It’s been more than a week since anyone has heard from or seen Omar Alisso’s nephew, Diyar, in Syria.
Alisso hopes Diyar will eventually be found, but has come to terms with the fact that he is most likely dead.
“He just disappeared and I think he was killed,” a choked up Alisso said from his home in Halifax.
“He’s only 24. He just got married last year.”
Alisso has been calling his sister every day since Turkey's military launched a cross-border operation against Kurdish-led forces in Syria in October.
But about a week ago, when Alisso called his sister who lives in Sari Kani, a city in northeastern Syria on the border with Turkey, all he heard was crying.
“Her house was gone and her son was gone,” Alisso said.
Alisso’s sister fled the war-torn city to join family in southern Syria.
She still hasn’t heard from her son.
“For Diyar to be gone a week is a long time, especially when the city gets hit every day,” Alisso said. “There’s a lot of loss of life and the city is destroyed completely.”
Alisso, who moved to Canada in 1995, said every member of the small Kurdish community in Halifax has family back in Syria.
“It’s not just me. Each family has somebody that’s missing,” Alisso said.
Alisso and the Kurdish community plan to meet at Victoria Park at 2 p.m. on Saturday and walk to the U.S. consulate general Halifax office at 1973 Upper Water St.
The rally is open to anyone who wants to support the community.
Alisso picked the Halifax office as a place for people to speak out on what’s happening in Syria because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent remarks and actions.
On Oct. 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Trump a cross-border operation, Operation Peace Spring, would “soon be moving forward.” Trump responded by saying U.S. troops based in the area be not involved in the operation and ordered them to withdraw from northern Syria a week later.
Thursday, U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence announced five-day ceasefire agreed between Turkey and the United States to let the Kurdish-led SDF militia withdraw from an area controlled by Turkish forces.
But shelling and machine gunfire continued at the Syrian-Turkish border on Friday.
“One day (Trump) said something like, ‘Well, I spent a lot of money on the Kurds.’ I would like to give this message to him: Is our blood, man and woman, does that qualify for money at all?” Alisso said.
“Now after the war, they’ve just left us all alone. We’re scared.”
With files from Reuters
Related:
