'They’ve forgotten us': The Syrians unable to return home inside their own country

The National visits Al Karamat camp in Idlib, a rubbish-strewn nether zone that many residents still cannot afford to leave

For Qibal Abdulhadi, seeing people around her put years of displacement behind them and return to their homes is almost unbearable.

“Our neighbours returned to their villages and rebuilt their houses,” she told The National from the shack that has been her home for the past decade, in the Al Karamat camp in Idlib, Syria. “I saw pictures of them and I envy them, because they have the money to rebuild.”

Qibal fled her village of Al Lataminah in rural Hama province during the civil war when her home was destroyed during heavy bombing of the area by forces loyal to the former regime of Bashar Al Assad.

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A year after the fall of the Assad family’s 50-year, iron-fisted rule over Syria, she is among the millions of Syrians still displaced within the country and unable to go home and rebuild because they lack the money to do so.

“I want to go back, but I don’t have a house to go back to,” she said. “Everyone here is in a terrible situation.”

A combination of aid cuts and the sheer stresses on the new government in Damascus mean that life is as hard as it has ever been for residents of Al Karamat, which is close to the Turkish border.

The camp's residents are some of the 760,000 people who remain internally displaced in this pocket of north-western Syria, a government migration management official told The National. Before the fall of the Assad regime, the area had been long held by rebels and hosted people seeking refuge from bombing, forced conscription and arrest elsewhere in the country.

Al Karamat's residents are also among the roughly six million who remain internally displaced across Syria as a whole, according to the International Organisation for Migration. This is one of the huge challenges still facing Syrian authorities.

While nearly two million people have returned to their homes since the Assad regime’s fall, enormous destruction, poverty and continuing instability are preventing many more from doing so.

Shanty town

The Al Karamat camp is a shanty town-like cluster of rough breeze block buildings, with electricity supplied only by solar panels. Sewage water runs into the empty homes of those who have left over the past year.

Of the 11,000 households here before the Assad regime fell, around half have returned to their original homes, mainly in rural Hama province, says camp manager Yassin Salloum Adahina.

Evidence of those who have left Al Karamat is all around, in the shells of their former homes, which stand as peculiar skeletons among the houses of those who remain. Some people dismantled their homes to use the components for rebuilding in their home villages, taking with them tarpaulin roofs, breeze blocks and sheet metal. Children in Al Karamat have taken over other homes with hammers and their hands as makeshift playgrounds.

But others, like Qibal, who is a mother of seven, simply cannot afford to leave. Working eight hours a day as a farm labourer earns her just 100 Turkish lira ($2.30) – the common currency in this part of Syria, which is under heavy influence from its northern neighbour. It is just enough to buy bread for her family.

“If I don’t work, I don’t feed my children. I don’t have any other choice,” she said.

Many who are still stuck in Al Karamat feel the new authorities 'don't see' them. The National

Mr Adahina, the camp manager, himself lives with his family in a shack and an adjacent tent. “Every day that passes, people here are dying a slow death,” he said. “Why? Lots of other people have returned, but they remain here.”

Among some, frustration is growing with the new authorities over what they feel is the marginalisation of Syrians who remain displaced in camps. “Where is the state? They don’t see us, they have forgotten us,” said camp resident Ahmed Youssef Eissa, 52, who is originally from rural Hama.

“We lived through 14 years of humiliation and shame in displacement camps, and now we are marginalised and forgotten, as if we didn’t go out in a revolution,” he said, waving his arms in frustration. “Why are we still living in camps? Even just when it comes to things like rubbish, no one is clearing the rubbish.”

He hopes that pledges from the government to provide more support to the displaced might be helped by a recent vote in the US House of Representatives to approve the repeal of the Caesar Act, which imposed harsh sanctions on Syria during Assad’s rule. “We want to see the promises after this,” he said.

Another camp resident said that her sons in the military had not received salaries and called on President Ahmad Al Shara to focus on Syrians still living in dire conditions in internal displacement camps. “Our situation is less than zero here,” she said, echoing a sentiment still felt by many across Syria.

Aid cuts

For those who have been forced to stay behind, recent humanitarian aid funding cuts have made life harder.

International organisations that used to provide food vouchers and rubbish collection for Al Karamat residents stopped their services in the last two years, Mr Adahina said. As some residents left, their empty homes have become putrid rubbish tips, filled with sewage and piles of rotting trash.

Children play alongside them in the dirt alleyways between the shacks, and Mr Adahina reports skin rashes among many of the camp’s younger residents, exacerbated by swarming insects. Those complaints have worsened over the past year as aid and refuse collection services have dried up and no one has provided an alternative, he said. Even basic foodstuffs are hard to come by.

Many Syrians still live in poverty even as the new authorities tout huge foreign investment since the fall of the Assad regime. EPA

Since the fall of the Assad regime – which coincided with, but was not the reason for, funding cuts – “no one here has received a single grain of rice from any organisation”, Mr Adahina said.

Humanitarian organisations around the world are calling for alternative financing as President Donald Trump’s cuts to US aid funding, and lower pledges from other donors, have forced them to halt many vital programmes. The cuts have also affected other countries including Sudan and Yemen. In Syria, an end to widespread conflict does not mean people are no longer in need, and the country's situation remains one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, UN agencies say.

In October, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) appealed to the UN Security Council for more money to help Syria, with its plans just 19 per cent funded.

“We need concrete steps to mobilise resources, and to do so quickly,” Ramesh Rajasingham, the director of OCHA's humanitarian sector division, told the council.

Al Karamat’s residents want to improve their lives, and not by relying on foreign aid. They are open to ideas from the new government in Damascus to support small business projects through provision of basic equipment that they cannot afford, which would then allow them to become self-sufficient.

Camp resident Hatem Sayed Mansour, who is originally from Hawija in Hama province, said he thought recent such proposals by the Social Affairs and Labour Ministry were “an excellent idea”.

“These are the projects we hope for,” he said. “We can’t rely on the outside, we rely on ourselves.”

But so far, authorities have not delivered on promises to camp residents. Mr Adahina said he had called on the local governor in Idlib and others for more support for the camp, but saw that their limited means meant they had been unable to deliver anything so far.

“The [Idlib] governor and so on made promises, but they have nothing in their hands, they have nothing tangible on the ground,” he said.

The Syrian government migration management official told The National that authorities had received the displaced people's requests for the restoration of basic services, and “are working within available resources and in co-operation with humanitarian organisations”. But “insufficient funding hinders a rapid response to these needs”, the official added.

To allow them to go home, vital infrastructure such as schools and health centres must be repaired and reconstructed and clean drinking water and sanitation provided, the official added.

Qibal does not know how much longer she will be displaced. Life in the camp has tired and changed her, forcing her into long hours of work just to meet she and her family's most basic needs. Going home feels like a far-off possibility.

“We are living here while God grants us relief and we feel able to build one room – just one room – to live in back in our village,” she said. “That’s all we want.”