A Smuggler and His Son

The smuggler looking back through his rear-view mirror

Hacipaşa, along the Syrian border - Syrian refugee Muhammed and his eldest son, Akeem, have begun a new form of family business: human smuggling. Beginning in 2012, the father and son duo have joined forces to illegally smuggle an average of 70 Syrians per week out of Aleppo and other parts of the country and across the Turkish border to safety. Muhammed and Akeem each cover half the journey, with Akeem working from within Syria to transport people to the Helleh River crossing, and Muhammed smuggling the refugees into Turkey once they make it across the border. Due to the massive influx of Syrian refugees, Turkey is surpassing their allocated resources to aid the newly arriving multitudes. As each refugee camp in Turkey has exceeded its capacity and no longer admits new families, the Turkish military is enforcing stricter border patrols and entrance regulations; a policy that only increases the need for sly smugglers such as Muhammed.

Dawn was beginning to break when I accompanied Muhammed along the Turkish-Syrian border toward the Helleh River in his rumbly, dented, white 1982 Mercedes-Benz, in hopes of documenting the experiences of incoming refugees. Passing through a Turkish military checkpoint along the road, Muhammed recalled his own experience illegally crossing into Turkey three years earlier. Born and raised in Aleppo, just like his father before him, Muhammed, 56, worked as a general handyman for most of his adult life, raising 12 children in the same Aleppo neighborhood where he grew up. When Syria slipped into brutal civil war in 2011, Muhammed and much of his family fled to Turkey along with hundreds of thousands of other Syrian refugees, while a few of his oldest children—those with homes and families of their own—chose to remain in Aleppo.

Driving to the Syrian border

Getting out of Aleppo and other besieged cities is difficult and dangerous, and the physical risks and financial costs of crossing into Turkey are even more extreme. Yet, after finally making the crossing, legally or otherwise, countless Syrians are left stranded just across the Turkish border, stuck in a country with an unfamiliar language, currency, and culture. This reality was clearly visible as we drove through the smuggling border town of Hacipaşa, its streets lined with dozens of newly-arrived Syrian refugees sitting idly on the sidewalks with looks of confusion and desperation, unsure of what steps to take next. Facing the same experience when first arriving in Turkey with his family, it was this dilemma that led Muhammed to his new career as a smuggler. After a year living as a refugee in southeastern Turkey and struggling to get by, Muhammed began looking for more unorthodox job opportunities, and with his personal experience of illegally crossing the border still a fresh memory in his mind, he called his 35-year-old son Akeem and began setting his plans in motion.

That was two years ago, and the savagery of the Syrian civil war has only worsened since then. With over 40 percent of the Syrian population now displaced, millions have fled to neighboring countries. While thousands of Syrians are still stuck inside their war-torn country, unable to afford the cost of smuggling themselves and their families out, many working- or middle-class Syrians are able to pull together the necessary funds—enough that Muhammed and Akeem can earn a steady living.

Approaching a military checkpoint nearing the Syrian border

"Not all Syrian people can afford to become refugees," Muhammed explained to my fixer and I as we neared a small border village, where a second van waited to take us to the crossing point. "It costs them the amount of $40 US dollars for my son to get them out of Aleppo or Idlib. Once they cross the border and I meet them, I will drive them to any outlying border city for another $30-$40, but that doesn't include the bribes they need to pay to secondary smugglers who take them across the No Man's Land between the two countries illegally. That is done by different smugglers who charge by the person and can change their price anytime depending on the situation or their needs. It is very dangerous, but there are always more people."

His last sentence strikes a cold, simple truth: there are always more people. It is almost impossible to truly comprehend the atrocities happening to the Syrian people, the everyday suffering of innocent people stuck in city siege. Internationally, most people are left to rely on bits of information, trickled in from media outlets: footage of combatants destroying one another over a street of rubble and refugees living in dire conditions; one humanitarian crisis after another with a lack of medical care and food, but a surplus of weapons and human suffering. The violence has even escalated to the point where the UN no longer counts the casualties of the Syrian civil war due to the carnage and difficulty of confirming their sources. The Syrian regime indiscriminately blanket bombs entire sections of a city, rogue militias and gangs have free reign to impose their rule over whatever strips of land they can seize, and humanitarian aid is routinely denied by the regime to civilians living in rebel-controlled areas, under threat of torture to the aid workers delivering desperately-needed supplies. It is a crisis beyond description, without moral bounds, and with no solution on the horizon. Instead, we simply stop counting the dead, and Muhammed’s business thrives, because, in the end, there will always be more people.