“We’re occupying the land of others”, a displaced woman goes back home in Ghouta from Afrin
Damascus – North-Press Agency
Shaza Suleiman
“I was not happy in Afrin, I felt that we occupying land that’s not ours”,
Om Haytham started her talk by answering the question about her return from Afrin, which is populated now by thousands of people, most of them were displaced to the Kurdish region during “Olive Branch” operation in 2018 by the Turkish military and some Islamic armed groups.
Om Haytham, a woman from East Ghouta, was displaced with her children after her eastern Damascus town was controlled by the Syrian government in March 2018 due to a military operation and conciliation with the government by the Russian guarantee.
Mistreatment
While she plays the role of both father and mother, Om Haytham is awaiting the return of her missed husband in the Syrian security detentions, expressing her need for help and support in bringing up her children within the new situation in East Ghouta.
Her house was not the same after she had left during the conciliation agreement which was conducted between the opposition armed groups and the Syrian and Russian forces.
Om Haytham talked to North-Press about her father’s disability to protect her house from looting, while she tried to rebuild it and succeeded, hoping the return of her children to the seats of the school.
She returned from the northern Syria region of Afrin to East Ghouta, because she felt like many other displaced people in Afrin that they’re occupying homes of other people, “although we were paying for the house rent, so I decided to return with others despite knowing the dangers of that decision”.
She described the situation in Afrin that “It was not good according to the expectations”, adding: “Mistreatment by the Turkish-backed armed groups has increased my determination on returning home, after all, I wasn’t satisfied to keep staying there”.
Displacement and fear
Om Haytham goes back with her memory to the period before displacement from East Ghouta towards northern Syria, describing her pains and fears of the Syrian government forces control of her area, “I’m responsible for 4 children, the oldest is my 16-year daughter, my husband has been in jail for 5 years without knowing anything about him, his absence was hard as the hardness of the war,” Om Haytham said.
“After being bombarded, I got out of East Ghouta to an area in Damascus countryside close to Barada River, then my mother died due to a shot by a sniper at Al-Mleiha checkpoint eastern Damascus, the capital,” She added.
She pointed out to her decision of the return and preferring death in her house to her suffering from tragic circumstances she was subjected to when moving from one place to another, but with the intensive shelling in the first quarter of 2018, that pushed her and the rest of Ghouta citizens to go out and head towards Idlib and northern Syria, then to Afrin.