Syrian Refugees Trickle into the Bay Area

Two years into the Syrian civil war, residents continue to flee the bombs and destruction—a few are finding refuge in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“People are fleeing. They are trying any way to leave the country,” said Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, a San Francisco grassroots organization that is helping them adjust to the new world

One of the newest arrivals, Amjad Shkera, landed in the U.S. on a student visa five months ago with no connections and just enough savings to hold him over for three to four months.

Since leaving Syria to complete engineering studies in neighboring Jordan, he has bounced between countries, unable to get back home because of the fighting.

He is one of a handful of Syrian refugees known to a network of social organizations in the Bay Area’s Middle Eastern communities.

In an exclusive interview with The Pioneer, he spoke of harsh conditions back home and of how he and his friends used social media in the early days of the uprising to organize and fight the current regime.

Shkera, 27, lived a sheltered life with his family in Ruken-Al Din, a suburb of Damascus. He recalls the harsh conditions back home, the breakdown of social fabric, the continuing incarceration of family members and friends, the religious bias and discrimination.

Shkera left the conflict behind and is preparing for a new chapter in his life.

“I love it here in California. It’s amazing; everything is organized and people are friendly,” he said.

Shkera would like his family to join him in the U.S. for safety, however, he is conflicted because he would like to go back and help rebuild the towns and cities that have been shelled and destroyed.

“Before I wanted my country free, now I’m looking for peace, just stop destroying our country,” he muses. “I will go back and I will rebuild it, I will put my hands with my friends and start building Syria over again as we want to build it.”

Syrians are fairly new to the San Francisco Bay Area. No government agency or other entity could offer a figure for the number of Syrians here. They are known to gravitate to the more established Syrian communities in Michigan, Boston and Los Angeles.

Shkera said he has met only one other Syrian by coincidence, on a bus in San Francisco. They shared stories about the fighting back home, but do not keep in touch.

Syria’s 18 million people are diverse ethnic and religious groups with Sunnis making up 74 percent of the population, the Shia Muslims make up 13 percent, the Alawites make up 10 percent and the rest are the other minorities.

The two dominant Muslim groups have vied for power since Syria’s independence from France in 1946.

He discerns the differences of the religious groups and describes the intolerance as “complicated.” Shkera describes the frequent discrimination.

“There is no equality. If two people are in an accident, one Shiite and one Sunni, they put the blame on the Sunni, because all the police are Shiite, all the military are Shiite…” said Shkera.

“In July 2012, the government sent planes and bombed everything… everything, everything. They bombed the tanks, the houses, everything; more than 1,500 men died,” said Shkera. People began to flee Syria for refuge in neighboring countries.

More battles have ensued since the original uprising, including the battle for Aleppo at the beginning of this year, Syria’s most populous city, when government forces escalated the conflict by bombing urban targets to take back the commercial center seized by the rebels, even bombing the university, where 87 students, staff and faculty were killed.

Shkera said he began participating in the protests from afar, after his graduation from the Applied Science Private University in Jordan; he was able to obtain a two-year contract as a product specialist/sales consultant in Saudi Arabia.

“I was going to Saudis asking for money to send to Syria to help support the people,” said Shkera.

He said he would watch the news and re-post videos, images and articles on his Facebook account.

“It became my life, because it’s something I want. I want to get rid of this stupid government, this stupid regime so that I will be free, so that my people won’t be tortured,” said Shkera.

However it all came to a stop, when his family received threats from the government.

“My hands are cuffed; they silenced my mouth. They knew how, they went to my family and threatened them,” said Shkera.

Syrian intelligence officers visited the Shkera family often, extorting them for money in return for physical safety. He believes the regime obtains power from the people who remain silent.

“My family is silent, nobody is speaking up,” says Shkera. “My family didn’t ask me to stop, they forced me to stop and I feel so bad,” he said.

“If people are waiting for something to happen to their family for them to get involved, then they don’t love Syria, because Syria is one family,” said Shkera. “It’s like the United States, if something happened in Wisconsin, would you wait until something happened to California to get involved? No, you support your people. Those who aren’t involved in the struggle are not taking care of their people.”

He explained the fear of retaliation from the government forces people to remain silent.

“[Some] talk to me, but they tell me don’t involve us in your activities, what you are doing, don’t involve us, because we want to live, we don’t want to die or be tortured,” said Shkera.

He said the regime used social media to get back at Free Syrian Army supporters.

“Some of them are guys like me,” Shkera said, referring to their age and social media competency. “They are like spies,” he said.

They pretend to be anti-regime supporters on Facebook in order to befriend others to monitor and compile records on who is posting what.

He recalls the violent death of family members and friends but grieves the death of his friend, Abdullah Al-Baba, who after earning a masters degree from the University of Michigan, left the U.S. in July 2012 to visit family in Damascus. Al-Baba planned to return for further studies, he mourns.

“He was like me: protesting on Facebook, sharing photos, writing posts ‘Look what the government does; We don’t like this government,’” Shkera explains.

His family went to greet him at the airport, but did not find him; they checked the airline passenger manifest and learned he boarded the plane with a layover in Heathrow, England. For six months they did not hear from him.

In January “the body was sent to the family,” Shkera said with tears in his eyes, “He was an amazing guy, really beautiful, and they killed him!”

“Until now I can’t sleep; maybe I’m a sensitive guy,” Shkera said.

He said he maintains daily communication with his family and friends in Syria, the people who share stories with him about what is happening in Syria. “I’m talking to my friends on Skype,” said Shkera adding that disillusionment has indeed come upon Syria.

“When I speak with my mom I hear boom, boom (bombs going off in the distance),” said Shkera. “She would tell me they cannot sleep when they hear bombs.”

Shkera expressed concern that his five-year-old niece has become accustomed to the loud noises of explosions and can assure his mother that, “…it’s just a bomb.”

He looks at videos showing gutted out and bombed areas of the capital, Damascus, and other major historic cities and sites like Aleppo and Homs as he laments.

“All the people that are not involved in weapons  [armed resistance] or government [employees] or opposition [factions,] like me, who are watching the story, they say that the only solution for Syria is magic,” Shkera said.

Syria plunged into civil war that, so far, claimed over 60,000 casualties according to United Nations published estimates.

Some news agency reports have assessed the casualties to upwards of 70,000. The two-year conflict is pitting government forces against a citizen army led by military defectors who profess to establish a democratic regime.

The U.S., after months of publicly sitting on the fence, recently pledged $60 million dollars in humanitarian and medical aid to help the opposition.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an organization based in London, reported that pro-government forces have killed 3,774 people just in the month of February, including 421 children and 231 women.  There are no immediate figures for the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army.

“What is happening to Syria is really serious and it will probably impact the generations to come and the region,” said Kiswani. “About 200,000 people have been imprisoned.” Kiswani added that incarceration is an incredibly large part of brutal dictatorship.

He said he attributes the current civil war since the February 1982 Muslim Brotherhood uprising against the current president’s father, Hafez Al-Assad.

Some 40,000 Syrians were reportedly killed in the government suppression known as the Hama massacre.