Children of Syria

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

AIRCRAFT RUMBLES OVERHEAD

There's no end in sight to this brutal war.

The children of Syria are trapped in this conflict.

To understand the war, you have to listen to them.

For the past six months, we followed the lives of six children.

Many are learning to hate.

'Many more are deeply traumatised.'

Tell me what it was like for you inside.

Hope, innocence has been lost.

Syria's war is a war on childhood.

The lives of the children are shaping Syria's future.

MAN CALLS OUT RHYTHMICALLY

It's February.

Jalal and his friends prepare for a national children's event,

sports day.

HE SINGS

Jalal lives in a southern suburb of the capital, Damascus.

In 2011, President Bashar al-Assad's forces

suppressed pro-democracy protests,

sparking a conflict that became a full-scale uprising.

By 2012, rebels took up arms in Jalal's neighbourhood.

Jalal's father and uncle joined neighbourhood defence units

set up to fight for the government.

The war, fought street-to-street, tore children's lives apart.

Jalal's neighbourhood is now on a war footing.

Every Syrian family has a story of sacrifice and suffering.

Last year, the violence struck his family.

GUNSHOT

Just streets from Jalal's home,

the front line in a key battle for Damascus.

Two years ago, government forces pushed rebels back.

But the area is still divided.

GUNSHOT IN DISTANCE

This is what now divides one side of Tadamon from the other.

This is the neighbourhood where Jalal used to play,

used to go to school, used to be with his friends,

and now some of his friends are on the other side.

GUNSHOTS

Rebel fighters occupy buildings metres away.

Government forces encircle and besiege

rebel strongholds around Damascus...

..cutting off food and medicine to force them to surrender.

Warplanes and artillery pound the suburbs,

but rebel positions are also neighbourhoods

where tens of thousands of families live.

BOOMING IN DISTANCE

BIRDSONG

Next to Jalal's neighbourhood, Yarmouk, home to some 18,000 people,

trapped by the siege in the fight against rebel groups.

Desperate families queue for UN food.

BABY CRIES

I've seen many devastated areas in Syria,

but I've never, ever seen one like this.

How does a child begin to understand

when they see their parents bent over by the sheer exhaustion

of simply surviving another day?

'His son is called Kifah.'

How old are you?

Tell me what it was like for you inside.

-WOMAN TRANSLATES

-Yeah.

'Kifah's family, like most residents here, is of Palestinian origin,

'refugees from earlier Middle East wars.

'Their refuge now feels like a prison.'

What do you want to do now?

Kifah's mother has permission to leave.

She's about to give birth.

Kifah and his sisters are going with her to stay with relatives.

Their father isn't allowed out.

Kifah doesn't know when he'll see him again.

Homs, about 100 miles north of Damascus.

The opposition calls it the capital of the revolution.

Homs has seen some of the worst of the fighting.

It's a key city in the battle for Syria.

It's February.

The UN helps broker a deal

to allow civilians to leave the city's embattled old quarter.

It's been under siege and bombardment for nearly two years.

Children escape from that dark hole

to the glare of bright lights and balloons.

Eight-year-old Bara'a - her name means "innocence" -

has her first proper meal in a long time.

And what do you want to do now?

SHE SPEAKS IN ARABIC

Bara'a and her family are moved to a shelter in a local school

along with fighters who've also fled the old city.

They're all closely monitored in this makeshift detention centre.

Not everyone in Bara'a's family survived the siege.

Her mother and brother were killed in a bombardment next to their home.

When there were explosions, when you used to hear the guns,

what did you do?

Bara'a doesn't know when she'll be able to go back to school,

where she'll live next.

There are millions of Syrian children like her.

Daad is also a child displaced by war.

Her family fled their home outside Damascus.

SHE SPEAKS IN ARABIC

Now they live above a shop in the old city, in a small storeroom.

They came here after living out of their car for seven months.

Daad's father now sells second-hand clothes

to try to make ends meet.

Daad lost her old spacious home in 2012

when it was in the line of fire between the regime and the rebels.

Hard to be a mother? Mm?

