QAMISHLI, Syria — Children race through the courtyard of a vacant school in this northeastern city, but they are not students — the classrooms have been turned into shelters for displaced families since January. The pickup trucks, one with an American-flag sticker and “Allah” scrawled across the windshield, brought people here as fighting closed in on Kurdish areas.
Bashar al-Assad was toppled in late 2024 by Turkish-backed opposition fighters. In the months since, the Kurdish-led region that ran an autonomous territory for 12 years after breaking away from the Syrian regime in 2012 has been pushed back into the center of the conflict. Syrian government forces retook territory amid January fighting. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the immediate fighting, arranging for Syrian government control of borders, security and oil fields in exchange for promises of Kurdish rights — terms that have not been fully implemented.
Many of the people sheltering in the school came from the Tabqa displacement camp and have been uprooted repeatedly. “We squeezed all the children on top of us and in the back of the truck and I put all our stuff on top,” says a displaced father and former shopkeeper. For others, the evacuation was desperate and chaotic: families fled on foot, rode in trucks carrying sheep, or piled into pickups.
The father who brought the red pickup that sits in the school courtyard is bitter toward the United States. Syrian Kurds provided the main ground forces that fought alongside the U.S. to defeat ISIS years earlier; Kurdish leaders say at least 10,000 Kurdish fighters were killed. In January, when Turkish-backed forces advanced on Kurdish-held territory, U.S. officials declared they no longer needed Kurdish help against ISIS — a decision Kurds say effectively green-lit the offensive. The White House did not respond to an NPR request about Kurdish accusations of abandonment.
Conditions in the converted classrooms are harsh. Small kerosene heaters are present but there is no fuel to cook donated food or boil water; people burn sticks, old clothing or a little gasoline to stay warm. Sanitation worker Said Mohammad Mustafa, 63, and his wife Sabah Hassan Biro were among the last to leave their camp and were given only hours’ notice. They lost contact with their 15-year-old daughter, Zaynib, who had heart surgery a year earlier; friends later told them she joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush. Her body was later returned and she was buried in mid-April in Qamishli alongside others given martyrs’ funerals.
Some families were able to return. In mid-April, about 800 displaced families went back to Afrin under the ceasefire that saw government forces take over formerly Kurdish-held areas. But many at the Qamishli school remain in limbo with almost nothing left after multiple displacements. Mustafa and Biro had no transport and fled on foot when Syrian forces approached.
Trauma is widespread. Schools have not been in session since the January fighting. Children who experienced earlier displacements show signs of distress; one 10-year-old described seeing bodies along the road. Gulestan Rashid, who helps run the shelter, says her nephew was sickened after witnessing burned bodies of regime soldiers while evacuated from Shahba camp near Afrin. People here recall seeing bodies, bombardment and having to lie on the ground while fleeing.
Small attempts at normalcy continue: a man weighs out pumpkin seeds to sell; a snack table sits by the school entrance. The red pickup’s owner, holding a 2-year-old nicknamed “Trump” because of her blond hair, says of the U.S. president, “I used to like Trump but not anymore. You saw what he did to us — he sold us out.” For many Syrian Kurds, the future remains uncertain as ceasefire terms stall and promises of rights and protection have yet to materialize.