We had fun in conjunction with them, having spent the 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 at the telephone with the folk now we have gotten to understand since their lives modified greatly in 2011 – hoping that 2025 will be the turning level in an overly lengthy and harrowing odyssey. Certainly one of us (Charlotte) additionally travelled to Syria in January 2025 to peer what used to be taking place and get in touch with folks looking to navigate the brand new truth there.
“Syrians everywhere, inside Syria and outside Syria, did not ever imagine we would reach this stage,” mentioned Qasim, 42, talking from his domestic in Zaatari camp, the sector’s 3rd greatest 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 wilderness camp, Qasim has spent the decade beginning his existence another time in Jordan. Since fleeing Daraa, in southwest Syria, in 2013, he labored a chain of freelance jobs and created a community of purchasers. He has put meals at the desk with cash-in-hand paintings for support organisations within the camp and providing portray and plastering services and products outdoor the camp.
However in Syria, he mentioned, “There’s no home, there’s no work, there’s nothing.”
His circle of relatives of 4 grew to 11, and his daughters who left Syria as babies have entered their ultimate years of highschool.
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Now, with Assad long past apparently in a single day – and the revolution marking its 14th anniversary in March – the dream of returning domestic or just the likelihood to finish a decade of exile is unexpectedly inside of achieve. However this dream now comes with existential, sensible and criminal questions. After a decade in exile, how do you uproot your self and your circle of relatives all over again? How do you provide an explanation for the go back to the youngest, who’ve most effective recognized existence outdoor Syria? What sort of existence waits at the different aspect of the border?
Qasim’s circle of relatives has outgrown the house he left at the back of. Whilst existence within the camp, with its electrical energy shortages and financial hardships, is nowhere close to best, Qasim no less than manages to get via.
Returning to Syria additionally comes at a worth – for Qasim’s circle of relatives of eleven, it could price US$550 simply to move the border – and plenty of Syrians in exile have no longer been afforded enough financial balance to organize for the prices of go back. For lots of, the go back to Syria stays dream they will have to paintings to avoid wasting up for.
Other folks move the destroyed Arida border crossing between Syria and Lebanon in December 2024.
EPA-EFE/WAEL HAMZEH
Syria’s important situation
What’s left of Syria in Assad’s wake will take years of restoration. The World Group for Migration (IOM) has warned that Syria isn’t in a position to obtain returnees. US president Donald Trump imposed a freeze on US-funded overseas support in January, affecting as much as 90% of humanitarian actions in some spaces in Syria, in line with the UN’s emergency support coordination place of work (OCHA). That has created a devastating ripple impact throughout Syria and neighbouring host international locations.
And but western powers handle their sanctions in opposition to 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 protection scenario continues to be precarious in portions of the rustic. Issues within the northwest have stepped forward for the reason that settlement between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and Damascus’s provisional executive, however March used to be marked via the killing of over one thousand basically Alawi civilians within the coastal spaces after assaults began from Assad loyalists. Israel has expanded its battle in opposition to Palestine and Lebanon into portions of Syria, even bombing the capital town, because it appears to profit from an influence vacuum.
At first of the brand new yr, 115,000 Syrians had already returned domestic from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In December, the United International locations Top Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) anticipated 1 million Syrians would go back via June, however now predicts most effective 600,000 to go back via September.
Unwelcome visitors
Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon don’t seem to be signatories of the 1951 refugee conference which means that they don’t seem to be obliged to recognise the displaced Syrians of their nation as refugees with internationally-protected rights. The governments of those international locations recognise displaced Syrians most effective 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 mentioned. She remembered her existence in Gaziantep as one among consistent humiliation, the place she needed to beg for help and her son used to be compelled to paintings shifts of over 12-hours at a time in a clothes manufacturing unit.
As visitors, Syrians face social and criminal hindrances in getting access to services and products, schooling, healthcare, housing and jobs. They’re continuously blamed for waning economies and scarce sources and face xenophobic discrimination because of this. Having to paintings with out secure rights or permissions pushes Syrians like Umm Ahmad’s son to the casual labour marketplace, the place they’re at risk of 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 laborious to acquire and don’t seem to be persistently delivered in some spaces. “Refugee” standing is reserved just for Eu voters. If Turkey used to be lengthy thought to be essentially the most welcoming host nation amongst Syria’s neighbours for its open-border coverage and pleasant place in opposition to the Syrian opposition, the placement modified dramatically after the EU-Turkey deal resulted in the border closure in 2016. Syrians in Turkey have more and more confronted deportation since 2019, and there is not any transparent trail to Turkish citizenship.
