ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish woman recently returned to her hometown of Kobane - fleeing the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon - instead preferring northern Syria as the safer place despite more than a decade of devastating civil war. Dijla Mahmoud and her three children returned to Kobane but her husband could not, fearing arrest by Syrian regime forces for not enlisting in the army. “Many other people, Kurds originally from Kobane, accompanied us. Some [women] were accompanied by their husbands, while others came alone,” Mahmoud told Rudaw on Monday. Her husband would have to pay smugglers $600 to enter the Kurdish city. “My husband could not join us because he is wanted [by the regime] as his time for conscription has come,” she said, adding that other male family members could not return due to conscription-related issues. “We went through too much pain until we arrived here. It took us four days to arrive here,” she recounted. Mahmoud lives at her sister’s one-room house. She is encouraging philanthropists to assist and help her children return to school. An estimated 1.5 million Syrians went to Lebanon because of the civil war, according to UNHCR, but only about 80,000 registered. Now, dozens of thousands of Syrians are returning home amid recent escalations in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Sheikhmous Ahmed, who oversees all refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, told the Rojava Information Center on Sunday that they have received 17,558 people from Lebanon in recent weeks, adding that they welcome anyone returning to Rojava. “[In] response to the high numbers of people fleeing Lebanon, we have established an emergency committee. Its role is to ensure the safe and easy passage for people arriving at the Tabqa and Manbij crossings. For example, we have set up mobile health clinics," he said. He also stated that they have designated Newroz, Arisha, and Adnaniyah camps across Rojava to shelter those who have returned from Lebanon but have no place to live. Many Kurds from Rojava have been stranded in southern Lebanon and are desperate to find a way out. “We have no place to go. We have fled southern Lebanon by foot. We are poor and we have no money,” Mustafa Mohammed, a Kurd from Rojava’s Afrin who lives with his family in Beirut, told Rudaw late last month, saying people have exploited the situation by offering rides to Beirut for $500 or $1,000.