In this war, no-one is sure what will happen next.

It's March. The street next to Jalal's school is hit by a mortar.

The bodies of two children are brought out in sacks

by their relatives to be taken for burial.

MUSIC PLAYS

Jalal joins a demonstration against the rebels

in support of the president.

His neighbourhood is predominantly Alawite,

the same Islamic sect as Bashar al-Assad.

One of Jalal's best friends, 15-year-old Hassan,

has joined the local defence unit.

Did you use it?

You should be playing football, not fighting.

But war separates him from some of his friends.

The corrosive effects of this war

are also felt 250 miles north in Turkey.

There's been a massive exodus of Syrians into neighbouring countries.

In March, a steady stream crosses the Turkish border,

many escaping attacks by President Assad's forces.

Ten-year-old Ezadine

is one of more than a million and a half refugee children.

Just over the mountain is Ezadine's home town.

His new home is a two-room container.

His world is steeped in the hatred of war.

'Ezadine's father fought with the Free Syrian Army

'until he was injured.

'Omar is 15.

'He's been fighting with the rebels for two years.'

Do you want to finish your schooling someday?

Are you proud of your brother?

Ezadine prepares to say goodbye to his brother.

Omar will soon cross the border again to fight inside Syria.

In March, the battles also intensify around Damascus.

I try to find the child I met a month before...escaping the siege.

The little boy that we met in Yarmouk, Kifah,

left such an impression that I decided to track him down and...

only to find that, on first glance,

he's left one wasteland where his family was trapped...

..for another destroyed neighbourhood.

BOOMING IN DISTANCE

13-year-old Kifah has taken refuge with relatives.

The government recently recaptured this area.

The school, like thousands of others across Syria, is wrecked.

-Mechanic.

-Mechanic.

Wow! That's very good.

-Si... Siyara.

-Siyara.

-Englise?

-Car.

-Car!

What does Kifah think when he sees all this destruction?

When you are grown up, what would you like to do?

Doctor? What kind of doctor?

Kifah's father still hasn't been able to join his family.

His besieged suburb is still a battle ground.

What did you do, Kifah, when the rockets fell? What did you do?

Kifah seems so fragile now. Are you really worried about him?

Kifah's mother is due to give birth shortly.

A child due to be born into war.

Finally, some good news for Daad.

After a year out of school,

her parents found her a place, close to where they now live.

Schools across Syria work double shifts

to cope with the vast number of children of all ages

displaced by war.

WOMAN SPEAKS IN ARABIC

SHE SPEAKS IN ARABIC

But Daad's past still haunts her.

And yet, despite everything,

Syria's children are still delighted by rituals.

CHATTER

'But life gets harder.

'Daad's father isn't earning much money.

'They don't want to leave Syria,

'but they're starting to wonder if they can survive here.'

It's April.

The government steps up its offensive against rebels

still inside the besieged old quarter of Homs.

The regime is predicting victory in this key city.

Bara'a!

'I go back to Homs to find Bara'a.'

As-salamu alaykum.

Nice to see you.

Her family left the besieged old city in February

during an evacuation.

They've been moved from a makeshift detention centre

to a school where dozens of families have been given shelter.

What do you like about this centre?

All these kids, who've come from areas completely convulsed by war,

come here, and yet just over the sound of the children's laughter,

there's the constant sound of artillery, gunfire,

explosions in the distance.

Children, they don't seem to notice when they're playing,

but they know it's there.

Tell me what you're drawing. These are yours? Uh? Yeah?

LYSE DOUCET:

EXPLOSION

You OK?

Something's landed. OK.

Is she OK? OK, stay safe. This is what happens a lot.

Just when you least expect it,

there's been an explosion very close to the school.

Look at the smoke.

-Where? When?

-Stay.

-Just a second.

-Stay, stay.

-Where is it? Where is it? What is it?

-What happened?

-Mortar.

-Mortar? Where did it land?

SHOUTING

Oh...

Oh, my God, Phil. Are you OK?

One of them's hit.

You're hit.

Two of my colleagues are injured and are taken to hospital.