Round 1.5 million Syrians reside in Lebanon the place there’s a lengthy historical past of animosity in opposition to them reminiscent of Assad’s profession of Lebanon all over the Lebanese civil battle. However most effective 17% of the ones Syrians have acquired criminal residency.
Umm Ayman, who has lived for ten years in Beirut’s Shatila camp, advised 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 controlled to acquire criminal standing, which means that having to home-school her kids, who may just no longer be admitted to the Lebanese faculty machine – one more reason she needs to return. However she continues to be anxious concerning the creating political scenario that had taken her, because it did maximum Syrians, via wonder. Now not figuring out how the caretaker executive would rule, and with out a shut kinfolk or domestic to go back to in Syria, Umm Ayman is hesitant to decide to a last choice till she will be able to seek advice from her fatherland of Homs to peer the placement for herself.
In Jordan, the place most effective about 20% of the 1.3 million Syrian refugees are estimated to reside in reputable camps, refugees have felt the decline in global investment directed in opposition to the Syrian disaster lately, even earlier than the January US support freeze. “Recently there’s been scarce aid in the camp,” Qasim mentioned, “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 citizens save up for the go back. As his present task is coming to an finish, Qasim is in search of his subsequent one outdoor Zaatari, “if there is any”.
Other folks riding via Jordan in January, returning to Syria with their property piled at the automobile.
Charlotte Al-Khalili
Outdoor the camps, Syrians toughing it out in Jordanian towns have even much less get entry to to assist. And whilst the 2016 Jordan compact allowed Syrian refugees get entry to to formal employment, it failed to reside as much as its attainable because of the top costs of labor lets in and social safety contributions.
The place is domestic?
At the different aspect of the border, on the other hand, for tens of millions of folks domestic has been flattened to the bottom. Such a lot of refugees have nowhere to go back to and can want time to avoid wasting up for rebuilding a area that has been bombed, burned or vandalised.
Simplest the ones with the “money and the means”, as Qasim put it, will be capable of go back. He calculates that reconstructing and increasing his domestic to deal with 11 members of the family 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 mentioned.
Others like Qasim in Zaatari camp spoke about how much cash they’ve already spent at the maintenance in their caravan refuge (continuously hundreds of bucks) suggesting that they could possibly go back if they might promote their caravan and even carry it with them to Syria.
A view of Zaatari camp in Jordan appearing how refugees have tailored their ‘caravans’.
Melissa Gatter
Maryam, for instance, is a schoolteacher dwelling in Zaatari camp together with her husband and four-year-old daughter. She defined that the loss of cash used to be the only factor conserving them again from the go back: “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 damage and tear.
Returning to Syria calls for moving transient possession of the caravans again to the UNHCR – dropping the years of investments they’ve made to reside with ease within the harsh wilderness atmosphere. In Azraq camp, southeast of Zaatari, a lady known as Shamsa, who has lived within the camp since 2016, believes that get entry to to elementary monetary help in Syria would facilitate the go back:
If the UNHCR helped give cash for each and every particular person within the circle of relatives for such things as groceries – like they do now within the camp – folks say they are going to go back … However they are able to’t simply go back us when there’s not anything for us there.
Many of us are assessing the state in their properties and hometowns for themselves earlier than committing to a long-term go back.
For instance, Umm Mohammad, a mom of 5 in her past due fifties recently dwelling in Beirut, plans to ship her husband and eldest son first. She needs to make sure that prerequisites are appropriate for the go back earlier than giving up what they’ve fought laborious to acquire within the final decade in Lebanon. “If they see that we can all join, we will,” she mentioned.
Paintings and faculty
On the entrance of many Syrians’ minds is the query of labor and faculty. A lot of our interviewees famous that important financial prerequisites in Syria imply that paintings is difficult to return via, particularly for marketers like Qasim who depend on a gradual presence of consumers.
Whilst the intervening time Syrian executive has tried to boost the cap on public sector salaries to stimulate the economic system, the ones we spoke to weren’t positive about their potentialities. “The economic situation is on the floor,” Shamsa mentioned from Azraq camp.
Umm Ayman has a low-paying task in Beirut, however her husband, previously a physician in Syria, isn’t allowed to paintings in Lebanon and will most effective obtain a couple of sufferers off the books. Including to their expected prices in Syria is the trouble of integrating into the task marketplace 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 mentioned.
A plot of empty caravans in Azraq camp’s ‘Village 5’ which has been beneath safety lockdown since 2016 till just lately.
Melissa Gatter
After the Israeli bombing close to their domestic final October, the circle of relatives moved into a college sheltering different displaced households in Beirut. Umm Ayman feels that going again to Syria – even with the accompanying price ticket – would possibly be offering a brighter long run.
