QAMISHLI, Syria — Children run through the courtyard of a vacant school in this northeastern city. They are not playing at recess but are members of displaced families sheltering inside classrooms that have been turned into makeshift homes since January.
An old red Nissan pickup — a U.S. export bearing an American-flag sticker and “Allah” on the windshield — brought two displaced families, 15 people in all, to safety when fighting approached Afrin in January. Its owner, a former shopkeeper who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, holds a 2-year-old girl with a pink jacket and a tiny blonde ponytail. “We nicknamed her Trump as a joke because she’s blond,” he says. “I used to like Trump but not anymore. You saw what he did to us — he sold us out.”
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was toppled in late 2024 by Turkish-backed opposition fighters. The upheaval sent shockwaves across Syria, including the Kurdish-led region that had run an autonomous administration for 12 years after breaking from the regime in 2012. In January, amid renewed fighting, Syrian government forces retook territory long held by Kurdish authorities. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting, with terms that put Kurdish-held borders, security and oil fields under Syrian government control in exchange for promises of Kurdish rights — commitments that remain largely unfulfilled.
The White House did not respond to an NPR request about Kurdish accusations of abandonment. Kurdish forces had been the U.S. partner on the ground against ISIS; Kurdish leaders say at least 10,000 fighters were killed in that campaign. In January, as Turkish-backed forces advanced into Kurdish-held areas, U.S. officials said they no longer required Kurdish assistance against ISIS — a statement many locals interpreted as clearing the way for the offensive. In a region long battered by the regime, Russia, Turkey and ISIS, that perceived betrayal is deeply felt.
Conditions in the school shelter are harsh. Classrooms have small kerosene heaters but no cooking fuel; donated rice and lentils cannot be cooked and there is no reliable way to boil water. In one room, Said Mohammad Mustafa, 63, a sanitation worker from Afrin, collects sticks for burning and sometimes lights old clothing with a little gasoline to heat food. He and his wife, Sabah Hassan Biro, were among the last to leave the Tabqa displacement camp in January. They were given two hours’ notice and left amid bombardment while still searching for their 15-year-old daughter, Zaynib, who had undergone heart surgery a year earlier.
“Since then we completely lost contact with her,” Mustafa says. Friends told them their daughter had joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush by Syrian forces, but without seeing a body they refused to believe it. A few weeks later the parents received the body; the teenager was buried in mid-April in Qamishli along with four others in funerals for “martyrs.”
After repeated displacements, many families in the shelter have almost nothing left. Mustafa and Biro had no transport and fled on foot when Syrian forces closed in. “We were running and under bombardment. Sometimes we had to lie on the ground,” Mustafa recalls. When Biro could no longer walk, he stayed with her until they managed to get a lift in a truck carrying sheep — packed into a urine-soaked mattress between animals, soaked by rain.
Not all displaced people have remained in limbo. In mid-April, about 800 displaced families returned to Afrin under the ceasefire deal that transferred control of formerly Kurdish-held areas to the Syrian government. The families in the Qamishli school were not among those who went back.
The psychological toll is visible. Schools have been closed since January and children drift around the courtyard, many showing signs of trauma from the evacuations. “They were all dead,” says Hassan Hussein, 10, describing a roadside scene near Afrin in December 2024.
Gulestan Rashid, who helps run the shelter, recounts horrors seen during evacuations from Shahba camp near Afrin. “We saw bodies of regime soldiers being burned by the side of the highway when we were evacuated,” she says. “When [my nephew] saw those bodies he got very sick for three days — he was in hospital. They have seen everything.”
Around the school a small table sells snacks; a man measures out pumpkin seeds to earn a little money. Women and children sleep on classroom floors under thin blankets. Clotheslines hold a few socks and belongings. The shelter offers safety but little comfort and an uncertain future.
For many Kurds here, the political bargains that produced the ceasefire have become personal losses and unanswered questions. The deal placed strategic assets and borders under Syrian government control while promising protections for Kurdish rights that remain vague. Locals fear reprisals, forced conscription, and the erosion of the relative autonomy they once had.
The sense of abandonment by international partners runs deep. Kurdish fighters and communities across Syria and Iraq fought alongside U.S. forces to defeat ISIS, and many here say those sacrifices have been discounted. “Sold out” and “betrayed” are common words used to describe U.S. policy.
In the classrooms, families try to maintain dignity amid scarcity. Mustafa clutches photos of his daughter on his phone; Biro presses for authorities to return her body properly so they can know for certain. Others tend to physical wounds and deep emotional scars while trying to hold on to routines for the children, even though a proper school day is months away.
The pickup owner watches the courtyard and gestures to the toddler he calls “Trump,” remembering the cramped journey out of Afrin. “We squeezed all the children on top of us and in the back of the truck and I put all our stuff on top,” he says. For many here, the memory of fleeing — of repeated displacements and of political deals that have yet to produce security or stability — defines daily life in an uncertain limbo.