We rejoiced together with them, having spent the final decade in dialog with Syrians displaced to the neighbouring international locations of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, the place we analysis humanitarian support in refugee camps and revolutionaries in exile.
The times and weeks following Assad’s ousting have been spent on the cellphone with the folks we’ve gotten to know since their lives modified drastically in 2011 – hoping that 2025 could be the turning level in a really lengthy and harrowing odyssey. One in all us (Charlotte) additionally travelled to Syria in January 2025 to see what was taking place and converse to folks making an attempt to navigate the brand new actuality there.
“Syrians everywhere, inside Syria and outside Syria, did not ever imagine we would reach this stage,” stated Qasim, 42, talking from his house in Zaatari camp, the world’s third largest refugee camp, in northern Jordan. “No one ever expected that Assad would fall and leave the country.”
Just like the 80,000 others within the desert camp, Qasim has spent the final decade beginning his life over once more in Jordan. Since fleeing Daraa, in southwest Syria, in 2013, he labored a sequence of freelance jobs and created a community of shoppers. He has put meals on the desk with cash-in-hand work for support organisations within the camp and providing portray and plastering companies outdoors the camp.
However in Syria, he stated, “There’s no home, there’s no work, there’s nothing.”
His household of 4 grew to 11, and his daughters who left Syria as younger youngsters have entered their ultimate years of highschool.
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Now, with Assad gone seemingly in a single day – and the revolution marking its 14th anniversary in March – the dream of returning house or just the chance to finish a decade of exile is all of the sudden inside attain. However this dream now comes with existential, sensible and authorized questions. After a decade in exile, how do you uproot your self and your loved ones but once more? How do you clarify the return to the youngest, who’ve solely recognized life outdoors Syria? What sort of life waits on the opposite facet of the border?
Qasim’s household has outgrown the house he left behind. Whereas life within the camp, with its electrical energy shortages and financial hardships, is nowhere close to excellent, Qasim a minimum of manages to get by.
Returning to Syria additionally comes at a value – for Qasim’s household of 11, it will price US$550 simply to cross the border – and plenty of Syrians in exile haven’t been afforded enough financial stability to organize for the prices of return. For a lot of, the return to Syria stays a distant dream they need to work to save lots of up for.
Individuals cross the destroyed Arida border crossing between Syria and Lebanon in December 2024.
EPA-EFE/WAEL HAMZEH
Syria’s crucial situation
What’s left of Syria in Assad’s wake will take years of restoration. The Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM) has warned that Syria will not be able to obtain returnees. US president Donald Trump imposed a freeze on US-funded international support in January, affecting as much as 90% of humanitarian actions in some areas in Syria, based on the UN’s emergency support coordination workplace (OCHA). That has created a devastating ripple impact throughout Syria and neighbouring host international locations.
And but western powers preserve their sanctions towards Syria, the place 90% of the inhabitants is already dwelling under the poverty line and 70% are in dire want of humanitarian help.
In the meantime, the safety state of affairs remains to be precarious in elements of the nation. Issues within the northwest have improved for the reason that settlement between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and Damascus’s provisional authorities, however March was marked by the killing of over a thousand primarily Alawi civilians within the coastal areas after assaults began from Assad loyalists. Israel has expanded its warfare towards Palestine and Lebanon into elements of Syria, even bombing the capital metropolis, because it seems to be to benefit from an influence vacuum.
At first of the brand new 12 months, 115,000 Syrians had already returned house from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In December, the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) anticipated 1 million Syrians would return by June, however now predicts solely 600,000 to return by September.
Unwelcome visitors
Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon aren’t signatories of the 1951 refugee conference which suggests they aren’t obliged to recognise the displaced Syrians of their nation as refugees with internationally-protected rights. The governments of those international locations recognise displaced Syrians solely as “guests”, however that doesn’t essentially imply they’re welcome.
“We were not treated as guests in Turkey, people did not want us there,” Umm Ahmad stated. She remembered her life in Gaziantep as one in all fixed humiliation, the place she needed to beg for help and her son was compelled to work shifts of over 12-hours at a time in a clothes manufacturing facility.
