BY AMIR KHOUZAM AND TARA HEIDGER
At the Rukban informal IDP camp on the Jordan-Syria border, desperation can be measured by the price of bread. This past month that price has doubled.
The small markets and bakeries sustaining the 50,000 people in Rukban, a sprawling desert camp of internally displaced Syrians, have begun shuttering their doors. The once steady flow of flour brought in through complex smuggling routes has ended. There are no more diapers, there is no more baby formula, and there is no aid on the way.
After four years during which Syrians fleeing from the Assad regime took refuge at Rukban, the camp’s status quo has unraveled. Its residents face an endgame: die unprotected in the desert, or flee back to regime-controlled territory and risk detention or worse in Assad’s gulag.
US military personnel stationed near Rukban echoed the assessment of the displaced Syrians living in the camp: within a few months, several said in private conversations, they expect most of the camp would be gone.
Even the reprieve from regime violence provided by the US base at al Tanf, 10 kilometres away from Rukban, cannot replace the need for food and medicine. As the Syrian regime cracks down on smuggling routes into the camp, and Russia continues to prevent the UN from delivering aid from Damascus, people are being forced to make a grim choice: face starvation in the strangled desert camp, or return to the hands of the Assad regime, where they face the possibility of detention, conscription, and summary execution.
The US military established a strategic outpost at the border crossing of al-Tanf a little more than two years ago during its fight against ISIS. It sits nearly within sight of those starving in Rukban. Surrounding the base is a 55 km radius ‘deconfliction zone’ patrolled by armed factions of the Free Syrian Army, acting simultaneously as partners to the US Forces and protectors of the civilians in Rukban. To date, these civilians have enjoyed relative safety from the brutality of both ISIS and the Syrian regime, ensconced in this restricted patch of desert around al-Tanf. But as the most recent UN aid convoy departed in February, so too did the likelihood of a long-term future for those living at Rukban.
In March, as the regime and its Russian backers continued to consolidate its control over most of Syria, the Russian media began actively encouraging residents of Rukban to return home. The Russians established what they termed “security corridors” manned by Russian military police and Syrian Arab Red Crescent, as they’ve done in other rebel areas retaken by government forces. They promised safe passage home for those who were able to make the trip. Meanwhile, the Syrian government has begun to cut off smuggling routes into and out of the camp. People who wish to leave undetected, even at great cost, find their routes blocked. Supplies of contraband rice, flour, and fuel are dwindling fast.
A desperate flight
Out of desperation and frustration with the harsh conditions at the camp, some have decided to leave through the Russian corridors. Few have been able to report back on what happened to them when they returned to their homes in government-controlled territory. According to a man in his 40s with whom we spoke, many who traveled through these security corridors have been detained in “processing centers” around the country, their status and quality of care unknown.
In April, as the price of bread in the camp continued to increase, desperation drove even more people to take their chances and leave. The UN has reported that anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 residents have recently left. In an interview over Whatsapp, a man from Deir Azzour who has been living in Rukban for four years said that options available to people at the camp are severely limited, and conditions there have never been worse.
“For those who are willing to leave [Rukban] the road is open for them, but it only goes to the regime. We don’t know what happens after that,” he said.
The decision to stay is also rife with complications. Rukban has always been a harsh environment, with limited shelter from the brutal summer heat, and buildings too flimsy to withstand flash floods in the winter, but now it is becoming even more unlivable. Food prices have doubled and there are severe shortages of everything, from medical supplies and baby formula, to building materials.
“When we first got here four years ago, we had a single big tarp. We all sat in it. After a while, we started to be creative. We built walls from mud, the roof is the tarp, now we are sitting in mud huts.” As the man described the early days of the camp, he sounded almost wistful.
“There are the sick and the old, no one is here to treat them,” he said. “We used to know why people died. Now we no longer know. People just die.”
Mouaz Mustafa heads the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an NGO based in Washington, D.C. In addition to supporting civil society efforts across Syria, SETF has smuggled basic goods into Rukban. Mouaz says that the regime’s recent crackdown on smuggling has been catastrophic. Before, smugglers would use what means they could to bring goods from Damascus into the camp, often paying off guards at regime-run checkpoints. Prices were still inflated and quality control nonexistent. But it made do, amidst the stalemate over access to Rukban between the United States, the regime, and Russia.
