‘It’d be certain death’: After surviving years of war, Syrian Kurds now flee to Iraq fearing Assad’s draft

Families with boys of conscription age are sending their children to Iraq, hoping to spare them from fighting in Syria’s bloody war, Bel Trew reports

Young refugee men say they fled Northern Syria fearing conscription – they now live in a refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan (Bel Trew)

The parents of the Kurdish-Syrian teenager had survived years of war but began to panic when they heard rumours military conscription teams were coming to town.

So, they paid a smuggler $200 and sent their oldest son, Mohamed, who was about to turn 18, from the border town of Kobani 350km east to northern Iraq.

For most of the nine-year civil war, being drafted into the army of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had not been a concern for the inhabitants of the Kurdish-controlled northeast of the country.