Transported to Camp Arbat: the Invisible Scars of Syrian Teens

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When Asalah, her daughter, and her son fled the war and left their home, Damascus for Iraq, they found themselves on the Syrian side of a closed border. Two months later, when the border opened on August 19, Asalah, her children, and 55,000 other refugees hopped onto buses and trucks and entered Iraq’s Kurdistan region. They and another 30,000 refugees camped out wherever they could: parks, mosques, and even schools. By the time UNHCR arrived a week later, they hadn't eaten in 36 hours and disease had spread among the refugees.

Asalah didn't have a say in where she and her family could go in Iraq but technically lucked out when they were randomly assigned to Arbat camp by the Kurdistan government. Arbat camp is a transit refugee camp established by UNHCR located in the Sulaymaniyahprovince about six hours from the border Syrian-Iraq border. Arbat houses a small number of the refugees currently in Iraq—with only a 1000 refugees living in 500 tents compared to the Za’atari mega camp in Jordan that houses 130,000 refugees. The refugees were told they would temporarily stay in the transit camp for a few days while another, more accommodating camp was built. They’ve been there for almost two months.

If they had been assigned to Domiz camp in Dahuk, they would've dealt with overcrowded camps and a shortage of basic needs. While the Arbat camp has 100 vacant tents, Domiz's population is more than double its capacity. Domiz refugee camp, first created for Syrian Kurds and designed to hold about 20,000 people, is now housing over 50,000 Syrian refugees. NGOs are struggling to provide enough food, medicine, and clean facilities. The political tension in the region is only making matters worse. Fighting between the two main political parties, KDP and PUK, is directly affecting the refugees in the area. According to Bakhtyar Ahmed from the NGO, Civil Development Organization, when tensions between the two political parties occurred over opening the border, KDP decided it would prohibit any refugees to go to Arbat. About 200 refugee families want to move to the less crowded Arbat camp, but authorities in Dahuk are stopping them from leaving Domiz.

For Asalah to be on the lucky side speaks to the intensity of the situation. Asalah is anything but content with her life in Arbat camp. For her, what should be a temporary situation is a permanent reality. "Nothing is normal," Asalah told me over Skype. She said she doesn’t have a say in the food her family eats, where they can sleep, or where they travel. All the communal toilets and showers are dirty and need repairing. Dust in the camp causes her nine-year-old son to have coughing fits and trouble breathing on a weekly basis. She told me, “I’m worried if they are not able to build a school, [my kids]will miss school for a whole year.” She imagined a better future, “We can get a regular house and I can find a job to better our financial situation… and settle,” but time is moving slowly. "It's been two months but it feels like a lifetime for us. We cannot adjust." But Asalah is mostly worried about the mental health of her 13-year-old daughter, Yana—who’s been depressed  “I'll show you,” she said, and called Yana over.

Filled with teenage angst and disinterest, Yana sat down with her arms crossed. For the first time, I was intimidated by the presence of a 13-year-old. Before I asked my first question, she beat me to it: "Where do you live?" Her response would've been the same regardless of my answer. It was a setup for her next question: "Can you take me there?"

Yana wanted to stay in Syria. All her relatives, her friends, and her father are still there. They’re the only ones who left. Leaving her home and loved ones to live in a tent with her mother and nine-year-old brother indefinitely feels like the apocalypse. Her one-word responses told so much more: I asked her, “Do you like the camp?” She replied, “No.” Then, I pried, “What don’t you like about the camp?” She snapped, “Everything.” She told me she wants to go back, “but not to do this Syria, to a Syria without war.”

Her mother is worried: "She is in a bad mood all the time. She'll argue with anyone who talks to her," and, "on most days, it's hard to get her up."

UNICEF describes Yana’s depression as the “invisible scars” of Syrian kids and teenagers: displacement, distance from their friends and family members, destruction of their homeland, and witnessing the tragedies of war affect all Syrian youth psychologically. Just like Yana.

Attending school regularly might help, but the war has kept millions of Syrian children out of the classroom education situation. In the Kurdistan region near the camps, there are not enough Arabic classrooms to meet the demand of Syrian refugee children. Most classes are taught in Kurdish, a language foreign to most Syrian children. As a result, Yana hasn't attended school since she reached Iraq, seven weeks ago. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to catch up with my friends,” Yana said, concerned that she'll fall behind on her schoolwork. When she said that, it suddenly became clear to me: She feels like her life is on hold. It is.

Her eyes only lit up when she spoke about what she missed about Syria: her friends, her teachers, her school, the food. "Even the water tastes better in Syria," she assured me. “What I miss the most though, is my grandma yelling at me," I squinted to see if there was a hint of a smile on her face. I couldn't tell.

Before the interview was cut short, she told me with a heavy sigh and a blank expression, "I don't feel anything anymore."

@aintacrow

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