Scarred by conflict

Sangeetha Barooah Pisharoty

“Though I stay 30 kilometres from here, I come here every weekend.

I have grown up here, so how can I forget the place?”

Revisiting history can disrupt sound sleep. No, I have not seen any historical place or say, a museum, display such a slat so far. Yet, there are places of historical importance which can keep you make you stop and ponder for long. Take the United St ates Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. for instance. The exhibits at the museum are padded with detailed descriptions of torture - man on man - at once placing a visitor face to face with genocide, and how it can be methodically exercised to repress a part of society.

Connected

Living relics: Their playground. Photo: AP

To a list of such places - which stay with you forever and compel you to reflect on violence and its cataclysmic effects - I would like to add a less-heard name, Quineitra, the Capital of Golan, pockmarked with over 30-year-old despoils of war. Open to tourists (It needs prior permission from the Syrian Interior Ministry office at Damascus) Quineitra on the edge of Syria-Israel border throws a jaw-dropping sight at a first time visitor to the disturbed area now under the United Nations’ surveillance. Rows and rows of razed down houses, buildings and market places, bullet-ridden hospital and other public spaces are the leftovers of the Israeli destruction of the city just before they vacated it in 1974.

Call it war tourism, naked display of human devastation or a page of history kept alive for posterity to review, Quineitra is but worth a visit. My first stop at Golan is the famous Shouting Hill.

The hill, at the tip of Israel border (which the Syrians call occupied Golan) got its name from a need very human - the urge to communicate with the family members caught on the other side of the border. A Syrian Police official posted at the spot explains, “The common means of communicating with the estranged family members and relatives was by shouting on a mike from this point which is how the area got its name. But today, many use mobile phones to keep in touch.” People on both sides use cell phone connections of any third country to call each other, he adds.

From Shouting Hill, there is a sudden drop of about 250 metres leading to the barbed border, overlooking a thickly populated Golanese village called Masdar Shams. The full view is of the village clearly divided into two parts: houses of Golanese residents on the right and fairly new settlements on the left.

“There are about 44 such new settlements with a population of about 20,000 Israelis in Golan,” Mohammad Ali, public relations director, The Governate of Quinetra, later tells me. Across the border, I also see a heavy-duty crane cutting a hillock, its squeals all consuming. Ali claims, “People are allowed to go only till the platform made at the hill because the valley below is full of mines set by the Israeli Army in 1974.”

Though on the Syrian side, you can see some UN soldiers guarding the post besides a run-down Syrian security forces post with President Al-Assad’s portrait hanging on one of its outside walls, on the Israeli side, you can clearly see a huge radar system protruding towards the Shouting Hill besides its presence at various vantage points on the higher reaches of the mountain range surrounding the Golan area.

The conflict is overt to any naked eye. I next take a round of Quinetra, a completely flattened city, my first stop being the Golan Hospital. A three story building, most of its inside walls have fallen apart while it’s exterior has numerous bullet hits.

Criss-crossing the city bursting with the residues of terrible times it went through over three decades ago, I come across a half-burnt church, its floor enveloped by a bed of shrubs growing wild. Moving ahead, I meet a woman, whose house now lies in ruins at the end of that road. My guide translates what she says, “Though I stay 30 kilometres from here, I come here every weekend. I have grown up here, so how can I forget the place?”

Having turned Quinetra into a show case of Israeli destruction, the Government naturally doesn’t allow the residents to return to their homeland. Though Ali says, “It is too dangerous to live in a place like this.”

So on a weekend, what you see is an interesting sight here. Hordes of displaced families sit by their razed down houses. To me, it also seems to be a way of keeping their claim on their land.

There is also a busy restaurant open for lunch here. Ali’s office at Quinetra has a huge clay model of the disputed region, open for visitors interested in understanding the conflict. Using a pointer, he shows the villages on the Israeli side.

There are five of them. He states, “The population of Golan is half a million today, out of which the five occupied villages have 30 million.” According to official record, there are 580 students from these villages studying in Syria presently. “But on returning, they are not allowed to work in their specialised fields, they can’t even emigrate,” he claims.

Marriages between the two sides are a common thing done with the help of Red Cross. “But once the girls come to this side post marriage, they can’t go back,” he adds. Also, he claims, “The Golanese are imposed heavy taxes, many farmers’ land have been confiscated.

They also impose Israeli education system on them. Soon after Golan was captured, they launched archaeological excavations in the area looking for antiquity. They have replaced the Arabic names of places with Hebrew names, for instance, there is a big settlement called Quesrien. It has now got the Hebrew name, Kitsrien. Even the term Golan Heights is an Israeli innovation. Locally, it is called Zolan.”

Persistent issues

What you see clearly on Ali’s model is also the Jordan water system and how Golan is also a fight for water between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Almost all the green lights on the model - signifying water - are on the Israeli side.

The Hindu