Syrian refugee campSky Holmes

I am applauded as I head towards the Syrian border. After walking for nine hours, I am on a coach that will take me to Urfa. A few guys at the back of the bus are supporters of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS) and assume, largely because of my black beard, travel clothes and destination that I have come to cross the border. I am offered passage since they believe me to be a ‘Western Jihad’ off to Syria for *hand gestures of guns firing*. I neither confirm nor deny, not wishing to state “I’m a journalist actually” and risk passage to Syria in a different form. I politely refuse their aid and ask why they are heading to the border. Their answer brings the conversation-cum-interrogation to a quick close, as I expected it would.

I move from Urfa to Mardin Province in this way, from one strange bus to another, stopping in Mardin before going on to Midyat and Nusaybin. Nusaybin is a city split in two by the border, with its ‘other half’ being the Syrian city Quamishli. If it were not for this border they would be joined completely. The Jaghjagh River runs through both areas and it would not be difficult to cross into Syria from here.

I enter a refugee camp in Mardin which houses Yazidi refugees. Boys my age tell me tales of their villages being attacked. On August 3rd, one village called Sieba in the Sinjar province was attacked by IS. The Yazidi residents fought IS for four or five hours before running out of ammunition. They had exhausted the first wave of IS, who had arrived in ten vehicles. IS fled to Barzanji ‘government controlled’ areas and returned - this time with around seventeen vehicles, some with mounted machine guns. The young men of the village were fighting with their household AK47’s. One man, a twenty-one year old maths teacher, told me that he “did not wish to kill” but his friend, with a skeletal face, admitted to me that he had “shot ISIS men in the head”.  I look at these boys. Before this war, they would have been working the fields, teaching in schools or helping their parents.

“The attack came at midnight, most were sleeping” says the teacher. “Rounds of mortars hit the village; our village does not have mortars, we could not fire back”. Soon IS breached the walled village, “entering, shooting and taking prisoners”. He managed to leave in a truck that was collecting people that drove out of the village’s main gate, heavily fired on by IS. He was lucky to escape. Many died in their village, women were captured to be used and sold for sex, while others starved or dehydrated to death on Mount Sinjar.

The PKK (Kurdish Worker’s Party) helped many Yazidis fight ISIS and flee them, providing passage, protection, food and drink. Those who are here in Turkey are here because of the PKK.  Very few others have helped, certainly not as quickly. The US provided air strikes against IS and some helicopter rescues but many feel the US support came too late and others worry that US involvement may turn into what it has in the past: occupation. IS must be defeated and many feel that the PKK are the key force to do so. But, whilst the moral might is with the PKK, they lack the fire power in the face of tens of thousands of IS men.

As I wander from tent to tent, the stories strew themselves across my mind like the dusty, ripped clothes that litter the camp and the piles of shoes that bring to mind past genocides. I hear of a young, female niece beheaded as she fought would-be rapists. I shudder at stories of refugees recognising neighbours in execution videos - where the neighbours are performing the killings. But what is most harrowing is the fact that, for many, there are no tales of individual loss because no-one knows if their family members are dead or alive. Many people were left in the villages I hear about and some were lost in the mountains. Figures are so hard to get hold of but the faces are plentiful. I fear that in the coming months many more faces will be discovered face-down in the desert, mountains and villages, and this genocide will reveal itself as having taken many more lives than anticipated.