As visitors, Syrians face social and authorized obstacles in accessing companies, schooling, healthcare, housing and jobs. They’re typically blamed for waning economies and scarce sources and face xenophobic discrimination consequently. Having to work with out protected rights or permissions pushes Syrians like Umm Ahmad’s son to the casual labour market, the place they’re susceptible to exploitation and abuse.
There are over 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey and their standing is unsure and or unlawful as a result of residency paperwork are onerous to acquire and aren’t constantly delivered in some areas. “Refugee” standing is reserved just for European residents. If Turkey was lengthy thought-about essentially the most welcoming host nation amongst Syria’s neighbours for its open-border coverage and pleasant place in direction of the Syrian opposition, the state of affairs modified dramatically after the EU-Turkey deal led to the border closure in 2016. Syrians in Turkey have more and more confronted deportation since 2019, and there’s no clear path to Turkish citizenship.
Round 1.5 million Syrians stay in Lebanon the place there’s a lengthy historical past of animosity in direction of them paying homage to Assad’s occupation of Lebanon throughout the Lebanese civil warfare. However solely 17% of these Syrians have obtained authorized residency.
Umm Ayman, who has lived for ten years in Beirut’s Shatila camp, instructed us: “I can’t wait to go back to Syria. Our life here has been so hard.” However earlier than she returns she needs “to wait to see how the situation evolves and if it’s safe to go back”.
Umm Ayman by no means managed to acquire authorized standing, which suggests having to home-school her youngsters, who couldn’t be admitted to the Lebanese faculty system – one more reason she needs to return. However she remains to be nervous concerning the growing political state of affairs that had taken her, because it did most Syrians, without warning. Not figuring out how the caretaker authorities would rule, and with no shut family or house to return to in Syria, Umm Ayman is hesitant to decide to a ultimate choice till she will be able to go to her hometown of Homs to see the state of affairs for herself.
In Jordan, the place solely about 20% of the 1.3 million Syrian refugees are estimated to stay in official camps, refugees have felt the decline in worldwide funding directed in direction of the Syrian disaster lately, even earlier than the January US support freeze. “Recently there’s been scarce aid in the camp,” Qasim stated, “so people are only just managing to take care of themselves.” Now, the refugee-run market in Zaatari has grinded to a halt as camp residents save up for the return. As his present job is coming to an finish, Qasim is on the lookout for his subsequent one outdoors Zaatari, “if there is any”.
Individuals driving via Jordan in January, returning to Syria with their belongings piled on the automotive.
Charlotte Al-Khalili
Outdoors the camps, Syrians toughing it out in Jordanian cities have even much less entry to help. And whereas the 2016 Jordan compact allowed Syrian refugees entry to formal employment, it failed to stay as much as its potential because of the excessive costs of labor permits and social safety contributions.
The place is house?
On the opposite facet of the border, nevertheless, for thousands and thousands of individuals house has been flattened to the bottom. So many refugees have nowhere to return to and can want time to save lots of up for rebuilding a home that has been bombed, burned or vandalised.
Solely these with the “money and the means”, as Qasim put it, will be capable to return. He calculates that reconstructing and increasing his house to accommodate 11 relations will price round US$5,000. “I don’t have the money to go back, where am I supposed to go, am I supposed to sleep on the street?” he stated.
Others like Qasim in Zaatari camp spoke about how a lot cash they’ve already spent on the maintenance of their caravan shelter (typically 1000’s of {dollars}) suggesting that they may be capable to return if they might promote their caravan and even deliver it with them to Syria.
A view of Zaatari camp in Jordan displaying how refugees have tailored their ‘caravans’.
Melissa Gatter
Maryam, for instance, is a schoolteacher dwelling in Zaatari camp along with her husband and four-year-old daughter. She defined that the dearth of cash was the one factor holding them again from the return: “We paid a lot for our caravan, so if someone could take our house in exchange for money, it would help us to go back right away, in a month or less.” However the UNHCR owns the caravans, even those who camp refugees have purchased or changed over years of wear and tear and tear.
