Syrian Kurds look to Iraq for
safety By Samer Muscati
It was a January evening when his Syrian
army unit raided a house near the city of
Zabadani, not far from Damascus, the former
sergeant recalled. A 70-year-old man wearing a
hospital gown was brought to the house, and the
soldiers, including a colonel, interrogated him.
When he wasn't able to respond to their
satisfaction, one of the guards beat him
ferociously in the face with a helmet.
"I
heard the old man muttering in a muffled sound as
he fell to the ground," the former sergeant told
me. "About 15 minutes after they first brought the
man in, I went inside and saw his lifeless body.
There was blood coming out of his nose and ears.
I'm positive he was dead and they just disposed of
his body."
With violence raging in Syria,
thousands of people are fleeing to
neighboring countries to
escape the bloodshed. Although the flow of
refugees to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey has been
covered extensively, the Syrians who have fled to
Iraq, most of them Kurds, have received less
attention.
As of April 14, more than 80
Syrian Kurds a day were crossing into Dohuk
province, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
Most were coming from Syria's poorer Kurdish
northeastern provinces of Qamishli and Hasakeh.
About 1,300 Syrian Kurdish men, women and children
were living in tents in Domiz, the main refugee
camp for new arrivals, near the city of Dokuk.
After years of discrimination, neglect,
and repression, the Syrian government made some
concessions to the Kurdish community last year,
including granting citizenship to an estimated
200,000 stateless Kurds. It was an effort to keep
the Kurds, about 10% of Syria's population, from
joining the protests against President Bashar
al-Assad.
Protests and
exile Since the start of the uprisings last
year, the violence and repression in Kurdish areas
have been less bloody than other parts of Syria.
But many Syrian Kurds - mainly young men - who
fled to Iraq told Human Rights Watch that they
felt they were in danger back home.
Some
feared arrest by security forces because of their
political activism or participation in
anti-government protests. Others left to avoid
being conscripted into the Syrian army, or they
deserted, as the sergeant did, after witnessing
abuses and the targeting of civilians. Some who
left the army joined the rebel Free Syria Army but
left soon after because, as Kurds, they said, they
were discriminated against or not trusted.
Human Rights Watch researchers who
traveled to northern Iraq in April interviewed
more than three dozen Syrian Kurdish refugees, who
described the dire events they had witnessed at
home.
A 17-year-old at another refugee
camp, Moqabli, showed us his wounds, where
security forces shot him during a peaceful protest
in Qamishli on March 12 as he was helping an
injured soldier who had been trying to defect. "As
soon as I could limp, I made my way to the
border," he said. "I was so afraid that the army
would be looking for me."
Another army
defector said that in Rastan, in Homs governorate,
his battalion arrested 30 men during house raids
one night in June in retaliation for the killing
of a 19-year-old soldier, Omar Hamza. After the
soldier's death, the defector said, he heard the
brigadier general of the 41st regiment say, "We
should not let the blood of Omar flow freely.
There must be retribution."
The 30 men
were interrogated and later that night taken out
to a main street, handcuffed and blindfolded.
After making the men kneel to the ground, the
brigadier general and two other soldiers executed
them with machine guns. "I still have flashbacks
from that episode," the defector said. "I know it
happened but I still don't believe what I saw."
A 23-year-old Kurdish political activist
who lived in Damascus said he was arrested last
July and severely beaten because he was well-known
to the authorities as a regular at protests. He
was released only after he signed a guarantee that
he would refrain from future protests. "In prison,
they kicked me so badly I felt like they were
playing soccer with my body," he said. "They also
slapped and beat me, they treated me no better
than a dog."
Crossing the border To escape such horrors, many of the Kurds, the
largest ethnic minority in Syria, have told us
they paid hundreds of dollars to guides to help
them navigate across the border through informal
crossing points to Iraq, a country better known
for exporting refugees than receiving them. Their
hours-long journeys on foot were often perilous.
In some cases, the refugees said, Syrian guards
shot at them as they approached the border.
One 19-year-old activist said that a
Syrian border patrol shot at his group of 37
asylum seekers on April 8 at 2 am when they were
about 400 meters from the border. "Shots rang out
from the border patrol base toward us," he said.
"I saw two from our group getting shot and
dropping to the ground. I don't know if they
survived because after that we all scattered in
different directions." Domiz was set up in
early April. Before that, many new arrivals had
been going to Moqabli, a camp already occupied by
Kurds who fled Syria in 2004 after a crackdown by
security forces. Local authorities started moving
the new arrivals to Domiz in early April.
With about 50 new arrivals daily to Domiz,
local authorities and relief agencies, including
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
and the International Organization for Migration,
have been struggling to keep up with the influx.
They are concerned about their ability to meet
future demand, especially for food supplies.
Other refugees are living outside the
camps in other areas of Iraqi Kurdistan, where
they have friends or family, or where they have
greater opportunities for finding employment.
Local authorities estimate that as many as 5,000
Syrian refugees have moved to Iraqi Kurdistan
since the start of the year.
Although they
are now safe in Iraq, the refugees said they worry
about loved ones left behind and what the future
holds for their country. They said they want to
return to Syria once things get better but fear
that they and their Kurdish community will
continue to face enormous challenges and
discrimination in Syria regardless of who leads
their country.
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