They had been raining down for a full 24 hours, recalled Inam Tahir, 27. Soldiers pillaged the neighborhood. She and ten family members left their village of Darkush in a hurry to begin the terrifying three-day trek to neighboring Turkey. Tahir regrets she forgot to lock the door; even in war, house pride dies hard. But she admits, "We might not have a roof over our heads when we go back."

Today Tahir and her family crowd into a converted storeroom with a hundred other refugees on the ground floor of a building in Hacıpaşa. Fleeing a civil war that's claimed 70,000, they had finally reached the Turkish border village after wading through the Asi River. "We came here with