Returning to Syria requires transferring non permanent possession of the caravans again to the UNHCR – shedding the years of investments they’ve made to stay comfortably within the harsh desert atmosphere. In Azraq camp, southeast of Zaatari, a lady referred to as Shamsa, who has lived within the camp since 2016, believes that entry to primary monetary help in Syria would facilitate the return:
If the UNHCR helped give cash for every particular person within the household for issues like groceries – like they do now within the camp – folks say they’ll return … However they will’t simply return us when there’s nothing for us there.
Many individuals are assessing the state of their properties and hometowns for themselves earlier than committing to a long-term return.
For instance, Umm Mohammad, a mom of 5 in her late fifties presently dwelling in Beirut, plans to ship her husband and eldest son first. She needs to make sure that circumstances are appropriate for the return earlier than giving up what they’ve fought onerous to acquire within the final decade in Lebanon. “If they see that we can all join, we will,” she stated.
Work and faculty
On the entrance of many Syrians’ minds is the query of labor and faculty. Lots of our interviewees famous that crucial financial circumstances in Syria imply that work is difficult to come back by, particularly for entrepreneurs like Qasim who depend on a gradual presence of consumers.
Whereas the interim Syrian authorities has tried to lift the cap on public sector salaries to stimulate the economic system, these we spoke to weren’t optimistic about their prospects. “The economic situation is on the floor,” Shamsa stated from Azraq camp.
Umm Ayman has a low-paying job in Beirut, however her husband, previously a health care provider in Syria, will not be allowed to work in Lebanon and may solely obtain just a few sufferers off the books. Including to their anticipated prices in Syria is the issue of integrating into the job market as her husband approaches retirement age. “He will need to open a practice or find one, and we don’t have this kind of money,” she stated.
A plot of empty caravans in Azraq camp’s ‘Village 5’ which has been beneath safety lockdown since 2016 till lately.
Melissa Gatter
After the Israeli bombing close to their house final October, the household moved into a faculty sheltering different displaced households in Beirut. Umm Ayman feels that going again to Syria – even with the accompanying price ticket – would possibly provide a brighter future.
Then again, Rasha, a current divorcee dwelling in Turkey along with her two youngsters, will not be able to take the danger. “I cannot go back now,” she stated. “My boys need to finish school first.” Her teenage sons, who’re enrolled in Turkish faculties, have grow to be fluent in Turkish. Going again to Syria would imply adapting to a brand new curriculum – and having to be taught formal Arabic.
Many Syrians across the age of Rasha’s sons who’re enrolled at school additionally choose to earn their highschool diplomas earlier than making the journey again to Syria. Maryam defined to us that this isn’t at all times a simple choice for her college students as a result of it relies on what number of years of education stay: “The students are feeling a little lost.”
For Syrian college students presently finding out the primary 12 months of tawjihi (the ultimate two years of highschool in Jordan, assessed by exams that decide the course of a scholar’s profession) they need to determine whether or not to remain within the nation for yet another 12 months to finish their research, and if this can be potential. For highschool and college college students alike, it’s unclear how their research will switch to the Syrian system.
“But most of my students tell me they don’t want to return at all because they honestly don’t remember anything about Syria,” Maryam stated. Like Rasha’s youngsters, Maryam’s college students have been solely toddlers in the beginning of the warfare and have spent the vast majority of their life outdoors their house nation. Maryam needs for her personal daughter to develop up in Syria and obtain the identical schooling she and her husband did.
However what sort of future would Syria provide them? A younger mom of a toddler defined that there aren’t any nurseries in her hometown of Daraa. As the one girl of her technology from her social circle left within the metropolis, she was struggling to seek out childcare assist and discourages her sister from returning along with her youngsters. “At least if she goes to Damascus she will find nurseries and good schools, but here there is nothing.”
Crossing right into a ‘void’
For individuals who do want to go house, returning to Syria entails committing to a one-way ticket – when you cross the border, there may be little risk of coming again. Host international locations have launched guidelines that ban re-entry for Syrians with out authorized standing and residency permits (the case for many refugees).
“You exit into a void,” Lina, who returned to Damascus from Beirut, defined. “No one can guarantee you’ll be able to come back.” In December, Syrians coming back from Lebanon obtained solely an exit stamp as there was nonetheless nobody engaged on the Syrian facet of the border.