Our vehicles are badly damaged.

One child living in this school is lightly wounded.

This is what happens day in, day out in Syria.

The mortar strikes, there's chaos, injuries and sometimes death,

and then see how quickly things go back to what they were before.

But you can't call this normal.

Government assaults on rebel-held areas are often indiscriminate.

Crude barrel bombs packed with explosives and dropped from aircraft

are wounding and killing a growing number of children.

Mariam is nine years old, from a village outside Homs.

For the past year, she's been a refugee in Turkey.

Mariam's rebel-held village

regularly came under attack by Syrian government forces.

What happened at the hospital?

Mariam's home is now a tented refugee camp on the Syrian border.

She likes to escape to the nearby wheat fields.

They remind her of her farm.

There is no accurate figure

for the number of children maimed and killed in this war.

The estimates run to many tens of thousands.

Mariam's father is still stuck inside Syria.

She doesn't know when she'll see him again.

MUSIC PLAYS

In Damascus, a big day out for Jalal and his friends.

They've been preparing for it for some time.

It's children's sports day.

Even sport isn't free from war.

Days like this play a role in government mobilisation.

For decades, Syrian students were raised to support the regime.

Now they're called to defend their president.

MUSIC PLAYS

CHEERING

Daad's family faces a new crisis in the old city of Damascus.

Now Daad's family faces eviction from this storeroom.

Near the Turkish border,

the war inside Syria becomes more complicated.

The opposition is deeply divided.

Factions are fighting against each other.

Ezadine waits the crossing.

His brother, Omar, is arriving today from the front.

Omar, who fights for the Free Syrian Army,

blames the atrocities on extreme Islamist fighters.

Rebels still control swathes of territory.

Fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's forces

intensifies in the north.

Ezadine's anger is directed not just towards the president

but also his Alawite community.

It's late April.

The war goes on near Jalal's house in Damascus,

but not on the same scale.

Jalal's father is still with the local defence unit,

but the mood on some streets is more relaxed.

Jalal hopes his former friends across the front line

will return someday to support President Assad's Syria.

Every Friday evening, Jalal's family gathers.

There's a growing mood here, at least,

that recent gains by President Assad's forces

could herald a turning point.

BOOMING IN DISTANCE

It's early May in the old city of Homs.

The last of the rebel fighters have done a deal with the government

that allows them to leave for another rebel-held area.

It's the end of the brutal two-year siege.

The government surrender-or-starve tactic has worked here,

as well as in some other areas.

But it's come at a heavy price.

Not much is left.

Bara'a, her father and sister, Ala'a, can now return

to see their old neighbourhood and the home they fled a few months ago.

On the way to their street, we pass their old school.

Bara'a's home has been looted and stripped bare.

Bara'a's family took shelter here from constant shelling,

mortar and rocket fire during the siege.

Their brother was mortally wounded,

their mother decapitated.

They go to tend the graves.

Since the Syrian military entered the area,

the mosque has been set on fire and the tombstones smashed.

The graves have been tampered with.

Bara'a's father quickly covers up exposed bodies.

It's mid-May.

There's some good news for Kifah.

He has a new baby sister.

After a pregnancy spent with fear, hunger and bombardment,

it's a huge relief to have a healthy child.

Kifah's father hasn't seen his new daughter.

He's still stuck inside the suburb of Yarmouk.

In May, we finally get permission from the army

to return to the besieged area.

Fighting continues, despite efforts to reach a truce.

Food and medicine are still scarce.

When aid does get in, queues are long and desperate.

We're trying to find Kifah's father.

We've brought him photographs of his new baby.

He hasn't seen the little one.

He also hasn't seen his family for months.

He's still trapped, just like everyone else here.

We aren't allowed to go in any further.

We don't reach Kifah's father.

Syria's war is now well into its fourth year, with no end in sight.

Kifah still isn't at school,

just like three million other Syrian children.

When do you hope to go back to school?

But children on all sides

are further than ever from reconciliation.

With every day that passes, children are displaced, traumatised, killed.

These children are the future of Syria.

The longer this war goes on, the darker that future may be.