Syrians Come back to Peaceful Life
Now about Syria. More than 80 Syrian families left the refugee camp near Damascus. People are coming back to peaceful life in territories liberated from militants. However, many still remain in refugee centers. Our special correspondent Alexander Rudenko visited one of them in the suburbs of the Syrian capital.
Here is his report. First-grader Yasim draws his first number, one, on the board. The boy is an orphan. His father and mother died during mortar shelling. Half of the pupils can tell similar stories about themselves in this school. The children who study here aren’t ordinary. They need more love, attention, and care because some of them don’t have parents.
The state helps with all it can. And teachers also help these children by investing more in them and paying more attention to them. The school is located in the center of the refugee camp. There used to be a recreation center. Now, it's the second home for one and a half thousand dispossessed. Families of the Syrian military and militants live here together. Rua Khayyaf has been living in the camp for three years now with her sister, mother, and brother in two rooms without doors. Drinking water in a bucket, an old TV set, sleeping mattresses and a refrigerator. That’s the simple life of refugees. Of course, I want to come back home. But for now, we can’t. It’s in a zone controlled by militants.
We are looking forward to the ending of the war. There are people from all over Syria. Deir ez-Zor, Idlib, Daraa, Aleppo. Refugees call the camp near Damascus as one of the best. There is something to compare with. Magdalena spent almost a year in another similar place, a camp on the border with Jordan. The girl says that it was supervised by Americans. Americans, military instructors, were preparing militants alongside us.
They trained them there, taught them something. All the food, medicines, almost everything went to them. We almost didn’t have water and clothes there. So, I had to run away from there. Here, it’s much better, of course. While the children are at school, adults earn money without leaving the camp. Right on the territory of the base, there is a mini-factory for making clothes. However, despite the good conditions, almost everyone wants to leave quickly. Only in the last month, 80 families left this camp.
Thanks to the creation of de-escalation zones and the ceasefire regime, people had the opportunity to return home, to where they lived before the war. Refugees are sure that very soon everyone will leave here, as soon as the hostilities finally stop in the territory of the country. Alexander Rudenko, Dmitry Vishkevich, and Andrei Yurchuk, Vesti from Syria.