However, Rasha, a contemporary divorcee dwelling in Turkey together with her two kids, isn’t in a position to take the danger. “I cannot go back now,” she mentioned. “My boys need to finish school first.” Her teenage sons, who’re enrolled in Turkish colleges, have grow to be fluent in Turkish. Going again to Syria would imply adapting to a brand new curriculum – and having to be told formal Arabic.
Many Syrians across the age of Rasha’s sons who’re enrolled at school additionally like to earn their highschool diplomas earlier than making the adventure again to Syria. Maryam defined to us that this isn’t at all times a simple choice for her scholars as it relies on what number of years of training stay: “The students are feeling a little lost.”
For Syrian scholars recently learning the primary yr of tawjihi (the general two years of highschool in Jordan, assessed via checks that decide the route of a scholar’s occupation) they will have to come to a decision whether or not to stick within the nation for yet one more yr to finish their research, and if this shall be conceivable. For highschool and college scholars alike, it’s unclear how their research will switch to the Syrian machine.
“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 mentioned. Like Rasha’s youngsters, Maryam’s scholars have been most effective little toddlers at first of the battle and feature spent the vast majority of their existence outdoor their domestic nation. Maryam needs for her personal daughter to develop up in Syria and obtain the similar schooling she and her husband did.
However what sort of long run would Syria be offering them? A tender mom of a baby defined that there aren’t any nurseries in her fatherland of Daraa. As the one lady of her technology from her social circle left within the town, she used to be suffering to search out childcare improve and discourages her sister from returning together with her kids. “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 move domestic, returning to Syria comes to committing to a one-way price ticket – when you move the border, there may be little risk of coming again. Host international locations have offered laws that ban re-entry for Syrians with out criminal standing and residency lets in (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 getting back from Lebanon won most effective an go out stamp as there used to be nonetheless nobody operating at the Syrian aspect 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 whilst her husband stayed at the back of to paintings in Beirut. She mentioned:
My kids are so petrified of the jet sound … We left Syria so they wouldn’t move during the battle there and those frightening sounds, so I didn’t need them to reside right here.
Ghada used to be some of the part 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 government in Damascus resulted in the transient final of the border, pushing Syrians to search for different routes again.
By means of then, Ghada used to be already making plans to return again to Lebanon. She mentioned: “We have a home, my husband works, and the kids have a good school in Beirut.” Lifestyles in her Syrian village were tough, as get entry to to on a regular basis services and products used to be significantly restricted.
However the Israeli battle in Lebanon has no longer ended, as Israel refuses to recognize the ceasefire settlement and portions of the rustic are nonetheless occupied.
In Turkey, crossing the border with out the specified authorisation to go back method dropping transient coverage standing, as used to be the case with Umm Ahmad as soon as she left Gaziantep for east Aleppo. She gained’t be capable of see her daughter, who’s as a Turkish passport-holder, for the foreseeable long run as she isn’t allowed access to Syria.
In this day and age, Syrians conserving Turkish transient standing (kimlik) or place of abode lets in can input Syria in the event that they follow for a allow. However the border crossing laws are continuously converting.
Syrians getting back from Jordan will have to pay a US$50 charge 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 go back, even after the UNHCR despatched an SMS message to camp citizens reassuring them that the verdict to go back 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 citizens on December 8.
Melissa Gatter
Worry isn’t a brand new emotion in Azraq, the place 1 / 4 of the camp’s just about 40,000 citizens lived beneath safety lockdown for as many as six of the final ten years whilst the Jordanian executive processed safety clearance for each and every particular person, deciding whether or not to just accept or deport them.
Shamsa famous that, whilst Azraq camp has grow to be much less stringent lately, “Everyone is still very afraid of forced returns.” Shamsa, who has spent the previous 8 years looking for tactics out of Azraq, mentioned that staying there can be “more comfortable than it would be to go back right now”.
A dignified go back
In January, the city of Darayya, 90% of which were destroyed via the Assad regime, used to be alive with folks rebuilding their properties. A person perched at the 3rd flooring of an overly broken construction used to be striking concrete blocks in combination, laundry hung to dry on washing traces, and logo new home windows sparkled on apparently uninhabited properties. Traces of vehicles and minivans full of baggage and furnishings entered from the Jordanian border and winded up Syrian roads – Syrians have been returning and in a position for a contemporary get started.
Different towns have additionally observed their population go back. Mohammad, a innovative who lived in exile in Turkey till Aleppo’s liberation on December 2, returned having a look to reclaim justice and dignity – the core calls for of the 2011 revolution. He mentioned:
I will be able to in spite of everything search justice, I will be able to in spite of everything glance folks within the eye, I’m going again domestic with my head held top.
