Nihad passed his school leaving exams but, unable to afford to continue, decided to become a carpenter. He began working in Syria, then in Lebanon and Turkey, before returning to Syria. Living conditions being difficult at the start of the Syrian revolution, he decided to leave again for Turkey with his family, to the border with Syria, from where he could see his home village. When his village was freed, he decided to go home.
He then helped the Syrian Democratic Forces, before being recruited by the company Tetratech, for which he worked for more than 3 years. He first took the level 1 deminer training, then level 2. But with the Turkish attacks, Tetratech decided to end its work in north-east Syria.
Nihad was then out of work for some time, until he heard about HAMAP-Humanitaire. He registered with NESMAC and applied to HAMAP. Thanks to his experience in clearance work he came through the interviews successfully and took several training courses with Syrian and also foreign deminers.
What does your work involve day to day?
At the end of each week I prepare the following week's programme, with the clearance activities that will take place. Sometimes I go out to the field with the teams, but most often I stay in the office for the administrative work: I receive the reports from the deminers, from non-technical survey and risk education, I produce the attendance report and the monthly summary of all those reports, and I send them to HAMAP's operations management and to NESMAC.
Your most memorable assignment?
We were on a clearance assignment at the national hospital in Raqqa. There was a PG7 rocket embedded in the wall on the 4th floor. On the first day the EOD and survey teams went to reconnoitre the site. The next day we went in with all the equipment and set about removing the rocket. It was a very dangerous assignment because the hospital is a very large place, with many patients and several departments, as well as three or four NGOs working there. It is always a great source of pride to be able to help people through our clearance work.
How do you see HAMAP-Humanitaire developing?
Our performance has improved and gradually everyone knows their tasks and duties. It must not be forgotten that the most important thing in clearance work is safety. So far we have had no accidents, which means our work is a success. We are pleased with this new project on climbing and underwater clearance and we have gained a great deal from the training; it is new for us as local staff! We hope to have other projects and other training so that we can carry on clearing north-east Syria.
An anecdote from your work as a deminer?
One day we were working in the field when a motorcyclist arrived. He had an explosive device with him and wanted to hand it over to us. The site guard shouted to alert the team. It was very dangerous. The motorcyclist was holding an explosive device in his hand and did not seem to realise how serious the situation was. The device could have gone off at any moment, but he had decided to bring it to us because he had heard that we work against explosive ordnance. The way he failed to grasp the danger was both strange and funny.
The project was carried out with the support of:
