Grave food short­ages and ex­treme weath­er con­di­tions in Syr­ia have left some fam­i­lies in Trinidad and To­ba­go wor­ried that their loved ones trapped in refugee camps will not make it to the end of the year.

Sev­er­al mem­bers of a group who re­fer to them­selves as “Con­cerned Mus­lims” are try­ing to get at least 74 chil­dren be­tween the ages of three to 17 as well as 24 women to their homes in T&T.

At least 38 of those chil­dren were in­vol­un­tar­i­ly tak­en abroad by their par­ents, while 31 of them were born in Syr­ia and four were born in Iraq to T&T par­ents.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions Chil­dren’s Fund (UNICEF) web­site there are 2,500 peo­ple in the Al Roj camp in North-East Syr­ia and half of these are chil­dren, some of them from T&T. Oth­er camps with T&T na­tion­als are Al Hol and Jarablus.

Mem­bers of the Con­cerned Mus­lims Group gave some of the hor­ror sto­ries of what their rel­a­tives are fac­ing in Syr­i­an camps over the last few years, dur­ing a Zoom in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian last week. They said their pleas to the T&T Gov­ern­ment to bring home these "in­no­cent chil­dren" have fall­en on deaf ears.

Some of the fam­i­lies de­scribed the freez­ing cold in win­ter to the 55 de­grees cel­sius heat in the sum­mer to a lack of food to eat as some of the prob­lems that they face in refugee camps.

UNICEF’s web­site con­firmed what lo­cal fam­i­lies have said about the harsh win­ters and the lack of ba­sic re­sources like food and clothes for chil­dren at the camps.

Ter­ry Ann Roberts, who lives in Curepe, de­scribed the con­di­tions in the camps as "in­hu­mane" and "not even fit for a dog to be in."

Roberts gave the sto­ry of her grand­son who was born in T&T and at age four was tak­en to Iraq by her son and his wife when they mi­grat­ed in 2014.

Her son mi­grat­ed, she said, for "a bet­ter life."

Eight years lat­er, she said, "My 11-year-old grand­son sent me a voice note ask­ing for mon­ey for things to eat and clothes. It is heart­break­ing for a child to ask for these things know­ing that we are here in T&T drink­ing and eat­ing and hav­ing a mer­ry time and they’re over there starv­ing. I even sent the voice note to Min­is­ter (Fitzger­ald) Hinds and no re­sponse.”

As the war in­ten­si­fied, Roberts said, her son and his fam­i­ly end­ed up in Syr­ia where he was killed in 2017 while re­turn­ing from an in­ter­net cafe where he made reg­u­lar vis­its to com­mu­ni­cate with her.

"My fam­i­ly and all the chil­dren over there want to come to T&T. The rea­son why they’re not back here is be­cause of the block the T&T Gov­ern­ment is putting up to pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing. We have been send­ing cor­re­spon­dence and giv­ing the Gov­ern­ment every­thing nec­es­sary to have our fam­i­lies back home. I sent the cur­rent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter What­sApp mes­sages of our fam­i­ly cold and starv­ing and he nev­er replied."

Roberts said the US au­thor­i­ties have said that they are will­ing to help to bring the fam­i­lies back home but the T&T Gov­ern­ment has not shown any in­ter­est.

Shanaz Mo­hammed, al­so from Cunu­pia, ex­plained that her five grand­chil­dren and daugh­ter-in-law are in the Al Roj camp in Syr­ia.

Her son took his fam­i­ly there in 2014 and he was killed in 2019.

She said she has been try­ing to get her fam­i­ly back to T&T since 2019 and has not been suc­cess­ful.

"We have done every sin­gle thing we could pos­si­bly do to bring them back. We’ve writ­ten let­ters to the dif­fer­ent au­thor­i­ties and no re­sults. My grand­chil­dren are suf­fer­ing there. It’s so cold that they freeze in the win­ter and when it’s hot in the sum­mer, it’s al­most 55 de­grees. It’s hor­ri­ble.”

She re­mains pes­simistic about her daugh­ter-in-law and grand­chil­dren re­turn­ing any­time soon giv­en the re­luc­tance of the Gov­ern­ment to do any­thing.

When asked if lo­cal fam­i­lies are pre­pared fi­nan­cial­ly and oth­er­wise to re­ceive their loved ones from Syr­ia, she replied that they are ready with their fi­nan­cial re­sources and oth­er means to as­sist them to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety.

An­oth­er per­son from Ca­roni who is in the group, and who asked not to be named, has two daugh­ters and five grand­chil­dren who are in Syr­ia, told about their suf­fer­a­tion.

"One of the moth­ers is hav­ing seizures, there is a lack of food and they face ex­treme weath­er pat­terns. They orig­i­nal­ly left T&T around 2015. One of the hus­bands was killed and we can­not ac­count for the next one. It is dev­as­tat­ing."

