Syrian Kurds rebuild war-hit Kobane alone
kobane (syria) — After giving up on getting help from Syrian Kurdish authorities, Ahmed Saleh relied on relatives abroad to repair his home in Kobane after it was heavily damaged in a battle against militants.
Much of the border town along Syria’s northern frontier with Turkey was left in ruins after US-backed Kurdish forces ousted the Daesh group from it in early 2015.
Saleh fled to Turkey in the battle’s early stages and came back a year later to find two of his home’s three rooms destroyed.
“We returned to Kobane after the battles had stopped and were shocked by the huge destruction in the town,” Saleh said.
He hoped authorities would step in, but said he eventually “lost hope”. “We had to live in these
homes and we weren’t going to wait for these empty promises,” said the 45-year-old. Instead, he turned to family members abroad, who sent remittances.
“My son in Germany and my brother in Iraqi Kurdistan helped me so my children and I could return home,” he said.
So far Saleh has spent the equivalent
of $1,150 fixing up his house, little by little. All it needs now is a final coat of paint.
Other homes in his eastern neighbourhood of Butan have also been roughly restored. Bullet holes are still visible, but many walls have been re-erected and painted.
Mohammed Naesan, who lives in the nearby Martyr Kawa district, repaired his one-storey house by hand and with his own savings. “Our home was completely destroyed by Daesh,” the 76-year-old Naesan said.
“The municipality came and recorded all the damage to the buildings. But then they didn’t do a thing,” he said. “No one helped us. Rebuilding was so expensive, and it cost me a lot.”
The four months of fighting it took to push the militants out pulverised about half the city, said Anwar Muslim, the town’s top official. “Five thousand homes were destroyed in Kobane, about 70 per cent of which have been rebuilt,” Muslim said.
He said remittances were crucial for rebuilding individual homes as authorities did not have the budget to help. — AFP