For individuals who supported the revolution, going again to a loose Syria is an immense political and private victory.
Internally displaced Syrians dwelling in camps within the northwestern area of Idlib have additionally begun to go back to their properties, bringing their tents to reside some of the rubble as they rebuild. Iman, a lady in her 50s travelling to her domestic town of Idlib, mentioned that the tents introduced 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 reduction of Assad’s absence, concern and distrust continues to be rampant amongst refugees dwelling in camps in Jordan. “People are expecting another downfall,” Qasim mentioned, pointing to the selection of coups previous the Assad regime’s just about 50-year historical past. What would occur if, upon returning, they will have to flee once more?
“There is still no hope,” Shamsa mentioned wearily over a WhatsApp voice be aware from Azraq camp. She repeated the phrases her mom had advised her virtually ten years in the past of their domestic in northern Syria, encouraging her to take a look at a brand new existence outdoor: “There’s nothing for us in Syria.”
Drying laundry within the rubble of Darayya in January.
Charlotte Al Khalili
Shamsa and her circle of relatives watch for a last choice on their resettlement software to the United States, which they be expecting to obtain in April, simply after the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian revolution. Assad’s departure has no longer modified their plans.
Regardless of the chance and uncertainty, some individuals are hopeful about the way forward for Syria and are taking a bounce into the unknown to return domestic. Umm Ahmad, a lady in her fifties, were dwelling within the town of Gaziantep, in southern Turkey, since 2012. She used to be some of the first to return to Syria. A mom of 2 martyred and 3 disappeared sons from the suburbs of Aleppo, Umm Ahmad made up our minds to move only a day after the autumn of the regime, ecstatic as a way to reunite together with her siblings who had no longer left Syria and whom she hadn’t observed for 13 years. With pleasure in her voice, she advised us:
That is our nation, there is not any explanation why to go away it once more now that we removed Bashar al-Assad. Inshallah [God-willing] we’re staying right here.
Umm Ahmad’s existence in Turkey, the place she and her son’s circle of relatives lived with out place of abode lets in, were laced with hardship and monetary lack of confidence. It didn’t topic to her that she would no longer be capable of re-enter Turkey – she is worked up to be domestic: “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 search out her lacking sons.
A couple of others we spoke to rushed to go back to Syria in the similar means: revolutionaries who had waited on the border for years to be reunited with circle of relatives who had stayed at the back of; kinfolk of the detained and forcibly disappeared looking for their family members; folks with not anything to lose being banned from re-entering a number nation who had no longer given them criminal standing to start with.
A brand new blueprint for the go back
Even if the figures offered via the UNHCR are top – greater than part 1,000,000 anticipated to go back in six months – the selection 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, whilst figures from Lebanon stay unclear.
The verdict to go back might not be a easy one for many, and the go back will almost definitely contain greater than a unmarried one-way shuttle. In lots of instances, younger, unmarried males are making this adventure by myself to check the waters on behalf in their households.
Syrians out of the country were 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 will have to be capable of make their very own knowledgeable choices about making the go back – or no longer – in their very own time.
The theory of a “safe, voluntary, and dignified” go back will have to account for the sophisticated logistical truth that repatriation to a rustic recuperating from 50 years of an oppressive regime might not be a one-way adventure for many. Relatively than halting refugee techniques and making an attempt to ship as many Syrians again as temporarily as conceivable, host international locations will have to grant Syrian refugees freedom of motion to and from Syria.
The go back to Syria will in the end most effective be conceivable with global improve in rebuilding the rustic’s infrastructure, services and products and economic system to peer a relaxed political transition. Returnees will want monetary and subject matter help as they re-establish themselves, particularly within the fallout of the drastic cuts to US-funded humanitarian support. Western international locations will have to raise their sanctions and hang Israel to account if they’re really within the long-term sustainability of Syria and the encircling area.
This second isn’t just a possibility for exiled Syrians to show the web page on displacement, it’s also an extraordinary alternative for the global neighborhood to design a brand new blueprint for refugee returns in an age of criminalised migration. Additionally it is an extraordinary alternative, then, for a wary hope.
“As for me, I’m thinking of getting my PhD from Damascus University,” Maryam mentioned. Whilst dwelling within the camp, she earned a grasp’s level at Al Al-Bayt College within the within sight town of Mafraq.
Going again to Syria, her husband may just go back to his task as an IT engineer, and so they may just hire a flat whilst rebuilding their domestic in Daraa. Her daughter may just get started first grade within the Syrian faculty machine. She is hopeful.
“We’re seriously considering going back. It’s just a matter of time.”
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