Syrians return to devastated Kobani in droves

As thousands of the country's refugees risk their lives every day to enter Europe, Kobani’s residents are moving the other way, leaving camps in Turkey to rebuild their lives in the midst of a seemingly endless civil war.

Many families cannot afford to pay for transport across the Turkish-Syrian border so they make the journey on foot. Florian Neuhof for The National

KOBANI // Every Monday and Thursday, at about 11am, the border crossing between Syria and Turkey opens and a long line of trucks rumbles towards the devastated city of Kobani.

Weighed down by furniture and household appliances, the trucks drive past families also making their way back into Syria on foot, carrying what little belongings they have.

As thousands of Syrians risk their lives every day to enter Europe, Kobani’s residents are moving the other way, leaving refugee camps in Turkey to rebuild their lives – and their city – in the midst of a vicious and seemingly endless civil war.

Kobani became a symbol of heroic resistance to ISIL when the extremist group laid siege to the city in September last year, only to suffer defeat at the hands of its Kurdish defenders. The four-month battle left Kobani abandoned and destroyed, with all but a handful of its citizens having sought safety in Turkey.

But now that the front line has moved deeper into Syria, people are returning in droves.

“We have come back because we love our land,” says Lativa Borsan, who crossed the border on foot with her four children. Her house has been destroyed in the fighting, and she will be living with relatives in a nearby village.

As she talks to The National just beyond the gate that marks the beginning of Syrian territory, trucks pass by, turning right into an open space where families are busy unloading fridges, washing machines and mattresses. Transport hired in Turkey can go no further, and trucks from Kobani come to complete the logistics chain.

Among those lugging furniture is Lafit Yalcin, a 40-year-old housewife who arrived with her husband and children.

“The conditions in Turkey are very difficult, and living there is expensive. Its better to go back to Kobani,” she says, echoing a common refrain. The Yalcins house was destroyed in the fighting, and the family will be living in a tent this winter.

By all accounts, life across the border is tough for refugees from Kobani and the rest of Syria. Turkey has taken in more than two million people who fled the Syrian civil war, which has claimed an estimated 250,000 lives. This wave of displacement has flooded the Turkish labour market, and stretched humanitarian capacities, leaving refugees languishing without income in rudimentary camps.

While many swell the stream of refugees heading to Europe, others prefer to return to the relative safety of Rojava, as the Kurds call the autonomous region in northern Syria they have carved out for themselves. After expelling ISIL from Kobani, the Kurds forced the group back to the west and the south, creating a buffer zone, and are now pushing further west to connect Afrin, the third canton of Rojava, to the cantons of Kobani and Jazira.

The Kurds are now preparing for an offensive on ISIL’s de facto capital, Raqqa.

Fear of ISIL remains high after the extremists infiltrated Kobani in June, killing at least 220 civilians. But that has not stopped 23-year-old Rojim Muslim from returning.

“I am afraid of Daesh, but I’d rather die than go back to Turkey,” he says, standing at the border with friends who have come to receive him.

Some in the group are more nuanced in their commitment to the city than Mr Muslim, who wears a red T-Shirt with the word ‘Kobani’ emblazoned across his chest. They point out that work is hard to come by in Rojava, which is smarting from wartime deprivation and a Turkish economic blockage.

“If I can’t find work here I have to go back to Turkey,” says Ali Kassem, who has been without an income since returning a month ago.

Officials at the Kobani canton administration say most of those who fled the ISIL onslaught have returned. About 175,000 people from the canton have crossed back into Syria, says Abdulrahmen Hamo, head of Kobani’s reconstruction board. This is almost equal to the pre-war population of roughly 200,000 people, which had been swelled by internal displacement because of the civil war.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 of the city’s inhabitants have returned from Turkey, from a peacetime population of about 50,000. But with the city in ruins, many are forced to live with relatives in surrounding villages.

As the returnees leave the border crossing, they step into an urban wasteland. ISIL thrust deep into the city’s core, and the results of heavy fighting are immediately visible. A shattered residential building looms beside the checkpoint, across the road from another building whose floors have collapsed onto each other like a layer cake.

Few buildings are without the telltale signs of urban combat: holes punched into bullet-scarred facades to create shooting positions, walls pierced by heavy machine guns and which rocket-propelled-grenades. More damage still has been inflicted by ISIL tanks, mortar and artillery, while the US air force flew more than 600 bombing runs to flush the terrorists out of the city.

According to Mr Hamo, 70 per cent of the city has been destroyed. The UN estimates that more than 3,200 buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged during the fighting.

“We don’t have much housing. Many people who come back live in villages or camps,” says Mr Hamo.

Efforts to rebuild the city are hampered by Turkey, according to Idriss Nassan, deputy minister of foreign affairs of the Kobani canton. Ankara is opposed to Kurdish self-rule in Rojava, and is hostile towards the ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) that took control of Syria’s Kurdish region in 2012, citing its close links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey considers a terrorist organisation.

“Turkey is clear: they don’t want any development here because the ties the PYD has to the PKK,” says Mr Nassan. A limited amount of construction material has made its way across the border, but Turkey is not allowing any international aid to get through, he adds.

Kobani’s administration is doing as best as it can with the few resources at hand. About 1.2 million tonnes of rubble have been cleared, says Mr Hamo, while 1,300 new apartments are being built, and will be finished sometime next year.

Not everyone is relying on the cash-strapped administration, which has to balance reconstruction needs with the ongoing war against ISIL.

On the roof of a residential building that overlooks the surrounding wasteland of Kobani’s city centre, a group of men are busy rebuilding a wall. One of the men, who declines to give his name, says he joined the Kurdish People’s Defence Units (YPG) during the siege of the city.

Now he is helping repair this battered building owned by his brother, chipping mortar from bricks that have been salvaged from the collapsed wall for reuse. He does not want to abandon the city he fought hard to protect.

‘We will create our Europe here. I’d rather die in my own country than leave,’ he says.