By: Sophie Ma

In 2013, Umm Mohammed’s husband was beaten and taken by Syrian soldiers after previously participating in protests against the government. The only news she’s heard about him since was in 2015, when someone claimed to see him in the Syrian military prison.

Since that day, Umm Mohammed has been left depressed and apathetic, waiting every day in the hope that her husband will return.

“In this case, you don’t know and you’ll always be wondering,” she said.

Nearby, in Qamishli of Northeast Syria, Hamed Hemo has also been suffering from the same uncertainty after his son was taken in 2014. He has turned his living room into a shrine for his son, Ferhad. Hemo and his wife have both been anguished from losing Ferhad.

Ferhad, a journalist, went missing when he was kidnapped along with his colleague, Masoud Aqil. Later on, Aqil was released and moved to Germany, but Ferhad never returned.

Hemo said, “His mother once weighed 154 pounds, and she’s dropped to 88 pounds.”

And they’re not alone. Umm Mohammed’s husband and Ferhad are among 130,000 people who have gone missing since the onset of the civil war in 2011. Thousands of families have been left lost and without information about their loved ones. The missing people are believed to be held in government prisons. Others are thought to be buried in mass graves.

And it’s not only Syria. In Lebanon, 17,000 kidnapped people from the civil war in 1975-1990 are beginning to die of old age. In Yemen, people say hundreds are still missing. In Iraq, over 43,000 people are left missing after the savage civil war occurred when the U.S. invaded and took down dictator Saddam Hussein.

Losing their family members and loved ones has forever changed thousands of lives.