In recent weeks guards have stopped accepting bribes. Experienced and well-networked smugglers are no longer able to access Rukban through their typical routes. Now one of two bakeries in the camp has closed, and residents have taken to mixing stale bread with water in lieu of flour.
Conflict still matters
Mouaz is adamant that even against the backdrop of nearly a decade of war in Syria, even after all the death and torture already experienced there, how the conflict is playing out today is worth paying attention to. “”Never again” moments are unfolding as we speak. It is our responsibility to do something,” he says. He sees two looming catastrophes on the horizon. One of them is Idlib, where jihadist militant groups rule the last major opposition-held area in Syria, and where a Russian and regime offensive could force three million people to choose between death and fleeing to neighboring countries. The other, off the radar, is Rukban.
“No one represents these people,” he told us. Least of all the government in Damascus. In late April, two men were executed by Syrian government troops after leaving the camp. Damascus is quick to write those in the camp off as enemies, and to hint that it is rife with extremists, ISIS members, and foreign puppets. The United Nations says 80 percent of the population are women and children.
By now most of the people with any hope that they might escape retribution if they return to areas under the control of the regime have left. Those who remain are looking to others for protection.
“The regime thinks everyone in Rukban is a terrorist,” said one resident. In a video filmed in the camp, a man is seen pleading with the international community, aid organizations, and Arab states specifically to send help. As a last resort, people are looking for passage to the small pockets of opposition controlled regions that remain. These include areas north of the Euphrates River, overseen by Turkish-backed remnants of the Free Syrian Army. They also include Idlib, Syria’s other impending disaster. “If you cannot give us support,” the man in the video says to whomever will listen, “Open the road to the north.”
A little before midnight on 19 December, US President Donald Trump tweeted that all US troops would soon be leaving Syria. The abrupt announcement set Washington abuzz. In Rukban it set off widespread panic.
“When the pullout was announced, people lost their minds,” Mouaz told us. He said that prior to the decision, his organization was lobbying the United States to use al-Tanf as an access point to deliver aid to Rukban. With the announcement that soldiers were leaving, attention shifted to trying to just convince the United States to stay. This is largely because, in the milieu of the Syrian war, at least some of the residents of Rukban have found in the US military base a strange bedfellow. As difficult as conditions are, they are at least safe from the extra-judicial executions, forced conscriptions, and arbitrary detention that have faced others who have found themselves newly under the thumb of the authorities. Although Russia has tried to frame the deconfliction zone as the main impediment to aid and assistance, those we spoke to do not see it that way.
“We are under their protection and we feel safe because we are their neighbour. We really hope that the base remains here,” one man said about al-Tanf.
What’s to be done?
This is not to say the US presence is entirely benign. In one of our conversations, a resident of Rukban pleaded for helicopters to airdrop aid to the camp, an idea that the Department of Defense has adamantly opposed. Residents never encounter the US service members stationed at al-Tanf. And, as the announcement in December showed, the camp’s protection hinges on the whims of a president who does not want US forces in Syria, and by all indications does not care about the collateral damage a sudden withdrawal could bring even if it means civilian casualties numbering in the thousands. But for all its limitations, there are things the United States could do to lessen the misery at Rukban.
The residents we interviewed were clear that their preference is for safe passage to the northern areas of Syria still outside the control of the government. The United States cannot unilaterally make this happen, but it could pressure its NATO partner, Turkey, to allow people to find refuge in the regions its proxy forces control. Once it has Turkey’s assent, the U.S. could press Russia to provide security as people transit by bus from Rukban to the north. There is precedent for such an arrangement, and Russia might see such a step as burnishing its reputation as a broker on the ground, encouraging its cooperation. This would be an imperfect option, and under international law, would constitute a further forced displacement for the forgotten people at Rukban. But people see relocation as one of their only paths to safety, and the laws of war were long ago left in the rubble of Syria.
If all else fails, the United States could drop its objections to involving the military, and deliver life saving humanitarian aid through its access point at al-Tanf. Such a denouement would be a tragic end to American insistence that the base and the camp are different issues entirely, and would provide Russia with a Public Relations win. But if that is what it takes to prevent catastrophe at Rukban, Washington should consider it.
As the last scraps of food move through what remain of the once-bustling smuggling routes, the people of Rukban are left alone and to face an impossible decision. Remain in the camp another day, praying for a reprieve from the desert, or leave in search of something unknown. Regardless of which they choose, it is clear that the international community has abandoned them. Their desperation for a sliver of hope is palpable, and the price of bread just keeps going up.