QAMISHLI, Syria — The children running through the courtyard of a school in this northeastern city are a blur of motion. But they're not students at recess — they are members of displaced families living here since public schools were turned into shelters in January.
Instead of a school bus, there is an ancient red Nissan pickup truck with black flames painted along the sides. It's a U.S. export, evidently — according to the large sticker of the American flag depicting 14 states and the year 1791 when the Bill of Rights was enacted. On the windshield above the green faux fur glued to the dashboard, "Allah" (God) is written in flowing white Arabic script.
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled in late 2024 by Turkish-backed opposition fighters. But the repercussions are still rippling through Syria, particularly here in the Kurdish-led breakaway region where Syrian government forces retook territory amid fighting in January.
The pickup truck brought two displaced families — 15 people in all — to safety in January when Syrian forces advanced near the Kurdish city of Afrin.
"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 the displaced father, a former shopkeeper. For most of the families here who came from the Tabqa displacement camp, it was at least the third time they have been uprooted.
This Kurdish region in northeastern Syria, which ran its own autonomous territory for 12 years after breaking away from the Syrian regime in 2012, is now in play again.
A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting this year but the terms of the ceasefire — the Syrian government taking over Kurdish-held borders, security and oil fields in exchange for promises of Kurdish rights still have not been fully implemented.
The owner of the red pickup holds a 2-year-old girl wearing a fuzzy pink jacket. Her blonde hair is tied in a ponytail spout on top of her head.
"We nicknamed her Trump as a joke because she's blond," he says of the toddler, whose real name is Barfi.
The shopkeeper was afraid to give his because of the risk of retaliation by government security forces. Near the entrance to the school, he has set up a small table selling snacks.
"I used to like Trump but not anymore," he says of the U.S. president. "You saw what he did to us — he sold us out."
The White House did not respond to an NPR request for comment about Kurdish accusations that the U.S. had abandoned them.
Syrian Kurds provided the ground forces fighting alongside the U.S. military to defeat ISIS seven years ago. Kurdish leaders say at least 10,000 Kurdish fighters were killed in battle. Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi forces helped defeat the militant group in Iraq.
In January, when Turkish-backed Syrian forces moved in on Kurdish-held territory, the U.S. declared it no longer needed Kurdish help in fighting ISIS; effectively green-lighting the advance.
In a Kurdish-led region besieged for over a decade by the Syrian regime, the Russian military, Turkish forces and ISIS, the perceived betrayal is keenly felt.
Loss, hardship and unanswered questions
Families here say conditions in the other camps were harsh but the school shelter is particularly difficult. There are small kerosene-powered heaters in the classrooms but no fuel for cooking. Not only is it cold but it means there is no way to cook the donated rice and lentils or even boil water for tea.
In one of the classrooms turned into living quarters, Said Mohammad Mustafa, 63, a sanitation worker from Afrin, has collected a few sticks to burn. When he can't find those, they set old clothing on fire with a bit of gasoline and burn them.
He and his wife, Sabah Hassan Biro, were among the last to leave the camp they were displaced from in January. They had been looking for their 15-year-old daughter, Zaynib, who had heart surgery a year ago, and were given just two hours' notice to leave.
"Since then we completely lost contact with her," says Mustafa. "So we don't know if she was killed or what happened to her."
Biro says since they haven't seen a body, she doesn't believe what they were told by their daughter's friends: that the girl joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush by Syrian forces.
"What is important is that they bring us her body so we will know," she says.
A few weeks later the parents did receive the body. The teenager was buried in mid-April in Qamishli along with four others given martyrs' funerals.
Return for some, limbo for others
In mid-April, 800 displaced families returned to Afrin under the ceasefire deal in which Syrian government forces have taken over formerly Kurdish-held areas. The families at this school in Qamishli were not among them.
After multiple displacements, most people here have almost nothing. Mustafa and Biro had no transportation and fled the camp on foot on the night Syrian forces approached.
"We were running and under bombardment. Sometimes we had to lie on the ground," says Mustafa.
When Biro couldn't walk anymore she told her husband to leave her. He refused and they finally got a ride in a truck carrying sheep — sitting on a urine-covered truck bed in the rain wedged in between the animals.
Schools have not been in session since the fighting in January and in the courtyard a group of children are hanging around. Many seem traumatized by displacement they experienced almost a year and a half ago when the regime was toppled.
"They were all dead," says Hassan Hussein, who is 10, describing a roadside scene near Afrin in December 2024.
His aunt, Gulestan Rashid, who helps run the shelter, says they saw bodies of regime soldiers being burned by the side of the highway when they were evacuated from Shahba camp near Afrin.
"When he saw those bodies he got very sick for three days — he was in hospital," Rashid says of her nephew. "They have seen everything."
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