The dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad has fallen. Now, many of the 6.2 million Syrian refugees abroad—more than a quarter of the country’s prewar population—are thinking, finally, about going home. Whether in muddy refugee camps, crowded working-class neighborhoods in Istanbul, Beirut, and Amman, or distant European cities, they have been following the dramatic news out of Damascus and entertaining the idea, perhaps for the first time, that their children will know Syria.
Last month, UNHCR (the UN refugee agency) reported that nearly 30 percent of Syrians in neighboring countries say they intend to return to Syria in the coming year. That’s up from just 1.7 percent in April 2024—eight months before rebels drove Assad into exile and, it would seem, ended the country’s grinding, thirteen-year-plus civil war. Host countries like Lebanon, which have struggled to accommodate waves of Syrian refugees, are also hoping that many will soon return home.
Yet countries hoping that more Syrians will return should calibrate their expectations. Interviews last month with Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s northern Akkar governorate provided a reminder that there is still a lot of work to be done if refugees are going to be able to return safely, voluntarily, and in dignity. When Assad fled to Russia on December 8, he left behind a ruined Syria. “Here is better than there,” one Aleppan man in Akkar said about life in Syria. “Because there, there’s nothing.”
International donors, with the encouragement of host countries like Lebanon, can do more to enable the return of Syrian refugees. But making return possible will take a major effort to rebuild and revive the country—and it will take some time.
Calls for Return
Pressure for Syrians to return has been mounting for years, in Lebanon and other host countries.
Syria’s war remains one of the largest displacement crises in the world: in addition to the more than 6 million refugees outside the country, upwards of 7 million people are also internally displaced. Most Syrian refugees are hosted by Syria’s neighbors in the region.
The UN estimated that Lebanon hosted 1.5 million Syrians in 2024, out of a total population of 5.7 million. An estimated 360,000 of those Syrians fled Lebanon for Syria during Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon late last year; most of those Syrians are believed to have remained in Syria.
In 2024, anti-Syrian sentiment in Lebanon reached new heights. Lebanese officials said they would deport “most” Syrians and called for the designation of “safe zones” in Syria to which Lebanon could repatriate Syrians.
Then, Assad fell. In the aftermath, Lebanese leaders joined politicians in countries like Germany and Austria in calling for Syrians to return home. Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati pressed the issue when he visited Damascus in January and met with Syria’s interim authorities. Mikati’s designated successor as prime minister, Nawaf Salam, has since said Lebanon must work with the UN to prepare for the safe, dignified return of Syrian refugees to their home country. Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun has repeatedly appealed for UN support organizing the return of Syrian refugees “now that the reasons for their displacement to Lebanon are gone.”
Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun has urged the return of Syrian refugees “now that the reasons for their displacement to Lebanon are gone.”
There is also new interest among Syrian refugees in returning to their country, according to the January 2025 round of the annual UNHCR Refugee Perceptions and Intentions Survey. In addition to the 27 percent of Syrian respondents in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt who said they intend to return to Syria in the next year, the number of respondents who said they hope to return to Syria “one day” increased to 80 percent, from 57 percent in April 2024. UNHCR estimated that nearly 210,000 Syrians have crossed back into Syria since December 8.
Still—and contra President Aoun—not all the reasons for Syrians’ original displacement are gone. And for many refugees, conditions in Syria may not yet be appropriate for return.
Lingering Safety Concerns
For Syrian refugees, return is still complicated—even post-Assad.
The situation in Syria remains fluid. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel faction that led the offensive that overthrew Assad, has assumed de facto control in Damascus, although it is now working to organize a national dialogue conference that will advance the country’s political transition. Public institutions are still incompletely functional. The economy is in dire condition, although some regional countries are providing infusions of support.
A number of considerations may factor into Syrian refugees’ decision-making on return. Some obstacles to return relate to safety and security; other concerns are more material, including the availability of livelihoods, services, and housing in areas of return. Which issues are most salient will necessarily differ from one individual to another.
