SAVING SYRIA’S LOST GENERATION
64 | June• 2019
banned locals from smoking, drinking
or leaving their village. “It was a pris-
oner’s life,” says Takwa’s mother, Rah-
ma Jasem Al Mousa.
That’s how Takwa became one of
the more than 2.8 million Syrian chil-
dren deprived of regular schooling in
the months and years after war began
in 2011. The conflict has left a whole
generation at risk of illiteracy, with-
out the opportunity to learn skills to
rebuild their lives or country. More
than five million Syrians have fled, and
the vast majority took refuge in neigh-
bouring countries that are themselves
struggling with poverty. So, the life that
many Syrians arrived to was one of
hardship – where education was either
unavailable or took a back seat to the
struggle to survive.
This was the case for Takwa and her
family, who in July 2017 finally escaped
Syria and made the perilous journey to
Lebanon. They found an apartment in
Zefta, a town 60 kilometres south of
Beirut. Lebanon was relatively stable.
However, Takwa’s father could only
find irregular, casual work.
“The large majority of refugees are
in poverty,” says Bill Van Esveld, sen-
ior researcher for children’s rights at
the global humanitarian NGO Human
Rights Watch. “Kids are expected to go
out and work to support the family and
girls are subject to increased pressure
to marry early.”
Although schools across Lebanon
had devised a system to let refugee
children attend, splitting the school
O
NE AUGUST morn-
ing in the south
Lebanese town of
Zefta, nine Syri-
an children sit in a
sunlit classroom.
Display boards around them are past-
ed with cheerful icons – drawings of a
balloon, an ice cream cone, a smiling
doctor with a stethoscope. The class of
boys and girls, in jeans, long skirts and
T-shirts, is attentive. There is no chatter.
The teacher reads words in Eng-
lish for the class to repeat. Takwa, an
11-year-old girl in the first row, fol-
lows along in her workbook. “Door,
window, table, chair,” she says. She sa-
vours each day in the school and each
newly acquired word because, before
these classes, she hadn’t set foot in a
school for nearly four years.
It was back in November 2014, in the
Syrian farming village of Ghanem Ali,
that Takwa’s education was cut short.
She was at her local school when a
group of bearded, black-clad strangers
burst through the doors. The children
cowered in fear while the ISIS fanatics
ripped pictures from the walls and set
fire to the Syrian flag. As smoke wafted
down the hallways, the terrified chil-
dren ran home to their parents in tears.
In dozens of classrooms across the
river valley similar shocking scenes
unfolded. ISIS closed schools, for-
bade education but opened them later
with a new brainwashing to replace
the standard curriculum. They also
imposed harsh new dress codes and PHOTOS: MAHER ATTAR
