Fleeing Syrians Take Refuge Along Border With Turkey

By SEBNEM ARSU and ANTHONY SHADID

KHIRBIT EL JOUS, Syria — Hundreds of Syrians displaced by a ferocious crackdown on the uprising here fled to the Turkish border by tractor, truck and foot on Tuesday, some huddling in muddy olive groves without shelter and food, residents said.

The scenes on both sides of the border, a 520-mile frontier that Syrians can cross without visas, brought yet another dimension to the three-month rebellion against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The repressive force of the state unfolded Tuesday, with the military expanding its deployment to restive regions in the north and east and security forces making more arrests, along with the consequences of thousands of lives uprooted.

In wrenching scenes, occasionally playing out under rare but torrential summer rains, some of the Syrians here spoke of the pain of flight in a region where land — as well as the attachment to it — stands as one of the most visceral notions of belonging.

“They think we are refugees, but we are not,” said a man who refused to give his name, holding a bag of bread and seeking shelter on the Syrian side of the border. “We have everything — our houses, properties and memories there. What would happen if we enter Turkey now and, when it’s time to return, find everything gone in our absence?”

The humanitarian crisis, along with the relentlessness of the crackdown, has drawn growing international condemnation, thrusting Syria’s leadership into some of its starkest isolation in its four decades in power. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a friend of Mr. Assad’s, urged him yet again to end the crackdown in a telephone call on Tuesday.

But so far, the Syrian government, led by Mr. Assad and a tight-knit, opaque circle, has signaled its intention to repress by force what it describes as an armed, religiously motivated uprising and what activists describe as a largely peaceful protest against the withering oppression of one of the Arab world’s most authoritarian states.

Residents in northern Syria said the military had deployed thousands of soldiers and hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles and jeeps in and around Jisr al-Shoughour, where insurgents, military defectors or a combination of both fought Syrian security forces earlier this month. The government retook the town on Sunday, prompting the exodus.

Reports from the town were contradictory, underlining the difficulty of reporting with authority in a country where foreign journalists are mostly barred. One resident, a 31-year-old government employee who gave his first name as Muhanna, said the town was relatively quiet on Tuesday, with some residents returning and electricity restored.

“The army received us and offered us bread and water,” he said.

But a driver from a nearby town who gave his name as Abu Khaled said Jisr al-Shoughour remained largely deserted, though the military had set up a base in the town’s hospital to direct operations in the conservative, predominantly Sunni Muslim region.

Activists and residents said tanks and soldiers were also moving east toward Deir al-Zour and Abu Kamal, a region near the Iraqi border dominated by extended clans. Video taken by residents showed a handful of tanks on a main highway, but some activists said the numbers of armored vehicles were larger, perhaps in the dozens.

Protests have gathered almost daily in Deir al-Zour, and clashes have erupted in Abu Kamal, a town inhabited by families that span the border with Iraq and Syria. One 27-year-old protester who gave his name as Abdullah said demonstrators hurled epithets as the tanks approached Abu Kamal, asking why the Syrian military was fighting its own people and not Israel, which seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war.

“Are you going to the Golan to liberate it?” he quoted them as shouting.

One local leader, Nawaf el-Bashir, said Syrian military forces had yet to enter Deir al-Zour, while Abdullah said they had already taken up positions inside the town.

Opposition activists have sought to rally Syria’s extended clans to their side, particularly the groups living in eastern Syria. Some activists speculated that the military’s deployment toward the region was meant as a show of force for a government that, at least momentarily, appeared to lose control of Jisr al-Shoughour and its hinterland.

“I think they want to signal strength to the tribes,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. “But it’s not an easy environment, and the people there don’t like anyone to intrude in their territory.”

via Fleeing Syrians Take Refuge Along Border With Turkey – NYTimes.com.