Ghada, a mom in her mid-30s, fled Shatila camp final October after Israeli bombing in southern Beirut intensified, returning to her village close to Aleppo whereas her husband stayed behind to work in Beirut. She stated:
My youngsters are so fearful of the jet sound … We left Syria so they’d not undergo the warfare there and these horrifying sounds, so I didn’t need them to stay right here.
Ghada was among the many half 1,000,000 individuals who fled Israeli bombing in Lebanon to Syria between October and November. Israel shelled all however one crossing level between Lebanon and Syria. In January, incidents between the Lebanese and newly established authorities in Damascus led to the non permanent closing of the border, pushing Syrians to search for different routes again.
By then, Ghada was already planning to come back again to Lebanon. She stated: “We have a home, my husband works, and the kids have a good school in Beirut.” Life in her Syrian village had been troublesome, as entry to on a regular basis companies was severely restricted.
However the Israeli warfare in Lebanon has not ended, as Israel refuses to respect the ceasefire settlement and elements of the nation are nonetheless occupied.
In Turkey, crossing the border with out the required authorisation to return means shedding non permanent safety standing, as was the case with Umm Ahmad as soon as she left Gaziantep for east Aleppo. She gained’t be capable to see her daughter, who’s as a Turkish passport-holder, for the foreseeable future as she will not be allowed entry to Syria.
In the meanwhile, Syrians holding Turkish non permanent standing (kimlik) or residence permits can enter Syria in the event that they apply for a allow. However the border crossing guidelines are consistently altering.
Syrians coming back from Jordan should pay a US$50 payment and signal an settlement consenting to being banned from re-entry to Jordan for 5 years. However many in Azraq camp are scared they are going to be compelled to return, even after the UNHCR despatched an SMS message to camp residents reassuring them that the choice to return to Syria would proceed to be “voluntary, safe, and dignified.”
The total SMS translation reads: “Refugees have the right to return to their homeland when they choose to of their own free will. The return will continue to be voluntary, safe, and dignified. The UNHCR works in cooperation with all concerned parties to address obstacles to refugee return in order to end their displacement.”
SMS message from UNHCR despatched to Zaatari residents on December 8.
Melissa Gatter
Concern will not be a brand new emotion in Azraq, the place 1 / 4 of the camp’s almost 40,000 residents lived beneath safety lockdown for as many as six of the final ten years whereas the Jordanian authorities processed safety clearance for every particular person, deciding whether or not to simply accept or deport them.
Shamsa famous that, whereas Azraq camp has grow to be much less stringent lately, “Everyone is still very afraid of forced returns.” Shamsa, who has spent the previous eight years looking for methods out of Azraq, stated that staying there could be “more comfortable than it would be to go back right now”.
A dignified return
In January, the city of Darayya, 90% of which had been destroyed by the Assad regime, was alive with folks rebuilding their properties. A person perched on the third flooring of a really broken constructing was placing concrete blocks collectively, laundry hung to dry on washing strains, and model new home windows sparkled on seemingly uninhabited properties. Strains of automobiles and minivans filled with baggage and furnishings entered from the Jordanian border and winded up Syrian roads – Syrians have been returning and prepared for a contemporary begin.
Different cities have additionally seen their inhabitants return. Mohammad, a revolutionary who lived in exile in Turkey till Aleppo’s liberation on December 2, returned seeking to reclaim justice and dignity – the core calls for of the 2011 revolution. He stated:
I can lastly search justice, I can lastly look folks within the eye, I’m going again house with my head held excessive.
For individuals who supported the revolution, going again to a free Syria is an immense political and private victory.
Internally displaced Syrians dwelling in camps within the northwestern area of Idlib have additionally begun to return to their properties, bringing their tents to stay among the many rubble as they rebuild. Iman, a lady in her 50s travelling to her house metropolis of Idlib, stated that the tents provided extra dignified dwelling than the camps: “You have to imagine that in the camps you have no intimacy, you hear everything your neighbours do and say in their tents.”
However even within the aid of Assad’s absence, concern and distrust remains to be rampant amongst refugees dwelling in camps in Jordan. “People are expecting another downfall,” Qasim stated, pointing to the variety of coups previous the Assad regime’s almost 50-year historical past. What would occur if, upon returning, they need to flee once more?
