Frightened Kurds dig in, flee or bury their dead in the face of uncertainty

Al-Darbasiyah, Syria: The Syrian border town of al-Darbasiyah was eerily quiet. Shops were shuttered, roads deserted, the highway empty of all but essential traffic.

But one place in this rural region close to the Turkish border was teeming with activity: the martyr's cemetery.

Hundreds of devastated, angry, helpless relatives gathered there to bury their young men for the second time. Adnan Hassan, 19, his comrade Shemid and two other young Kurdish soldiers had been buried for the first time by a Turkish airstrike on October 14.

Relatives grieve for teenage soldier Adnan Hassan. It took his family four days to retrieve his body from the rubble. Credit: Kate Geraghty

It took days to dig the bodies out of the rubble to allow the families to hold a funeral at the Bir Kavira military cemetery.

"You were my only son and you left me alone in this world," Adnan's mother wailed, crying into the freshly turned earth. "Why God are you doing this to us?"

"He was a very friendly boy, genial, full of energy," said Adnan's father of his teenage son who had joined the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces straight from high school. "All his friends loved him. He was a fighter. He was fighting for freedom and for humanity."

Shemid was killed alongside three other soldiers when an air strike hit their checkpoint in al-Salhiya on October 14th. Credit: Kate Geraghty

Turkey, with an airforce and mortars to back up its ground troops and militias, proved to be a very different adversary to Islamic State during the brief battle that raged over north-eastern Syria earlier this month. And the Kurds were left to face them without the help of their US allies.

Now the politics of this region has taken another turn. In the dying hours of a US-brokered ceasefire, as tens of thousands of Kurds fled their homes anticipating a new Turkish bombardment, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's Vladimir Putin signed a complex deal to exclude the Kurdish forces from this part of Syria and, with the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, conduct joint patrols of the border area.

It ends the immediate threat of a Turkish invasion of northern Syria at the cost of any hope of a Kurdish state called Rojava, and means the two allies of the nascent Kurdish proto-state that had remained after the ceasefire agreement - the Syrian regime and Russia - have turned against them. The Kurds would lose the capacity to defend and administer a large chunk of their territory in the context of Erdogan's desire to populate it with other Syrian refugees.

Turkey and Russia now fill the void left by departing American troops after President Donald Trump abruptly ordered their withdrawal.

The town of Darbasiyah has been all but abandoned by citizens fearing a Turkish attack.Credit: Kate Geraghty

It is unclear what the Kurds will now do: if they will choose to stand and fight, withdraw as required under the deal, or remove their uniforms and melt into the community, possibly becoming a guerrilla resistence.

But once again, they will feel the sting of what they call betrayal.

Civilians in the border town of Darbasiyah erect tarpaulins in the streets to hide their movements.Credit: Kate Geraghty

At the cemetery in Darbasiyah, just a few hundred metres from the border with Turkey, the mourners' grief turns quickly to anger.

"It's shameful on the Americans, the Europeans, who are watching what is going on. Where is your conscience? Where are you? You are killing our people," Adnan's father says.

Most of the Kurdish soldiers buried in the Bir Kavira cemetery died fighting in the western-backed campaign against Islamic State.

At the cemetery, and on the highway and in the surrounding villages, we found a mixture of defiance and helplessness, sometimes in the same individuals.

Adnan's father speaks of his fury at the US during his son's funeral.Credit: Kate Geraghty

As the end of the ceasefire approached on Tuesday, one group of men were determined to defend their homes with small arms. They erected huge blue tarpaulins covering the width of the streets - a home-made solution to the problem of staying out of the line of sight of snipers, spy drones and airstrikes. Others boasted of the tunnels under their houses.

The female relatives of Syrian Democratic Forces soldier Adnan Hassan during his funeral at the Martyr’s cemetery in Bir Kavira. Credit: Kate Geraghty

But thousands had simply fled. In one complex of farmhouses about 10 kilometres from the border, four families were staying as guests of 85-year-old Abdul Rahman al-Amo.

Bed-bound, his back weakened by age, a cigarette clamped between his fingers, Amo told us he had spent his life as a politician, trying to "achieve something for ourselves, the Kurdish people".

Abdul Rahman al-Amo, 85, refuses to leave his home in Kara Kwea village. Many of his neighbours have already fled.Credit: Kate Geraghty

He was a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party when political representation was banned by the regime of Hafez al-Assad, the current leader's father. He was jailed for two years in 1972 and then a second time for eight months.

Turkey, he said, wanted "a new Ottoman empire"; the Europeans have ignored the Kurds' plight for decades and the Americans "have no principals that can be trusted - they only look after their own interests". US President Donald Trump "is a Russia man", he said.

But he would do it all again, "working for a political solution" for the Kurds. His plea to the world's politicians was to "think of the humanity, not those you can get benefit from".

For five generations, the family of Taha Okan, 73, has farmed the same land within walking distance of the border.

Taha Okan, 73, and his wife Aisha, 67, climb into a van destined for Hasakah. Credit: Kate Geraghty

We found him and his wife, Aisha Okan, on the highway fleeing for safety to Hassakeh.

Okan said one of his sons was a refugee in Sweden and another was in Iraqi Kurdistan. His two daughters were in Germany and two in Turkey. They had fled various wars, oppression and economic hardship.

So when the latest threat came from Turkey, the couple found themselves alone, and like many others forced from their home.

After answering our questions Taha Okan asked a question of his own. It's one we and other journalists have heard many times in recent days: "Have you come to help us or just to make a story out of us?"

In the absence of any recognisable Western help, it's a question that right now, has no answer.