After Afrin: No Safe Haven

For weeks, more than 100,000 civilians from the Syrian-Kurdish enclave of Afrin have found what shelter they can, making 12 formerly abandoned villages home.

Families sleep rough or in half-destroyed houses littered with hidden explosives, after fleeing a months-long push by Turkish-backed Syrian rebels to claim the city of Afrin and the surrounding area – part of a wider Kurdish enclave of the same name. Shortly after those military operations succeeded, in late March, photojournalist Afshin Ismaeli spent a week visiting Tel Rifaat (about 30 kilometres southeast of Afrin) and other villages.

Having escaped aerial bombardment and advancing ground forces, the people he encountered face new dangers: hunger, sickness, and the legacy of improvised explosive devices left by the so-called Islamic State, whose fighters once occupied the villages. Families begged him to take their children to a safe place, hoping to ensure their survival.

The UN has estimated that 137,000 people from the Afrin district have been displaced to the villages and surrounding area, including some 105,000 in and around Tel Rifaat.