The Syrians in informal tented settlements in Akkar who were interviewed for this commentary represent only part of the Syrian refugee experience; Syrians living in urban centers elsewhere in Lebanon, or farther afield in places like Europe, will inevitably have different perspectives and preoccupations. Still, one would expect the Syrians in Akkar to be some of the least settled in their present country of residence, and the readiest to return to Syria. Thus, their concerns and reservations about return are important and worth understanding. Many of those concerns will be shared—to varying extents—by other Syrians now considering their next steps.
For Syrians in Akkar, Assad’s fall had obviated some safety-related concerns. Refugees no longer need to fear detention and disappearance by Assad’s security services, or indefinite conscription into the Syrian army. Open warfare seems mostly over in much of the country.
Still, not all interviewees were confident that Syria is safe. Some Syrian refugees fled persecution by the Assad government. Others, however, fled Syria’s war more generally, and the violence and chaos as successive armed factions seized control of their home areas. There is no guarantee that Syria’s ongoing political transition will be successful, and that the country will not devolve, again, into civil war. Syria’s de facto authorities continue to carry out security operations targeting purported regime remnants. More general insecurity and violence also persist. For Syrians who already fled war once, it’s understandable that they might now exercise caution. “What if you go back and then need to take your family again?” said a man from Idlib. “Better to wait and see.”
And in Syria’s northeast, specifically, the war is clearly not yet over. That part of Syria is still controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. The SDF is led by the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in neighboring Turkey. Months after the fall of the government in Damascus, Turkish-backed Syrian forces continue to clash with the SDF, and Turkey has threatened to intervene militarily.
Importantly for refugees hailing from Syria’s northeast, the SDF forcibly conscripts young men in its areas of control. While Syrian army conscription may be finished, then, conscription by the SDF is not—and new recruits risk being thrown into a battle for control of Syria’s northeast.
In Akkar, a truck pulled into a refugee settlement as the author sat with residents originally from northeast Syria. When the driver rolled up the tarp covering the back of the truck, dozens of young men jumped out and dispersed among the tents. They had just left Syria’s northeast to avoid being drafted by the SDF, camp residents said.
Material Considerations
These Syrians also faced more practical, material concerns in weighing whether to return. Many said their homes had been destroyed, or comprehensively stripped and looted. “If my home were restored, I would go back tomorrow,” said a woman from Idlib. Their home areas also lack minimal public services, including schools, bakeries, and accessible medical facilities.
Syrians also voiced concerns about returning to an economically ruined Syria—to areas with no paying work, with which they could support their families. A man from Deir al-Zour wondered aloud how he was supposed to afford bread if there was no work. “You have no income to live on,” he said. In some rural areas, farmlands are seeded with unexploded ordnance and landmines. And return is itself a major expense, in addition to the investment necessary to repair a ruined home.
One man from Idlib said relatives now living in displacement camps in northwestern Syria had gone to check on the family’s hometown. “They said it’s a ghost town, and that the economic situation is dead,” he said. “At least here, there are people, and your whole family is together.”
For many refugees, camp life may still be better than returning to bombed-out hometowns. “Anyone who wants to go back today has to go back from zero,” a man from Raqqa said.
Most Syrians in Akkar do not live comfortably. A man from the Raqqa countryside described a winter storm that, days earlier, had blown away the tarps covering tents in his settlement. “When it blows like that,” he said, “you hold your kids tight, so that if the scaffolding falls, it falls on you.” UNHCR aid is hardly lavish: the agency provides cash assistance to Syrian refugees of up to $145 per family, in addition to some in-kind assistance and support for health care and education. Refugees have to supplement UN support with other income, including from construction and farmwork. But as difficult as this life is, for many Syrians it may still be better than returning to bombed-out hometowns with no work at all. “Anyone who wants to go back today, he’s got to go back from zero,” a man from Raqqa said.
Most of the Syrians interviewed for this commentary said they knew or had heard about others who had gone back to Syria since December but had then returned to Lebanon. These would-be returnees said their home areas were not habitable; household basics cost too much, and there were no jobs.
