parents make their daughters marry at an early age? The girls should get married when they are 18 years old. Malik's family has been in Jordan for eight years. First we used to live in Mafra. Then we went to Hamman and after that we went to Madaba. The place I like the most is Madaba because it has a lot of green fields and I love the nature. Outside there's a lot of things that differ from here. The cars, the places, the views, even the nature and weather is better than here. In the future I would like to stay here. I don't want to go back to Syria. There's a lot of crisis in Syria until now. Even for the COVID-19 crisis there is no medicine. 13-year-old Hamza wants to be a dentist like his father. He's also a singer. The song he chose to share with us is by Lebanese singer Remi Bandoli who sang it during the civil war in her country in the 1980s. It begins in Arabic, moves to French and ends in English. I would like to tell people that are listening to me. If you have a goal, keep trying to get there. And don't let anything stop you. On our next episode we'll take you to Syria's largest city, Aleppo. Meantime, thanks for listening. Syria's lost generation is a production of foreign policy in partnership with World Vision International and the Syrian American Medical Society. Both are non-political groups, purely focused on the humanitarian aspects of the crisis. Our producers are Rob Sax, Alesson Meekam and Dan Efron. David Ender's report of the stories you're hearing on the show. Thanks to Laura Gamal, Josephine El Hadad, Elias Abouatta, John Doutsenberg, Lobna Hassanig and Angie Maraud for helping bring the series to life. Also thanks to final step studio in Beirut for production help. We'll be back next week with another episode of Syria's lost generation. I'm Liam Cunningham.