Syrian student in UK plagued by death

A small proportion of university students are forced to deal with the death of a loved one during their studies, but one student from Syria has had to deal with 20 family members and friends being killed during his time undertaking his PhD at a West Midlands university.

Kinan, 26, began his PhD at the university in September 2009. He has not returned home since his last trip back to Syria in November 2010. The revolution broke out in March 2011 and the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad began to use violence against its own people, making it too dangerous for him to return.

In September 2011, his family car was destroyed during a clash between security forces and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in his neighbourhood of Baba Amr, Homs.

“Hearing the car peeping, my father went down at night to check it without knowing what was really going on,” he said. “They fired at him from both sides.”


His father escaped unscathed, but Kinan only heard about this incident six months after it happened, due to part to the restrictive regime prohibiting information from being reported, and his parents who wanted to keep the news from him to prevent distress.

Following this incident, the FSA gained control of Kinan’s neighbourhood. But in February 2012, Assad’s forces destroyed the entire area, including Kinan’s family home during a month-long assault. Again, Kinan was late to discover this, hearing about it three months later when his brother uploaded photographs to Facebook showing the extent of the damage.


During this one month assault by government forces, Kinan also lost his best friend who worked as a high school English teacher. He was killed by a mortar during the assault. Kinan said he used to visit him at least once a week at his home.

“My friends were falling one by one, either by indiscriminate shelling of their houses or by intentionally being shot by snipers,” he said. “At first, I was dealing effectively and positively with the grief caused by such an increasing loss. However, I lost the most beloved one in February 2012.”

Faced with the loss of his best friend, he could not study properly for two months, but said he did not want to appear weak by asking his university for extensions on his work deadlines.

He decided to visit his brother who had fled to Cairo, Egypt, to complete his Masters in Medicine. The brother had previously worked in a Homs hospital but had witnessed patients not receiving treatment and being tortured and killed by security forces or by doctors loyal to the regime using lethal injections. After seeing this he said that he knew he had to leave.

Spending time with his brother abroad helped ease Kinan’s distress after losing so many loved ones.

But on his return the tragedies did not stop piling up.

Another friend whom he graduated together with from the same Engineering school was shot dead on 24 June 2012.

“He used to smuggle food to the Old City of Homs where Assad’s army besieged it,” said Kinan. “One day a sniper shot him dead. I heard about his death the same day as activists posted his picture on Facebook.

“We used to talk a lot on Skype. When I heard he died I cried in my office for a long time.”

An 18-year-old friend of his brother was also killed by a mortar attack during the February 2012 siege. Kinan heard about this after his return from Cairo. He knew the boy well, having giving him tutoring to help with his A-level studies. He was filmed dying in hospital by a CNN news team and Kinan only found out what happened when he saw this video.


Despite the conflict, Kinan must eventually return to Syria. The Syrian government is sponsoring his studies and a friend of his father is acting as as a guarantor of his return. If Kinan does not come back, the friend could have his property seized by the government.

With his visa expiring in April 2014 and his PhD set to finish in November this year, he admits he is worried. He hopes to be able to delay his PhD and remain in the UK until the expiration of his visa.


Kinan was recently accepted to present a paper at a conference in Spain, but due to problems renewing his passport after the Syrian embassy in London closed in August last year he will not be able to attend. He must send his passport to France, but the processing will take three months.

“It was a very frustrating feeling really as it took me five months to produce the paper,” he said.

Kinan described the problems encountered by other Syrians he knows who are studying in the area.

Between January and June 2012, Syrian students were unable to receive any funds from Syria due to sanctions on the regime. By June, they managed to have just the money for their living costs sent, but not the fees. Fortunately, many universities including Kinan’s and Warwick have agreed to temporarily waive fees and he has not yet paid for his second or third years of study.

“We all share the same stories,” he said. “But mine is the most difficult because I lost twenty friends. The others lost maybe one or two.”

One friend, who was financially insecure, was offered £500 as a loan from the University, but as it would not have been enough he did not take it.

Another friend of Kinan’s has a wife and children to support, thus incurring extra costs. He has had to borrow money from another Syrian friend to support them.

Two more students Kinan knows finished their Masters degrees last November. Their visas will expire this month and they are no longer receiving money. Like Kinan, they must return to Syria due to their sponsors, but he fears they will be in danger as they are returning to Aleppo and Idlib, which are currently dangerous areas.

He hopes the UK government could help them by offering them a job.

“We are not used to asking for money,” he said. “You can offer me a job and I can work but to ask for free it’s difficult.”

Not all Syrian students Kinan knows at Warwick are sympathetic to those fighting the government. There is at least one he knows who has close connections to the regime.

Kinan urges Warwick students to educate themselves about the Syrian crisis.

“Students can get engaged by being told about the reality from the ground, as recently media seems to be trying mistakenly to describe what is going on as a civil war,” he said.

He argues that the war should not be described as such due to the overwhelming imbalance in fighting capabilities between the two sides. Assad’s army has considerably more resources, including air forces which attack mostly civilians.

Kinan’s friends at Warwick are hoping to put on a big event there with the help of Warwick HUB to raise money and generate awareness about the situation in Syria. However, he and the other Syrian students who side the with opposition cannot directly put it on themselves for fear of retribution from the regime.

A spokesperson for Warwick University confirmed that there are 21 Syrian students at Warwick, the majority of whom study in Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) and Warwick Medical School (WMS). He said the University has not had to deal with any specific problems regarding these students.