Enabling More Returns—in Time
Some Syrian refugees have returned from Lebanon since Assad’s fall, although there is no ready, official estimate for the number of Syrians who have gone back. UNHCR has said crossings by Syrians from Lebanon have continued at a “low but steady” pace, with approximately 1,000 to 1,500 cars crossing daily between Lebanon and Syria at official border crossings and a less easily quantifiable number of Syrians traveling back and forth via unofficial crossings. Almost 90,000 people also fled from Syria to Lebanon after December 8, including more than 60,000 Syrians and 20,000 Lebanese who had been resident in Syria.
Humanitarians believe more Syrians will return from Lebanon in the spring and summer, when the weather is more forgiving and the school year in Lebanon has concluded. Only limited numbers of internally displaced Syrians in northwest Syria’s camps have returned home since December 8, likely for similar reasons.
More returns will take time, in addition to real, meaningful efforts to improve living conditions in Syria. UNHCR head Filippo Grandi has sounded the right notes of caution, saying that his agency will support returnees, but emphasizing that any returns should be “sustainable.” Following a meeting with Aoun in January, Grandi said that Syria’s interim authorities had welcomed returns but requested that they be “gradual”—not a mass return that the country cannot absorb. Grandi said that the number of refugees in host countries would decrease, but, for now, many would remain.
Rushing returns would be both inhumane and—for countries like Lebanon that would like to see Syrians go home—counterproductive. Syrians will not be encouraged to go back if people who prematurely return then report that conditions inside Syria are impossible, or if they are forced to move again in Syria or leave the country once more.
Improving living conditions inside Syria and removing the more material obstacles now standing in the way of refugee return requires action by Syria’s international partners. What happens next in Syria will be largely decided by Syrians; the success of the country’s political transition is for Syrians themselves to determine. But Syria’s reconstruction and economic revitalization are far, far beyond the means of the country’s interim government. The international donor community needs to contribute substantially to recovery in Syria and, additionally, relieve the sanctions now choking Syria’s economy.
Lebanon is not able to provide assistance to Syria; it has its own economic crisis and postwar reconstruction to manage. What Lebanon can do, though—if Lebanese leaders can manage public expectations and rhetoric about returns—is work with the UN to keep major donors focused on supporting Syria’s recovery. Because if Syria can be made livable again, Syrians will not stay in Lebanon. “We don’t want our children to have this same program,” a man from Raqqa said. “We want them to learn, to live in their own country. That’s the dream of all Syrians.”
IMAGE CAPTION: Syrian families living in Turkey walk towards the Cilvegozu border crossing to cross into Syria on December 13, 2024, days after Syrian rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad. Source: Burak Kara/Getty Images
Tags: syria, syrian refugees, syrian war
Assad Is Gone—But for Refugees to Return, the World Needs to Invest in Syria’s Peace
The dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad has fallen. Now, many of the 6.2 million Syrian refugees abroad—more than a quarter of the country’s prewar population—are thinking, finally, about going home. Whether in muddy refugee camps, crowded working-class neighborhoods in Istanbul, Beirut, and Amman, or distant European cities, they have been following the dramatic news out of Damascus and entertaining the idea, perhaps for the first time, that their children will know Syria.
Last month, UNHCR (the UN refugee agency) reported that nearly 30 percent of Syrians in neighboring countries say they intend to return to Syria in the coming year. That’s up from just 1.7 percent in April 2024—eight months before rebels drove Assad into exile and, it would seem, ended the country’s grinding, thirteen-year-plus civil war. Host countries like Lebanon, which have struggled to accommodate waves of Syrian refugees, are also hoping that many will soon return home.
Yet countries hoping that more Syrians will return should calibrate their expectations. Interviews last month with Syrian refugees in Lebanon’s northern Akkar governorate provided a reminder that there is still a lot of work to be done if refugees are going to be able to return safely, voluntarily, and in dignity. When Assad fled to Russia on December 8, he left behind a ruined Syria. “Here is better than there,” one Aleppan man in Akkar said about life in Syria. “Because there, there’s nothing.”
