Date: Apr 27, 2018 Source: The Daily Star After Ghouta, displaced Syrians face new trial Gemma Fox| The Daily Star BEIRUT: Eyad Srewel and his pregnant wife, forcibly evacuated from their homes in Eastern Ghouta last week, are now facing a new crisis. Should they try build a new life for themselves in Syria, or flee across the border? But with the threat of a new regime offensive in Syria’s northwest looming, the Srewels aren’t the only ones considering leaving the country, as residents displaced to Idlib in 2016 fear they’ll be soon be uprooted again. “Everything we had from Ghouta we had to take with us in one bag,” Srewel said in an interview with The Daily Star from Idlib. He left the enclave on one of the evacuation buses on April 11, before finally ending up in Sarmada in Idlib province. It was the first time the family had been to this part of the country, and some 370 km from home, they are now struggling to find work and a permanent place to stay. Previously working for a non-governmental organization in Ghouta, he’s not sure what kind of work he’ll be able to get. “I want a job, a house, a sense of stability,” he said. “The main thing on my mind right now is searching for a place where my wife and my daughter can have a normal life.” His daughter is aged just eighteen months. “All she has seen is destruction, bombs and death,” he said. His wife, he says, away from her friends and family, tells him she also feels isolated, and the family is struggling to settle in. “No one is helping us,” he said. A doctor from Ghouta, who asked only to be identified as Dr. Abu Yasir, is facing the same problems in Azaz village, some 70 km north east of Sarmada in the Aleppo governorate. “I’m finding it really difficult to find a house, I’ve been searching nonstop since I arrived.” He said rent is roughly $150- $200 month, which, out of work, he is unable to afford. He too isn’t familiar with the area and didn’t know where he would eventually end up when he got on the bus. He had previously told TDS that international guarantees were needed not only to ensure that safe passage of the convoys, but to ensure some level of help for people once they arrived. But Linda Tom, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson in Damascus, told TDS that despite the mounting humanitarian needs of internally displaced people (IDPs), the agency has been unable to get access to Idlib since 2016. “We’re seeing massive displacement in Idlib, almost half their population,” she said, and added that many were displaced multiple times. Around 67,000 of the total 160,000 individuals evacuated from Ghouta are thought to be currently displaced in Idlib and Aleppo provinces, according to OCHA figures. The U.N. estimates that there around 2 million IDPs in Idlib province. Hundreds of thousands were displaced to Idlib and Aleppo provinces after the government retook Aleppo city at the end of 2016. When the old city of Aleppo fell, Asaad Ashtar was forced to leave his home there and, like Srewel, was evacuated to Idlib province. He too struggled to find work when he arrived. “It was really difficult at first – I had been forced to leave against my will,” he said. “The regime has made life really cruel here.” Over time he managed to set up a small shop selling women’s clothes. With a background in humanitarian work, it was a stark departure from the work he had previously been doing at Syria Relief. “I have tried to settle and give my son a new life,” he said. “I’m just trying to lead a dignified life.” But fearing an imminent regime offensive, he recently started to make preparations to get his family out. “My wife and three children got across the border to Turkey four months ago,” he said. “It’s hard being away from them, I miss them a lot.” He said that he hopes that now they will be able to live a stable life and is happy that his children are finally going to school in Turkey. But whilst his wife managed to get a transit visa, he was unable to get permission. “I’ve tried three times to cross,” he said. “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to join them.” Omar, who asked to be only identified by his first name, was also evacuated from Aleppo city in 2016. He was more fortunate, however, in being able to link up with friends in the village of Urum al-Kubra. They were essential in coming to his aid and helping him get set up. “I would advise people recently evacuated from Ghouta to have faith. It might seem like a different place and not their own people, but over time that will change.” Even with the threat of a regime attack on the province, he has decided he won’t try and get to Turkey. “Out of principle I want to stay and rebuild my country until I die,” he said. The Idlib province is one of the key remaining rebel strongholds in Syria and is home to a number of dominant militant factions, including Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Earlier this month, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that the northwestern province would be “liberated soon.” “The regime has threatened to exterminate the north,” Srewel said. “I feel like the same thing that happened in Ghouta is going to happen here.” Even now Srewel fears his family could be caught in the crossfire between warring rebel factions and is worried about reports of car bombs. Feeling it’s too dangerous to settle in the north, he has set a plan of trying to leave the country in the next couple of months. With his wife in the seventh month of her pregnancy, he feels he doesn’t have much time. Srewel knows he cannot trust the smugglers who he says are charging $3200 per person for transit. “Yes, it’s dangerous [trying to leave], but my wife is pregnant and this isn’t a safe place.” Abu Yasir agreed, and said that everyone is trying to leave and get to Turkey. “Of course I have lots of thoughts about staying in Syria. “I wouldn’t run into the dangers of smuggling and I could stay in Syrian land, my land.” But, Srewel concluded, “on balance the dangers of staying far outweigh those of trying to leave.”