Syrian refugees in Jordan's Zaatari camp no closer to going home

The city at the western side of the Syria-Jordan border was a quiet village barely known to outsiders until July last year, when Syrians fleeing their seething homeland began streaming in.

Today, 122,500 refugees from that country's civil conflict are settled in a camp a tenth the size of Hong Kong Island. Exposed to sandstorms and near freezing temperatures in winter, a sea of tents and caravans blanket some 7.8 square kilometres of land, making Zaatari the site of the world's second-biggest refugee camp after one in Dadaab, Kenya.

More than two million Syrians were listed as refugees in the region last month. That number is expected to explode to five million by the end of next year, says the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

For many, the initial hope of temporarily escaping the hell of Syria has vanished, replaced by a dread that the camp may become their permanent home.

"I'd never have thought I'd be stuck here for so long," says a 66-year-old woman who called herself Mrs Moses, sitting on a mattress that doubles as a couch and bed in her family's tent. She fled to Zaatari six months ago from her obliterated village near Damascus, Syria's capital. "I swear to God, no."

With the Obama administration ruling out US military involvement in the protracted civil war, and a group of European and Asian nations just starting to mull talks for a political settlement, the bloody battles will seemingly continue. After two years of war, the Bashar al-Assad regime remains tightly in power.