Children of Syria

By Lyse Doucet, Times Live

July 30, 2014

Syria’s war – now well into its fourth year and with no end in sight– is having a devastating impact on the lives of the country’s children. Tens of thousands have been killed or wounded. Many children are learning to hate. Many more are deeply traumatised.

With unique access across the conflict’s frontlines, BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet has been following the lives of six children over six months for a new BBC World News documentary Children of Syria. Three boys and three girls aged from 8 to 14 years old shared their different stories, giving a chilling insight into the impact of the war on them, and helping explain how the conflict will affect their country’s future.

First it was Randa, a Syrian girl with two long braids tied with ribbons trailing down her back. At thirteen she had no doubt about what she wanted to be when she grew up: “a lawyer who gets people out of prison.”

“Why do you say that?” I ask, surprised that a young girl would be so precise.

She replies without hesitation: “When my two brothers left prison, they couldn’t walk.”

Then there was the young boy I met in Damascus who stood up in front of his mother, and the Syrian soldiers nearby, to declare “Mother, tell her the truth! The helicopters are attacking us every night and we’re scared.”

I began to realise that, on every visit to cover Syria’s punishing war, it was the children who told the most compelling stories. It was their stories of living with fear, hunger, anger, and resolve that helped us to understand one of the most complicated and consequential conflicts of our time.

Now well into its fourth year, Syria’s hostilities are many wars in one: a civil war; sectarian strife; a proxy war among regional powers; a new Cold War between Moscow and Washington.

It’s a deepening humanitarian crisis which has left more than 9 million Syrians – fourty percent of the pre-war population – displaced from their homes, finding whatever shelter they can inside Syria, or fleeing to neighbouring countries.

Half of these uprooted Syrians are children.

Syria’s war is also a war on childhood: schools come under fire on all sides of this brutal battle; the youngest are in the snipers’ sights; even infants have been tortured; and hundreds of thousands live with hunger and sickness as they suffer under siege.

And, on all sides, young Syrians are taking up guns.

We decided to listen to the children. Cameraman and Director Robin Barnwell and I followed the lives of six children over six months.

Our film Children of Syria, which airs on BBC World News this weekend, is their story.

It’s also a human and political map of this war of our time. And it provides more than a glimpse of a troubling future. It is, after all, the children of today who are shaping the Syria of tomorrow.

Syria’s youngest often sound like adults. But there’s no mistaking the painful yearnings of the young.

Fourteen year old Jalal is the “Billy Elliot” of Damascus, a boy who loves to dance. He dances for Syria and to support his President Bashar al Assad. But, like his father and uncles, he also puts on a military uniform, and says he is ready to fight.

“Before the crisis I was a child who played and had fun. I never thought of anything like politics and war. This crisis changed us. Now children understand and talk about politics. We’re all ready to die for our country.”

Ten year old Ezzedine lives in a refugee camp in Turkey. He waits for the day when he can avenge the deaths of Syrians by President Assad’s forces. And he believes that day isn’t far off.

“I’m only a child in age and appearance. But in terms of morals and humanity, I’m not. In the past, a twelve year old was considered young, but not now, now at twelve years old you must go for jihad.”

Then there is doe-eyed Kifha, a fragile thirteen year old who collapses in tears when we first meet him in the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk on the edge of Damascus.

“There is no bread ,” he cries.

Kifha and his sister are able to escape because their mother is pregnant and gets special permission to get out.

But their father is still trapped in Yarmouk and Kifha is still out of school. In the last three years of covering this crisis I haven’t met a child out of school who doesn’t dream of going back to class. So does Kifha.

“It’s a sad thing that children can’t study. They should be getting an education for their future.”

Eight-year old Baraa also escapes another rebel-held area under government siege in the Old City of Homs. With her trauma etched in her haunted look, and nervous eyes, Baraa tells stories of having to eat cats to survive, and living in fear of rockets and gunfire.

“Instead of learning to read and write, I learnt about all types of weapons. I now know the names of bullets, tracers and rubbers bullets.”

Sweet Daad, eleven years old, dresses in pink and has the darkest of dreams. Her family home fell into the line of fire between the regime and rebel fighters.

“In my dreams I go back to my old village and I see the ghosts of my friends. I see them and I see people who were shot who are still alive and some with their heads cut off. I wake up and can’t go back to sleep. “

And nine year old Mariam, from a village in central Syria, sits wistfully in a playground in southern Turkey, watching other children have fun on the swings and slides..

A year and a half ago my whole life changed. I lost my childhood. Nothing is left. I miss our house, our farm, basically everything. my home,

Mariam lost her leg, and her hope, when her house was attacked. She still remembers how a government warplane approached her house ‘’dropped a barrel and was gone.’’

She still can’t sit in a living room.

They’re just six of the millions of Syrian children who are living with war, forced to flee for shelter inside their country, or take refuge outside.

Please listen to the stories of the children of Syria. You’ll learn a lot about this war, and all wars of our time.

Children of Syria will be broadcast on BBC World News (DStv channel 400) on Saturday 2nd August at 11.10 & 23.10 and Sunday 3rd August at 17.10

Featured Image: Children ride on a swing during Eid al-Fitr in Duma, eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus July 28, 2014.
Image by: BASSAM KHABIEH / REUTERS