He said that they have been lob­by­ing the T&T Gov­ern­ment since 2019 and so far it has been fruit­less.

"We have been forced to try the courts to get the Gov­ern­ment to talk. The State prefers to spend mil­lions of dol­lars in court to pre­vent our chil­dren who are stuck there from get­ting emer­gency trav­el doc­u­ments. There are in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions like the Red Cross, UNICEF, and the US Em­bassy who are will­ing to help. The US is will­ing to repa­tri­ate and help re-in­te­grate these women and chil­dren."

He said once the court gives the per­mis­sion and their fam­i­lies are giv­en emer­gency trav­el doc­u­ments they will be able to re­turn home.

The fa­ther al­so said that they will shoul­der the costs and oth­er lo­gis­tics to rein­te­grate their fam­i­lies back in­to lo­cal so­ci­ety.

He said a pri­vate cit­i­zen has giv­en an apart­ment build­ing in St He­le­na to house these mi­grants once they re­turn.

"We have nurs­es, psy­chol­o­gists, ther­a­pists who are able to pro­vide as­sis­tance to them. The fam­i­lies are will­ing to pay for every­thing. The Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty here has all the re­sources to help them get back in­to so­ci­ety."

Tam­jeed Ali, whose name is on an ad that was in the me­dia two weeks ago and is al­so part of the Con­cerned Mus­lims Group, ap­pealed to the Gov­ern­ment to car­ry out its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect its cit­i­zens and re­turn them home.

"If we do not get these women and chil­dren back home soon they are not go­ing to sur­vive 2022. They would die. All we need is a doc­u­ment from the Gov­ern­ment al­low­ing them to re­turn home."

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds for an up­date on what the Gov­ern­ment is do­ing to as­sist in bring­ing na­tion­als back home but he did not an­swer his phone or re­spond to What­sApp mes­sages.

A news­pa­per ad two weeks ago by an ac­tivist from the Con­cerned Mus­lims Group ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of say­ing some of the chil­dren are not of T&T her­itage and so there is no rea­son to bring them to T&T.

In April 2021, High Court Judge Joan Charles ruled that it can­not or­der the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to repa­tri­ate a group of 12 women and chil­dren be­ing held at a refugee camp in north­ern Syr­ia.

The judge stat­ed that there was no leg­isla­tive or pol­i­cy frame­work in place for repa­tri­at­ing na­tion­als from war zones.

She al­so stat­ed that the min­is­ter does not have the le­gal pow­er or dis­cre­tion to repa­tri­ate or fa­cil­i­tate the repa­tri­a­tion of these na­tion­als.

No fig­ure on rein­te­gra­tion

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dau­rius Figueira, a vol­un­teer who works with fam­i­lies who have rel­a­tives in Syr­ia, could not say how much it will cost the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er stake­hold­ers to rein­te­grate the mi­grants in­to our so­ci­ety.

"Present­ly, we are look­ing at hous­ing as there are 74 chil­dren and 24 women and we are hop­ing that they come first as they are the biggest group. The process of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion will take a long time, giv­en the size of the group. Hous­ing is im­por­tant as the chil­dren can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from their care­givers. The chil­dren are all vic­tims of war and the on­ly per­sons in their lives are the moth­ers."

How­ev­er, he said that the dif­fer­ent stake­hold­er groups are will­ing to con­tribute to the cost of rein­te­grat­ing these fam­i­lies back in­to T&T’s so­ci­ety.

"We know we must shoul­der part of the bur­den of it. The fam­i­lies who are here and the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty as a whole are ready to con­tribute."

He is work­ing on a pol­i­cy pa­per which he said will be made avail­able to the pub­lic in a few weeks.

While Figueira and oth­er in­ter­est groups are mak­ing plans, they have no sig­nals from the Gov­ern­ment as to what they in­tend to do with these mi­grants when they re­turn.

"The Gov­ern­ment has nev­er sent a del­e­ga­tion to the camps to meet with the Syr­i­an De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Forces (SDF) which is the mil­i­tary arm of the Kur­dish au­tonomous re­gion and they run the camps. The Unit­ed Na­tions has in­sist­ed that the coun­tries from which these mi­grants have come from are sup­posed to send a del­e­ga­tion to the SDF in or­der to iden­ti­fy their cit­i­zens and take them back to their home coun­tries," Figueira said.

He be­lieves that there are pow­er­ful in­ter­est groups in T&T who do not want the mi­grants to re­turn as they think they may en­gage in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties.

De­spite this, he said the Amer­i­cans have in­flu­ence over that Syr­i­an re­gion where the camps are, and in­evitably they will have these cit­i­zens re­turned to T&T. He said that the Gov­ern­ment should make the wise move and start prepar­ing for their rein­te­gra­tion in­to so­ci­ety.

"The Gov­ern­ment is para­noid. With a pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign we have car­ried out, the mass­es now be­lieve that the chil­dren must come home," Figueira said.