“There is still no hope,” Shamsa stated wearily over a WhatsApp voice observe from Azraq camp. She repeated the phrases her mom had instructed her virtually ten years in the past of their house in northern Syria, encouraging her to attempt a brand new life outdoors: “There’s nothing for us in Syria.”
Drying laundry within the rubble of Darayya in January.
Charlotte Al Khalili
Shamsa and her household await a ultimate choice on their resettlement utility to the US, which they count on to obtain in April, simply after the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian revolution. Assad’s departure has not modified their plans.
Regardless of the hazard and uncertainty, some persons are hopeful about the way forward for Syria and are taking a leap into the unknown to return house. Umm Ahmad, a lady in her fifties, had been dwelling within the metropolis of Gaziantep, in southern Turkey, since 2012. She was among the many first to return to Syria. A mom of two martyred and three disappeared sons from the suburbs of Aleppo, Umm Ahmad determined to cross only a day after the autumn of the regime, ecstatic to have the ability to reunite along with her siblings who had not left Syria and whom she hadn’t seen for 13 years. With pleasure in her voice, she instructed us:
That is our nation, there is no such thing as a cause to go away it once more now that we removed Bashar al-Assad. Inshallah [God-willing] we’re staying right here.
Umm Ahmad’s life in Turkey, the place she and her son’s household lived with out residence permits, had been laced with hardship and monetary insecurity. It didn’t matter to her that she wouldn’t be capable to re-enter Turkey – she is pleased to be house: “We visited our old flat yesterday. It is damaged but we will work on it with my husband and it should be ready to welcome my son and his family next month.” Again in Syria, Umm Ahmad can start her quest to seek out her lacking sons.
A number of others we spoke to rushed to return to Syria in the identical method: revolutionaries who had waited on the border for years to be reunited with household who had stayed behind; family of the detained and forcibly disappeared looking for their family members; folks with nothing to lose being banned from re-entering a bunch nation who had not given them authorized standing to start with.
A brand new blueprint for the return
Though the figures introduced by the UNHCR are excessive – greater than half 1,000,000 anticipated to return in six months – the variety of returnees from neighbouring international locations has reached round 235,000 as of February, with 35,000 coming from Turkey and 22,000 from Jordan, whereas figures from Lebanon stay unclear.
The choice to return won’t be a easy one for many, and the return will in all probability contain greater than a single one-way journey. In lots of instances, younger, single males are making this journey alone to check the waters on behalf of their households.
Syrians overseas have been beginning over for the previous decade, and a complete technology has grown up in displacement. Stored on a hamster wheel of survival and disadvantaged of the chance to prosper in exile, Syrian refugees should be capable to make their very own knowledgeable choices about making the return – or not – in their very own time.
The thought of a “safe, voluntary, and dignified” return should account for the sophisticated logistical actuality that repatriation to a rustic recovering from 50 years of an oppressive regime won’t be a one-way journey for many. Quite than halting refugee applications and making an attempt to ship as many Syrians again as shortly as potential, host international locations ought to grant Syrian refugees freedom of motion to and from Syria.
The return to Syria will in the end solely be potential with worldwide assist in rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, companies and economic system to see a peaceable political transition. Returnees will want monetary and materials help as they re-establish themselves, particularly within the fallout of the drastic cuts to US-funded humanitarian support. Western international locations should raise their sanctions and maintain Israel to account if they’re genuinely within the long-term sustainability of Syria and the encircling area.
This second will not be solely a possibility for exiled Syrians to show the web page on displacement, it’s also a uncommon alternative for the worldwide neighborhood to design a brand new blueprint for refugee returns in an age of criminalised migration. It is usually a uncommon alternative, then, for a cautious hope.
“As for me, I’m thinking of getting my PhD from Damascus University,” Maryam stated. Whereas dwelling within the camp, she earned a grasp’s diploma at Al Al-Bayt College within the close by metropolis of Mafraq.
Going again to Syria, her husband might return to his job as an IT engineer, and so they might lease a flat whereas rebuilding their house in Daraa. Her daughter might begin first grade within the Syrian faculty system. She is hopeful.
“We’re seriously considering going back. It’s just a matter of time.”
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