Fourteen years ago, Yarmouk was one of the most desirable neighbourhoods in Damascus.
A refugee camp, yes. But one that had transformed from an informal tented community of Palestinian refugees to a district in the Syrian capital’s south that attracted people from all walks of life.
Today it is unrecognisable. Great gaps lie where buildings used to stand. Homes have been disembowelled by barrel bombs.
Women, children and dogs sift through piles of garbage looking for something to eat.
The complete devastation of this once-vibrant Palestinian community during the Syrian conflict was not matched until Israel launched its war on Gaza last year.
“It was beautiful, it was paradise,” Jumaa Ahmed al-Ainah says, thumbing blue prayer beads in his hands.
Yarmouk’s pre-war population stood at around 150,000 people, mostly Palestinians. In 2013, it became the scene of fierce battles between Syrian rebels and then-president Bashar al-Assad’s army, both of which fought alongside allied Palestinian groups.
Once in opposition hands, the camp was besieged and became a favoured target of Assad’s air force and the Russian jets aiding him.
To make matters worse, by 2015 most of Yarmouk had been overrun by the Islamic State group (IS). Only a few hundred residents remained and Ainah was one of them.
“The air strikes were the worst things, but everyone left when Daesh was here,” he says, using the Arabic acronym for IS. “They would kill anyone that stood in their way.”
Once one of the nicest parts of Damascus, Yarmouk was destroyed during Syria's war (Daniel Hilton/MEE)
Assad’s siege on Yarmouk was infamous. A photograph of residents queueing for food in its shredded street became one of the war’s defining images.
“It was a tough time,” says Ainah. “I looked everywhere for food, searching the streets for anything even if it was rotten.”
The 60-year-old Palestinian also had to learn to spend a lot of time on his own. Ainah’s family fled this part of Damascus when the bombing began but he insisted on staying behind to look after his property.
“I knew if I left my house for one second it would be taken by someone else. Thank God it was not bombed,” he says. “I was alone. It was very difficult to be alone.”
Palestinians in Syria
Unlike neighbouring countries, in 1956 Syria gave Palestinians almost exactly the same rights as Syrians, allowing them to be employed in all sectors. That allowed Yarmouk to flourish.
Assad and his father Hafez, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000, also portrayed themselves as allies of the Palestinian cause, allowing some Palestinian factions to operate from Damascus.
In November, an Israeli strike on an office in Damascus’ Mezzeh belonging to the Islamic Jihad killed several of the Palestinian group’s fighters.
Posters of their faces decorate crumbling concrete walls along Yarmouk’s main street.
Khaled Meshaal, a former leader of Hamas, was based in the camp until he broke with Assad after refusing to condemn the Syrian revolution.
And while some Palestinians have fought for the toppled government, many have been its victims.
Yarmouk resident Mohammed Mahmoud (Daniel Hilton/MEE)
More than 4,300 Palestinian refugees have been killed during the war and over 3,000 detained, according to the UK-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS).
Ayman Sakhnin, a 52-year-old Yarmouk resident, said Assad treated Palestinians decently before the conflict. “But this war was on everyone, Palestinians and Syrians,” he says.
“The revolution is good for people’s rights and it is a beautiful thing.”
'Everything is terrible'
Since Assad retook Yarmouk in 2018, residents like Sakhnin have begun to return. Some shops on the main thoroughfares are open again, but not all of them have four walls.
Sixty percent of the camp’s buildings are damaged or totally destroyed, according to AGPS.
Unrwa, the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees, is providing some services for the 8,000 people living among the rubble, like healthcare and education.
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But residents say they are lacking the absolute basics: water, electricity and enough food to live.
So far, a few rebels from the camp have come back home but residents say they are yet to be visited by representatives of the new interim government.
“Everything is terrible,” says Mohammed Mahmoud, a 25-year-old whose family were expelled from Safed in what is now northern Israel.
Mahmoud is a construction worker but his own home is a ruin. “My house has no windows or doors. It’s like living on the street.”
And residents can’t escape the comparisons with Gaza. Mahmoud says the images of slaughter and destruction from the Palestinian enclave are devastating for them.
“The same kind of evil is doing to Gaza what was done to Yarmouk,” says Ainah. “Bashar is the student of Israel.”
