Turkey’s “Peace Spring” operation turns Iraqi refugee to IDP in NE Syria
Aboud Jaber and his family in Washokani IDP camp, west of Hasakah – North Press
HASAKAH, Syria (North Press) – After he was displaced from his “second hometown” of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), a city in northeastern Syria, the 57-year-old Aboud Jaber, an Iraqi refugee from the city of Amarah in Basra Governorate in southern Iraq, had no choice but to accept his 15m² tent in his new home in Washokani Camp.
“I have two hometowns and I live in a tent,” said Jaber with a tone filled with sorrow.
The man refuses to go back to Iraq despite the repeated calls from his brothers and sisters to do so. He believes that he has great memories in Syria, making it hard for him to leave.
Jaber remembers well when, how and why he came to Syria. He does not forget the nearly 30 years he spent in Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), wherein he owns a house, which has become a residence for others.
Jaber left Iraq and headed to Syria in 1990 due to the Gulf War, which was waged by the US-led coalition of 39 countries against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
At the time, Jaber was 25 and he served in the Iraqi army in the Zakho area in northern Iraq near the Iraqi-Turkish and Iraqi-Syrian borders.
Back then, he and three of his colleagues fled to Syria. After that, they were arrested, and transferred among several detentions centers, including the Adra center in Damascus countryside, where they stayed for about three months.
Syrian government then transferred them to Hawl Camp east of Hasakah, northeast Syria, which was at the time designated for Iraqi refugees.
Life was not easy
After spending six months in Hawl Camp, Jaber decided to start a new life, so he moved to the northeastern city of Hasakah and rented an apartment with some Iraqi refugees. Jaber stayed two years in the city, working in restaurants and in selling vegetables and tobacco.
“Life was not easy. I did not have a source of income, and money I used to make could barely cover my food,” he said.
But it was better than what he is suffering in Washokani Camp, west of Hasakah, according to him.
With plundering, kidnappings, and homicides metastasized in Sere Kaniye, the IDP is afraid of going back there.
Life in the camp is difficult, but “It is better than living under humiliation, in a place full of armed gangs, the Turkish forces and the Free Syrian Army factions that call themselves the Syrian National Army,” he added.
When he was in Hasakah, Jaber met some people from Sere kaniye, and moved with them to their city to work there as a cook in a number of factories and workshops. He stayed there until he was 35 years old, he told North Press.
Meeting Fatima al-Hussein, now 44, from Sere kaniye, marked his best days back then, so he married her and built a modest home in the village of Umm al-Khair south of Sere Kaniye, and opened a grocery.
Jaber has five daughters, the oldest of whom is 10. He describes his life in Sere Kaniye as “decent, stable and safe.”
Helpless
Unfortunately, 2019 marked the end of his “stable” life, and the refugee turned to an IDP after he was displaced as a result of the Turkish military operation Peace Spring against Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad in 2019. The operation ended the same year after Turkey and its allied rebels, also known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) took control of the two cities.
After the Turkish attacks intensified, Jaber and his family left Sere Kaniye, leaving everything behind and headed to the village of al-Arisha in the south, hoping to return to their hometown in the following days.
However, with the Turkish forces and SNA getting closer, he did not have a choice but to leave al-Arisha. At last, he ended up in Washokani Camp.
The man said that he felt sad to see someone else residing in the house he had “built and lived in for 30 years,” in a reference to the settlement plan that Turkey implemented during its control of Sere kaniye, where it brought the families of the SNA members and other families from other Syrian parts and settled them in the original inhabitants’ homes.
“They will live in our homes while we live in a tent that lacks the most basic necessities of life,” he added with pain.
We have to return
The man considers Syria his second motherland, so he excludes the idea of going back to Iraq and hopes someday he will return to Sere Kaniye.
“I have friends in Syria more than Iraq, so I decided to continue my life here,” he said.
The most saddening thing for Jaber is being away from his friends and relatives, whom he had spent 30 years with in Sere Kaniye.
Jaber recalls days, walks and discussions he had with his friends and neighbors there.
The man’s five daughters have no access to education in the camp, and “the future of my daughters’ education remains uncertain,” he added.
While sitting next to her husband and daughters, the wife describes their life in the camp as “miserable.”
“All of us here lost someone close. It is really painful to live like this,” Jaber said trying to maintain his composure and not cry.