The Washington Post - 20.10.2019

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU A

appeared increasingly irrelevant to locals angered by

what they saw as Trump’s betrayal.

As t he sun rose over al-Malikiyah on Oct. 14, I went up

to the roof to take one last photo of Syria. This town had

been largely spared the brunt of the violence. To day it

represented the loss of a people’s hope for change. A

huge part of the younger generation had emigrated.

Many of their parents and grandparents remained, like

the old man and his neighbor, a woman in her 60s,

sitting under a pomegranate tree at the house where he

grew up, a picture of Assad still taped to his window — a

deceptively faded image of the current brutal reality.

[email protected]

It was Oct. 8 when photographer Alice Martins entered

Syria, one more trip on top of the dozens she has made to

the country in the past seven years, often on assignment

for The Washington Post. It was barely a day after

President Trump had announced that the United States

would withdraw its small contingent of U.S. forces from

northeast Syria, clearing the way for Turkey to begin an

air and ground assault on Kurdish areas. Through her

photographs, and in her own words, Martins describes

what she saw in Syria as Turkey launched its attack.

BY ALICE MARTINS

On Oct. 9, I was in Ras al-Ayn, a Syrian town on the

border, as Turkey’s t hreats became real. As w e approached

the town, I saw, at a checkpoint, a family of four crowded

in a small truck with all their belongings, while a woman

pleaded with officers to let her family pass. “I swear we are

not trying to flee,” s he said. “We are just taking these things

to my sister’s house in the village, but we will be back.”

That s ame evening, in Qamishli, a three-hour car ride

from Ras al-Ayn, Fadi Sabri was rushing to close his

small shop when he heard a blast across the street. Then

a second mortar shell landed in his front yard. The

father of three and his wife, Joliet Nicola, were injured

by shrapnel and taken to a hospital as their children,

unharmed, watched in shock. As h e lay in a hospital bed,

Sabri wept, saying, “I just want my wife to be okay.”

Nicola was unconscious and in critical condition. The

doctors who performed surgery to remove shrapnel

from her back say she may never walk again.

By the third day of the military operation, schools in

Hasakah became shelters for displaced civilians, who

told stories of risky escapes and nights spent in the open

as they fled the fighting that had engulfed their

hometowns. Many feared they would never be able to

return home. “We saw what happened in Afrin,” said

Shiar Becker Awni, a young Kurdish father of three who

had crammed onto a motorcycle with his wife and

children to escape the violence.

I headed toward al-Malikiyah, a town near the Iraqi

border. I felt it was a better place to spend the night, in case

I had to leave the country in a rush. On the road outside

Qamishli, we passed a U.S. military convoy. Its presence

The World

CHILE

State of emergency

declared amid riots

Chilean President Sebastián
Piñera declared a state of
emergency in the capital,
Santiago, Saturday, as the city of
6 million descended into chaos
amid riots that left a downtown
building engulfed in flames and
the metro system shuttered.
Black-hooded protesters
enraged by recent fare hikes on
public transportation ignited
fires at several metro stations,
looted shops, burned a public
bus and swung metal pipes at
train station turnstiles during
Friday’s afternoon commute,
according to witnesses, social
media and television footage.
Piñera spoke to the nation in
the early hours of Saturday,
declaring an emergency
lockdown as sirens filled the
night air downtown and police
and firefighters rushed to
contain the damage.
The center-right president
said he would invoke a special
state security law to prosecute
the “criminals” responsible for
the citywide damage, while at
the same time saying he
sympathized with those affected
by the rate hikes.
“In the coming days, our
government will call for a
dialogue ... to alleviate the
suffering of those affected by the
increase in fares,” Piñera said in
the broadcast address.
Chile, one of Latin America’s
wealthiest nations, is also among
its most unequal. Frustrations
over the high cost of living in
Santiago have become a political
flash point, prompting calls for
reforms on everything from the
country’s tax and labor codes to
its pension system.
— Reuters

NIGERIA

Raid frees 150 from

purported school

Police said on Saturday that
they had freed nearly 150
students from a purported
school in northern Nigeria that
claimed it was teaching the
Koran but had instead subjected
them to abuse.
It was the fourth such
operation in a month and brings
the total released from religious
schools in northern Nigeria to
more than 1,000.
The raid will put more
pressure on President
Muhammadu Buhari to take
action on loosely regulated
Islamic schools called Almajiris,
which experts say teach millions
of children across the mainly
Muslim north of the country.
Kaduna state governor Nasir
el-Rufai ordered the raid on the
Islamic reform school in Rigasa,
officials said. The released
captives were gathered later at a
camp nearby, standing in lines as
state officials tended to them.
Unlike at the other schools, at
least 22 of the 147 released
captives were female, Hafsat
Baba, Kaduna’s commissioner
for human services, told Reuters.
An official said that the school
was owned by the same man who
owned one of the schools raided
last week and that he had
already been arrested by police.
— Reuters

Syrian Kurds say they will
withdraw from border: A senior
Syrian Kurdish official said
Saturday that his forces will pull
back from a border area in
accordance with a U.S.-brokered
deal after Turkey allows the
evacuation of remaining fighters
and civilians from a besieged
town there. Redur Khalil, a
senior Syrian Democratic Forces
official, said that the plan for
evacuation from Ras al-Ayn is set
for the following day, if there are
no delays. He said that only after
that will his force pull back from
a 75-mile area between Ras al-
Ayn and Ta l Aybad. It will
withdraw and move back from
the border 19 miles. This is the
first time the Kurdish force has
publicly acknowledged that it
will withdraw from the border,
saying it has coordinated the
move with the United States.

Dam collapse kills Siberian
gold miners: At least 15 gold
miners were killed Saturday
when a dam collapsed, flooding a
mining encampment in a remote
part of Siberia, officials said.
Heavy rains had weakened the
dam and water broke through,
sweeping away several cabins
where the miners lived, about
100 miles south of the city of
Krasnoyarsk.
— From news services

DIGEST

From the front lines in Syria,

a photographer shares what

she saw as Turkey launched

its assault on Kurdish areas

PHOTOS BY ALICE MARTINS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

A Christian woman in al-Malikiyah sits under a pomegranate tree, below, outside her neighbor’s home. The grown children of both have emigrated to Europe.

Clockwise from top: A woman consoles a child at an improvised shelter in Hasakah, where two infants lie on a blanket. Shiar Becker Awni, a Kurd, and his family

arrived at the shelter after fleeing on his motorcycle. Sarah, 7, was injured by mortar fire in Qamishli and had her leg amputated. Her 11-year-old brother was killed.