Circassians

Circassians flee Syrian violence and return to Russian homeland

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• published: 31 Jul 2015
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LEAD-IN: The fighting in Syria is spilling out across the Middle East as refugees flee. People from one ethnic group, the Circassians are escaping to Russia to find their long lost ancestors in the North Caucasus. In the 1860s they fled to Syria to escape fighting in their ancestral homeland, and now they are trying to return. STORYLINE: Rim Kray is a refugee from Aleppo in Syria, and now she resides in this small, cramped room with her two sons. She is living in a single room in a sanatorium in Nalchik in Russia's Caucasus region. The refugee from Aleppo says she was worried for her two sons' safety, so the family left Syria for Russia. "We were afraid of bombings and armed people who were attacking. So because of the kids we had to leave everything we had there and go away," she says. In the 1860s many Circassians such as Kray's ancestors fled Russia. The Circassians fiercely resisted the Russian czarist conquest that ended in the 1860s after decades of scorched-earth warfare, mass killings or expulsions that some historians and politicians consider genocide. Now, hundreds of Circassians are fleeing war-torn Syria for this remote Russian region of soaring peaks and lush forests. In the coming months, thousands more are expected to arrive in Kabardino-Balkariya, a Caucasus province the size of Maryland with a population of less than 900,000, two-thirds of which is ethnic Circassian. Circassians were widely dispersed in the Russian expulsions. An estimated 2 million live in Turkey, another 100,000 in Syria and other sizable populations are in Jordan and the United States. But their sense of ethnic unity remains strong and the pull of their homeland compelling. The region they have come back to is afflicted by violence, too. The Caucasus republics are plagued by an Islamic insurgency that spread from Chechnya's separatist wars. A brazen 2005 raid of Islamists on Nalchik left 130 people dead, and Kabardino-Balkariya still experiences occasional small clashes. Despite the violence, Circassians say they feel comfortable in their ancestral homeland. But the refugees arriving say the economic prospects in the area are greater than in the Middle East. Natai al-Sharkas, a 35-year-old Syrian refugee from Damascus says some of the conflict in the Caucasus are similar to the Middle East. Al Sharkas's great-grandfather Koushoukou, his brother and two cousins were forcibly drafted and sent to the Russian-Turkish war of the late 1870s. They had to fight Ottoman Turks - fellow Muslims whose sultans supported Circassian resistance and provided refuge for hundreds of thousands of Circassians. After killing his officer in Bulgaria, Koushoukou joined the Turkish military and ended his life in Damascus - part of Ottoman Turkey at the time. Al Sharkas, which means Circassian in Arabic, used a network of family connections, along with Facebook, to find relatives in Kabardino-Balkariya and other parts of Russia. He encourages his Syrian relatives to follow him to the Caucasus, although now, because of the fighting, it hardly seems possible. "It's the same situation in the Middle East, you know, you always have problems almost everywhere, such kind of problems. If it's not some Islamic insurgency, so it will be mafia and criminal activities. So, everywhere in the world you have this situation. The major problem is the economical problem, I believe, and here, I think that Caucasus has the huge opportunity to be developed and to be a very developed area," says al-Sharkas. But for some Syrian Circassians refugees that have just arrived in the area, the bureaucratic hurdles in their ancestral homeland are immense. Without residence and work permits, they will have to leave the country when their visas expire. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/d7a1c375d03fa96383933ce4077bf480 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork