By RANA F. SWEIS
Published: February 8, 2012
RAMTHA, JORDAN — This impoverished Jordanian city across the border from Dara’a, Syria, has become a temporary haven for Syrians who continue to flee the violence that has swept their country.

Residents and family members point out that it was the arrest and torture last March of more than a dozen schoolchildren in Dara’a for scribbling graffiti critical of President Bashar al-Assad that sparked the uprising against the Syrian regime.

Abu Hadi, 40, who used to work as a painter in Dara’a, arrived in Ramtha two months ago; his last name has been withheld for security reasons. His family, including his six children, has fled Dara’a but remain in hiding in Syria.

“I was wounded while assisting an injured protester and underwent surgery in a makeshift hospital,” he said. As a result of his injury, he suffers from the pain of having a metal rod in his leg.

“Syrian informers arrested the injured protester I was helping and he provided them with my name after being tortured so they began searching for me,” Abu Hadi said, as he sat in a rundown Ramtha mini-market owned by a Jordanian. “A day later I heard the protester who they interrogated was found in a garbage bin, his body dismembered and his eyes ripped out.”

“My wife called me and said they stormed my house, humiliated and threatened her and our children.”

The residents of Ramtha have strong tribal and family ties with people in Dara’a and some have taken shelter with relatives here. But others, like Abu Hadi, live in precarious conditions in cramped apartment buildings as they wait for the crisis to play out across the border. He reported major difficulties among the refugees in finding food and getting access to electric power.

The United Nations refugee agency has registered 3,063 Syrians in Jordan and says the number is rising. But this number does not reflect all the Syrians who have crossed the border, legally or illegally, since some do not register with the United Nations. Jordanian media have published several estimates, ranging from 5,000 to 15,000, but these cannot be verified.

The U.N. agency has pressed for an urban-based response to this refugee crisis, with the option of placing them in camps being a last resort.

On a visit to Jordan at the beginning of this month, the U.N. secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, warned that the situation in Syria was deteriorating and said that the international community must provide aid to the refugees.

“We will support the Jordanian efforts in offering humanitarian aid to the refugees so that Jordan does not feel they are left out in facing this challenge,” he said in Amman during a press conference with Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh.

Abu Hadi, who is in regular contact with army defectors and activists who fled Syria for Jordan as well as with rebels inside Syria, said: “I saw many people who were killed, dismembered and injured in front of my eyes by the Syrian Army.”

“The violence has increased,” he added, “and includes torture and rape.” His claims could not be independently verified.

The United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, issued a press release this month mentioning reports of “children being arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sexually abused while in detention.”

Abu Hadi said activists and rebels had told him that protests against the Syrian Army would no longer remain peaceful, especially after the latest bombardments of the city of Homs in which scores of people have died.

In Abu Hadi’s view, civil war has begun in Syria, and will likely worsen even if the Assad regime falls. “Now at the checkpoints they look at your I.D. to see who you are,” he said. “Being Sunni or Shiite or Alawite can determine whether you live or die.”

Many Syrian refugees in Ramtha remain fearful of speaking about their experiences, fearing for their safety and for family members they left behind. Only when other refugees or local Jordanians whom they trust persuade them of the importance of revealing their current living conditions in Jordan and what they witnessed before they left Syria do they agree to speak.

Abu Qusay, 29, and his family arrived here recently from Homs and live in together in a one-room hovel. His three sons, all under the age of 4, looked subdued and unresponsive, and Abu Qusay, who also declined to give his family name, said that the eldest one sleeps nearly all day.

“If the boys heard anyone knocking on the door before we came here from Homs they would be terrified because they would think it’s the Syrian Army,” he said. “Now all we do is watch the news together and think about how we will survive economically.”

His wife, Um Qusay, 25, said life had become unbearable in Homs as gunfire and shelling became constant. “Leaving the house to buy bread meant we could die on the way,” she said.

Abu Samir, 45, another Syrian refugee in Ramtha who would did not want his family name published, recounted how he had been wounded by Syrian Army soldiers who stormed Dara’a early in the uprising last spring.

He said it was 1 a.m. when he awoke to the sound of gunfire and saw hundreds of soldiers surrounding his neighborhood. Young men began calling to each other from windows and rooftops to come out witness the violence taking place. Abu Samir said he was wounded as soon as he stepped outdoors.

“I believe that several of the snipers were Iranians and from Hezbollah,” he said. This claim could not be verified, but several refugees and former rebels said the snipers did not speak like Syrians and wore green bandanas, a hallmark of Hezbollah. That evening, while Abu Samir was still recovering from his wounds, a local radio station announced that he had died.

“I was traveling abroad for work, exporting vegetables to the United Arab Emirates, and after appearing on a television interview three months later I became a wanted man by the Syrian forces,” he said. Now he lives in Ramtha, where he continues to export vegetables and meets with other refugees and rebels fleeing the violence across the border.

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