Go to any school set aside for Syrian refugee children and the classroom walls are decorated with colorful drawings that, on closer inspection, depict scenes of carnage.

Airplanes drop bombs. Soldiers fire guns at civilians. Houses are consumed by flames. Tanks roll down streets lined with flowers. The color of blood and aggression is as plain as crayon on paper.

"The children's thoughts are in red," said Mustafa Shakr, a former principal in Damascus who now runs a school for more than 300 Syrian children in the Turkish city of Antakya near the Syrian border. "Even many of their drawings are done entirely in red."