Syrian tanks and military hardware continued to advance across northwestern Syria, pushing more refugees into Turkey and more into a bleak makeshift camp just inside Syria.
Heavy rain poured down on the camp last Tuesday night while hundreds of Syrians huddled under plastic sheeting strung up between green plum trees, their mud-caked shoes set carefully at the edge of sodden blankets.
As the clouds broke up, one man stood beside a 10-year-old girl named Sanaa, wearing a pink jacket. “My daughter, she went out in a demonstration and, just because she said the word ‘freedom’, she has given herself a death sentence,” said Abu Firas, a carpenter.
His two sons are in Lebanon and can’t return because their identity cards list their place of birth: the contested town of Jisr al-Shughur. If they were to show them at the border, the father said, “right away they would be detained, dead”.
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appear to be brutally asserting control over rebellious regions, even as pressure mounts on Syria to stop the carnage. On Tuesday this week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lectured the Syrian leader during a phone call, calling on him to implement reforms.
In the encampment, a haphazard patchwork of blue and white tarpaulins in the shadow of a towering Turkish border post, there are more questions than answers.
“Why is our president killing us? [Why] is he bringing us to this war?” asked an English literature graduate who used the pseudonym Nour. Jammed into a minivan with other women and children, the 22-year-old is pregnant and wearing a headscarf.
Nour’s hands shake when she speaks. She knows of killings in her city of Latakia, including a lawyer who was shot while visiting his sister. “I know that God created human beings to live in a liberal way,” said Nour. “Why does one man want to control all these people in Syria? More than 20 million people!
“Our president kills us — and forces us to leave our country and live in camps. Is it acceptable according to anybody in this world?” she asked.
This patch of northwest Syria has become the focus of the 12-week rebellion against Assad and his family’s 40-year rule.
But little has been heard from the worst affected. Turkish authorities are physically preventing outsiders from speaking to the Syrians who are crossing the border at a rate of more than 1 000 a day.
To circumvent those restrictions and to get to the camp in Syria, a few Western journalists have followed steep smuggler trails past the Turkish military. Through a gap in a fence they cross into Syria and follow another set of trails — strewn with debris from refugees — to reach this camp.
The inmates are among thousands thought to have left their homes, but are reluctant to cross into Turkey. They are waiting for other family members and want to keep an eye on their homes and livestock – and they don’t want to get trapped in Turkey’s well-made but isolated refugee camps.
Life grinds on for those choosing to be a few steps from safety. Drinking water is drawn from a well and rainwater is gathered in buckets.
In one canvas tent, which becomes steaming hot when a fierce afternoon sun follows the rain, a pharmacist from Jisr al-Shughur has set up shop. In spite of two donations of supplies from Turkey to supplement his own, he does not have enough.
A child screams as Mohammed Meeri gives him an injection for a stomach ailment. The pharmacist admits that anything he provides is a stopgap, little more than “psychological medicine”.
Vehicles, tractors and wagons double as shelter and no one wants to stay here for long. A woman brings a tray of food for a circle of men. In her wagon, children cavort behind canvas. Abu Saef, a farmer who carries a hunting rifle, laments: “[It is] a rapist, murdering regime that believes it is the only ruler. More people will come but, if the army comes, we’ve got God and Turkey only,” he said.
That is unlikely to happen, thanks to the close proximity of the Turkish military, which patrols the border road adjacent to the camp and just beyond a low line of trees and bushes. Turkish soldiers look into the encampment from the turrets of their armoured personnel carriers, which stop from time to time.
“I don’t think the military will come this close to the border in tanks but will use [other] vehicles to clear all villages,” said Musa, who returned 10 days ago from a construction job in Lebanon to his hometown of Jisr al-Shughur, 20km away. He watched the military advance “creeping through the fields” three days ago to reclaim control of the town. “I regret coming back to a place I don’t even want to call my homeland,” he said.
One man, who asked not to be named, used to go to demonstrations, but then had to flee. “They’re not used to demonstrations,” he said. “They don’t fire teargas, they fire live bullets. That’s all they have and know.”
Agents watching from street corners filmed the protests and those who took part were deliberately targeted.
A common refrain in the camp is that Assad behaves as if he were a god to be worshipped. “When the Syrian army says the people of a town are asking for ‘security’, you can be sure it’s finished,” said Mohammed, another refugee from Jisr al-Shughur.
“We didn’t love him [Assad] and we want him to go,” he says. “Maybe he will make his son president in the future. We want change now. “And we will stay here for 40 years more until he goes.” — Christian Science Monitor News Service