QAMISHLI, Syria - The grief of repeated displacement, homelessness, and the biting winter cold has driven dozens of Kurdish families to huddle around open fires in Qamishli, where makeshift shelters have become the only refuge for those fleeing renewed fighting across northeast Syria (Rojava).
Young and old alike gather around flames in open spaces and abandoned buildings, trying to dry their soaked clothes and warm shivering bodies. For many, the fire is the only protection against freezing temperatures and an uncertain fate.
Hussein Hamzi, a 62-year-old displaced from Afrin, is living through displacement for the fifth time with his family of nine. Standing barefoot near a fire, Hamzi told Rudaw on Sunday survival has become a daily struggle.
“We are hardly surviving. We are exposed to the cold. We have ended up here in an open place. We are succumbing to this fire to save our children from death,” Hamzi told Rudaw.
“We have reached a point where we might all die together where we stand. We are tasting every kind of hardship; the world needs to see this,” he added.
The latest wave of displacement unfolded as a fragile ceasefire took effect on Tuesday between the Syrian Arab Army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), following deadly clashes that began in mid-January.
The US-brokered truce, extended on Saturday for 15 days after an initial four-day agreement, is intended to facilitate the transfer of Islamic State (ISIS) detainees from SDF-run prisons in Syria to Iraq.
Despite the truce, SDF forces remain on high alert along all five frontlines in Hasaka province amid sporadic attacks by Damascus forces and its affiliated groups.
Many displaced families are now sheltering in a dark public building in Qamishli, where at least 43 families are crammed into rooms without electricity or running water.
The floors are muddy and filthy, and the building lacks even the most basic living conditions. In one 12-square-meter room, 15 people from four different families are living together. Just four days ago, 60-year-old Mohammed Qasim died there after succumbing to the cold.
His wife, Sultan Yousuf, described his final hours.
“He was staying in the doorway by the fire until 3 in the morning. When I found him he had already passed away. There is no water, there is nothing. Because of this cold, women and men - people - are dying. No water, no electricity, nothing.”
Another displaced person from Raqqa questioned the violence that has forced thousands from their homes.
“You say you are a descendant of Adam, and I am a descendant of Adam. You say you are a Muslim, and I am a Muslim. You say ‘there is no god but Allah,’ and I say ‘there is no god but Allah.’ Why do you come in the name of God to kill humans? Children and little girls are shivering in the cold - where are we supposed to go? Look at what the cold has done to them.”
Qamishli has increasingly become a primary destination for displaced Kurds fleeing front-line areas and newly contested territories, with unofficial figures suggesting around 5,000 people have arrived in the city over the past 10 days alone.
The surge in displacement comes amid intensified military operations by the Syrian Arab Army and allied armed groups, who since mid-January have advanced into Kurdish-held areas of eastern Aleppo, as well as parts of Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, and the predominantly Kurdish Hasaka province.
During the fighting, Syrian government forces and allied factions captured areas that had been under SDF control for nearly a decade, territory the Kurdish-led group had helped defend from ISIS.
Since January 6, hundreds of people have gone missing, with families still desperately awaiting news of their loved ones. Meanwhile, Damascus and the SDF continue US-mediated talks on integrating Kurdish-administered regions and Kurdish-led forces under Syrian state control, even as humanitarian suffering and displacement continue to mount.
