Syria’s cave dwellers
An estimated 2.5 million people have been displaced by the civil war, forcing refugees to seek shelter in hostile terrain and overcrowded camps, RUTH SHERLOCK reports.
Clinging to the rock face, the fouryear-old girl moved along the cliff edge. Her rubber clogs full of mud, her small feet slipped perilously as she stepped on the wet rocks of a narrow ledge, no more than four inches wide, which gave way to a steep drop.
With her arms outstretched to her daughter, Um Salem, 40, beckoned her forward. This is the only way to reach their makeshift home; a nook in the side of a cliff in northern Syria.
Um Salem, 40, and her children are among more than 100 people who have found some kind of refuge from the war in the caves and natural fissures of this sheer mountainside in Idlib province.
Their home village of al-Hamama lies little more than a kilometre away. But when rebels began fighting government troops there more than two months ago, the picturesque farming hamlet became the hostile terrain of air strikes and tank and mortar fire.
Their story of flight is familiar now across Syria, where an estimated 2.5 million people have been displaced by the civil war.
But their desperate circumstances are altogether different. “It became impossible to live there,” said Shaema Masri, 17. “We had no money to rent a new home in a safer village in Syria and the refugee camps in Turkey are full and we knew we would be turned away.”
When her family decided to move, it took them several days of searching to find a habitable cave, as “most were already full of other refugees from the village.”
As Syria’s army unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on rebel-held areas in a central province Friday as part of a widening offensive against fighters seeking to oust President Bashar Assad, at least 140 people were killed in fighting nationwide, according to activist groups.
‘This is a hard existence. If I knew I was going to live through this situation I would not have brought so many children into the world.’
UM SALEM, mother of 10
And the United Nations said a record number of Syrians had streamed into Jordan this month, doubling the population of the kingdom’s alreadycramped refugee camp to 65,000.
The newcomers are mostly families, women, children and elderly who fled from southern Syria, said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The exodus reflected the latest spike in violence in Syria’s civil war. The conflict began in March 2011 after a peaceful uprising against Assad inspired by the Arab Spring turned violent.
More than 60,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, for the cave dwellers in northern Syria, every day is a struggle. Plastic sheets have been strung up to shield the interiors. Some of the more established residents have built walls with dried mud, rocks or with cinder blocks and have even inserted a metal door.
When Um Salem moved here she had to spend a day shovelling animal droppings from the cave floor: “It was a shepherd who suggested that we move to this place. The caves had been used as shelters for sheep before,” she said.
“This is a hard existence. If I knew I was going to live through this situation I would not have brought so many children into the world,” said Um Salem, who shares the small cave with her husband and 10 children. “We have been here since the end of the summer. It takes me all day to heat a little water from the river to keep us clean.” But the caves are safer than her home village.