The Jazeera drought in pictures

SMN No. 2, May 24, 2010

A recent series of photographs picturing the daily predicament of Syrian internal refugees captured the attention of the Syrian online community.

The photos, which aim to raise awareness of the plight of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have been displaced from the Jazeera area in the drought-hit northeast of the country, were widely circulated on Syrian websites, blogs and Facebook groups.

The photos show large areas covered by tents. Some depict women washing clothes and cooking outdoors, children playing in dirty and worn clothes, and people crowded in small tents.

One photo shows dozens of men waiting to start work at a construction site.

[wp-imageflow2]

The pictures were first posted on a Facebook group called “No to the injustice and the neglect of the Syrian Jazeera area”. The group aims at encouraging the Syrian media to shed more light on the plight of Jazeera.

The group, which started in October 2009 and has about 1,150 members, said in its mission statement that 300,000 Syrians, or 60,000 families, live in deplorable conditions away from their home areas in what it described as “tents of hunger and estrangement”.

“All that misery and the Syrian media is silent,” the group said.

The group said the Jazeera area, which accounts for 41 per cent of the land area of Syria and is home to 17 per cent of the population, is in a state of poverty.

The group deplored the fact that the area had become one of the poorest in the country even though it was once one of the richest in natural resources such as oil and water and contained 42 per cent of the country’s cultivated land.

The photos, which were later published on several blogs and websites, like the Emarji blog and all4Syria website, were received with shock by many internet users. Some said they had not been aware of the seriousness of the area’s plight.

Most comments on the photos blamed the plight of Jazeera on corruption and economic mismanagement.

One asked how it was logical for people from the towns of Hasakeh and Qamishli to find themselves in this situation after they had “provided the whole country with cotton and wheat”.

Another internet user said that the photos made him cry and said they should make Syrian officials ashamed.

One commentator, however, blamed the people of Jazeera for their fate and said that men often married more that once and had very large families of nine or ten children.