Students, teachers go back to class in IS-free east Syria

Ayham al Mohammad -

Her name means “dreams” in Arabic and schoolteacher Ahlam is finally realising hers — returning to her beloved classroom after years of extremist rule over her eastern Syrian hometown.

Perched on school benches in their bright coats, excited young boys and girls chant in unison as they count the cherries she has drawn in chalk on the blackboard.

The IS overran large swathes of Syria in 2014, with the extremists imposing their own rigid interpretation of religion on residents.

Ahlam says the extremists tried to recruit her to teach in one of their schools in her hometown of Al Shamatiyah, near Deir Ezzor city.

She refused, opting to teach her children in secret at home and eking out a living from an orchard she tended to with her husband, an agricultural engineer.

“I thought there would no longer be a future for our children — no schooling, no rights,” recalls Ahlam.

“But thank God, the children are studying, so they can at least read and write,” she says.

Since a Syrian government offensive ousted the extremists from Deir Ezzor city and nearby territory in late 2017, teachers and pupils alike have rushed back to the classroom.

At 13, Mohammad al Ragheb shyly admits he does not know how to read or write, having spent the years under IS rein outside of school.

“I should be in eighth grade now, but I wasn’t able to go to school,” he says.

He now sits excitedly in a crisp classroom in eastern Syria, awaiting his lesson.

According to Deir Ezzor’s education directorate, the fighting in the region meant some 200,000 students went without proper schooling for five years, with around 5,000 teachers out of work.

Now, the directorate says, dozens of schools have reopened and around 45,000 students are back in school.

Some 6,000 students are also resuming their studies at the Euphrates University in Deir Ezzor, capital of the province of the same name.

But some of the faculties — such as those of medicine and agriculture — lie in areas that were seized by the extremists.

Student Mona al Nasser, now 24, was getting ready to graduate when IS swept across the desert province in 2014.

Their advance trapped her under extremist reign in her hometown of Mayadeen, 50 km away.

“All I wanted to do was study. I’m so happy to be back today, and I hope those other days never return,” says Nasser. —AFP