QAMISHLI, Syria — Children run through the courtyard of a vacant school in this northeastern city. They are not students at recess but members of displaced families living here since public schools were turned into shelters in January.
An old red Nissan pickup — a U.S. export with an American-flag sticker and “Allah” written on the windshield — brought two displaced families, 15 people in all, to safety in January when Syrian forces advanced near Afrin. The pickup’s owner, a former shopkeeper, is reluctant to give his name for fear of retaliation. He holds a 2-year-old girl with a fuzzy pink jacket whose blonde hair is tied in a tiny 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 has rippled through Syria, especially in the Kurdish-led region that ran an autonomous administration for 12 years after breaking from the Syrian regime in 2012. In January, amid renewed fighting, Syrian government forces retook territory that had long been held by Kurdish authorities. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting, with terms that placed Kurdish-held borders, security and oil fields under Syrian government control in exchange for promises of Kurdish rights — promises that have yet to be fully implemented.
The White House did not respond to an NPR request about Kurdish accusations that the U.S. abandoned them. 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 Syrian forces moved into Kurdish-held areas, U.S. officials said they no longer needed Kurdish help against ISIS — a message many here took as permission for the advance. In a region long besieged by the Syrian regime, Russia, Turkey and ISIS, that perceived betrayal is keenly felt.
Families in the school shelter say conditions are harsh. Classrooms have small kerosene heaters but no fuel for cooking; donated rice and lentils cannot be cooked, and there is no way to boil water. In one classroom, Said Mohammad Mustafa, 63, a sanitation worker from Afrin, collects sticks to burn and resorts at times to setting old clothing alight with a little gasoline. 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 were still looking for their 15-year-old daughter, Zaynib, who had heart surgery a year earlier.
“Since then we completely lost contact with her,” Mustafa says. Biro says friends told them the girl joined Kurdish fighters and was killed in an ambush by Syrian forces, but without seeing a body she refused to believe it. A few weeks later, the parents did receive the body; the teenager was buried in mid-April in Qamishli along with four others in funerals for “martyrs.”
After multiple displacements, many people in the shelter have almost nothing. Mustafa and Biro had no transportation and fled on foot when Syrian forces approached. “We were running and under bombardment. Sometimes we had to lie on the ground,” Mustafa says. When Biro could no longer walk, he refused to leave her and they finally got a ride in a truck carrying sheep — wedged on a urine-soaked bed between animals in the rain.
Not everyone has been stuck in limbo. In mid-April, about 800 displaced families returned to Afrin under the ceasefire deal that saw Syrian government forces take over formerly Kurdish-held areas. The families sheltering in Qamishli were not among them.
The psychological toll is visible. Schools have not been in session since January, and children hang around the courtyard, many showing signs of trauma from past displacements. “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 the horrors she and others witnessed while evacuating 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 weighs out pumpkin seeds to earn a little money. Women and children sleep on classroom floors under blankets. There are clotheslines with socks and few personal possessions. The shelter provides temporary safety but little comfort or certainty about the future.
For many Kurds here, the political bargains that brokered the ceasefire have translated into personal loss and unanswered questions. The deal placed strategic assets and borders under Syrian government control while promising protections for Kurdish rights that remain vague and unfulfilled. Locals worry about reprisals, conscription, and the erosion of the relative autonomy they once enjoyed.
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 believe those sacrifices have been discounted. Here, words like “sold out” and “betrayed” are common when people speak about U.S. policy.
In the school shelter’s classrooms, families try to maintain dignity amid scarcity. Mustafa clutches photos of his daughter on his phone. Biro insists they need the authorities to bring her body properly so they can know for sure. Others tend to wounds — physical and emotional — and try to hold on to routines for the children, even if a proper school day is months away.
The pickup owner, the shopkeeper, watches the courtyard and gestures to the toddler he calls “Trump.” He recalls the pickup’s long journey and the fear of leaving home. “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, that memory of fleeing, of being forced into repeated displacements, is what defines the present — an uncertain limbo framed by political deals that have yet to translate into security or stability.