Left: Shahad, center, 13, sought refuge in the Washokani refugee camp after fleeing the city of Ras Al-Ain, a Syrian city on the Turkish border, with her two brothers—and without her parents—after a Turkish offensive in 2019. The Washokani camp, near Hasakah in the northeast corner of Syria, houses more than 10,000 people. Others in refugee camps also requested their full names not be published.
Left: Hussein, 31, and son Ali, four months old, fled Ras-Al-Ain after the 2019 Turkish offensive in northern Syria and found shelter some 25 miles away in Hasaka at a school converted into a refugee center for internally displaced people.
A mass grave is prepared in Qamishli, Syria’s largest Kurdish city, in 2019 for civilian victims of a car bomb attack claimed by the Islamic State. At least five people died and more than 20 were injured.
Mourners stand alongside graves of civilians killed during a 2019 Turkish offensive in Qamishli, Syria.
YPG commander Hezat (center) speaks with his troops in Deir Ez-Zor in May 2021. The Kurdish fighter also commands anti-terrorist units of the SDF trained by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA.
Members of the SDF, made up mostly of fighters from Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), arrest two suspected Islamic State members in Deir Ez-Zor in May 2021. Deir Ez-Zor remains one of the most dangerous areas in the region, with Islamic State forces present and active.
Left: Children play in Raqqa’s Naim Square, where the Islamic State once held public executions. Places that once served as symbols of unthinkable brutality can find new purpose, but the hard work of reconstruction may take generations.
A man runs to avoid being targeted by snipers of the advanced Turkish forces.
On National Geographic: 11 years into Syria's civil war, this is what life looks like
Maya Valentine
Photo Editor
based in Washington, DC
Photographed by William Keo. Written and Text Edited by Kristen Romey. Photo Edit my Maya Valentine
William Keo is a French-Cambodian photographer and 2021 Magnum Photo Nominee based in Paris whose work focuses on his family’s refugee past: migration, social exclusion and inter-community intolerance. Since 2016, he has been documenting the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East before covering Syria after the fall of the Islamic State organization. See more on his website.
William Keo is a French-Cambodian photographer and 2021 Magnum Photo Nominee based in Paris whose work focuses on his family’s refugee past: migration, social exclusion and inter-community intolerance. Since 2016, he has been documenting the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East before covering Syria after the fall of the Islamic State organization. See more on his website.
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On National Geographic: 11 years into Syria's civil war, this is what life looks like
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