TORONTO -- Amira, a five-year-old orphaned Canadian girl who was stranded in a refugee camp in Syria, has finally been reunited with her uncle, after a Canadian delegation met with Kurdish officials to finalize her rescue.
It’s a happy ending for one orphan, but it points to the ongoing tragedy faced by other children who have no way out.
Amira arrived in Canada two days ago to a new life with her extended family.
“She was safely repatriated and is observing quarantine,” her uncle told CTV News. “Amira has been in my arms practically ever since she landed.”
Amira’s uncle, who goes by the name Ibrahim, had been fighting for the Canadian government to help him bring Amira home to Canada for months.
The little girl’s parents and her three siblings were killed in an airstrike during the final days of the war against ISIS. Amira, four at the time, was the sole survivor.
Amira was initially taken to the al-Hol refugee camp after she was found wandering a Syrian town alone, then moved to an orphanage. Her uncle learned she was alive through a photo that made its way to Canada.
In desperation, he traveled to Syria himself to attempt to bring her home in early February.
But although her identity was affirmed by Global Affairs, her uncle was unable to bring her home with him. Kurdish officials who controlled the region said they would not release Amira without a face-to-face formal meeting with a Canadian diplomat.
In December 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had acknowledged to CTV News that he was aware of Amira’s case, but said it was “too dangerous for Canadian officials to go into Syria.”
The official rescue this month marks a shift in that stance.
To retrieve Amira, a Canadian delegation, headed by a diplomat from Beirut, entered a Syrian border town to finalize her rescue.
A team of six, including two women, met Kurdish officials for the formal handover.
The Kurds have signed similar agreements with a number of countries. Occupying a semi-autonomous region outside direct Syrian control, the Kurdish people want recognition.
Kurdish forces took a leading role in the war against ISIS, and lost thousands of fighters.
When it was over, there was still a massive number of refugees to contend with, including thousands of foreign women and children who made up the families of dead or captured ISIS followers.
Amira was far from the only Canadian who was stranded in Syria, but Trudeau said Monday that Amira’s situation was unique.
"I think we have to recognize that this particular situation was an exceptional case of an orphan who no longer had any close family," he said at a news conference in Ottawa. "That was why we have worked very hard over the past months to bring her to Canada.”
Activists are calling for the Canadian government to help the 46 other Canadians stranded in unsafe conditions in Syria. Twenty-six of them are children.