International donors, with the encouragement of host countries like Lebanon, can do more to enable the return of Syrian refugees. But making return possible will take a major effort to rebuild and revive the country—and it will take some time.
Calls for Return
Pressure for Syrians to return has been mounting for years, in Lebanon and other host countries.
Syria’s war remains one of the largest displacement crises in the world: in addition to the more than 6 million refugees outside the country, upwards of 7 million people are also internally displaced. Most Syrian refugees are hosted by Syria’s neighbors in the region.
The UN estimated that Lebanon hosted 1.5 million Syrians in 2024, out of a total population of 5.7 million. An estimated 360,000 of those Syrians fled Lebanon for Syria during Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon late last year; most of those Syrians are believed to have remained in Syria.
In 2024, anti-Syrian sentiment in Lebanon reached new heights. Lebanese officials said they would deport “most” Syrians and called for the designation of “safe zones” in Syria to which Lebanon could repatriate Syrians.
Then, Assad fell. In the aftermath, Lebanese leaders joined politicians in countries like Germany and Austria in calling for Syrians to return home. Caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati pressed the issue when he visited Damascus in January and met with Syria’s interim authorities. Mikati’s designated successor as prime minister, Nawaf Salam, has since said Lebanon must work with the UN to prepare for the safe, dignified return of Syrian refugees to their home country. Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun has repeatedly appealed for UN support organizing the return of Syrian refugees “now that the reasons for their displacement to Lebanon are gone.”
There is also new interest among Syrian refugees in returning to their country, according to the January 2025 round of the annual UNHCR Refugee Perceptions and Intentions Survey. In addition to the 27 percent of Syrian respondents in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt who said they intend to return to Syria in the next year, the number of respondents who said they hope to return to Syria “one day” increased to 80 percent, from 57 percent in April 2024. UNHCR estimated that nearly 210,000 Syrians have crossed back into Syria since December 8.
Still—and contra President Aoun—not all the reasons for Syrians’ original displacement are gone. And for many refugees, conditions in Syria may not yet be appropriate for return.
Lingering Safety Concerns
For Syrian refugees, return is still complicated—even post-Assad.
The situation in Syria remains fluid. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel faction that led the offensive that overthrew Assad, has assumed de facto control in Damascus, although it is now working to organize a national dialogue conference that will advance the country’s political transition. Public institutions are still incompletely functional. The economy is in dire condition, although some regional countries are providing infusions of support.
A number of considerations may factor into Syrian refugees’ decision-making on return. Some obstacles to return relate to safety and security; other concerns are more material, including the availability of livelihoods, services, and housing in areas of return. Which issues are most salient will necessarily differ from one individual to another.
The Syrians in informal tented settlements in Akkar who were interviewed for this commentary represent only part of the Syrian refugee experience; Syrians living in urban centers elsewhere in Lebanon, or farther afield in places like Europe, will inevitably have different perspectives and preoccupations. Still, one would expect the Syrians in Akkar to be some of the least settled in their present country of residence, and the readiest to return to Syria. Thus, their concerns and reservations about return are important and worth understanding. Many of those concerns will be shared—to varying extents—by other Syrians now considering their next steps.
For Syrians in Akkar, Assad’s fall had obviated some safety-related concerns. Refugees no longer need to fear detention and disappearance by Assad’s security services, or indefinite conscription into the Syrian army. Open warfare seems mostly over in much of the country.
Still, not all interviewees were confident that Syria is safe. Some Syrian refugees fled persecution by the Assad government. Others, however, fled Syria’s war more generally, and the violence and chaos as successive armed factions seized control of their home areas. There is no guarantee that Syria’s ongoing political transition will be successful, and that the country will not devolve, again, into civil war. Syria’s de facto authorities continue to carry out security operations targeting purported regime remnants. More general insecurity and violence also persist. For Syrians who already fled war once, it’s understandable that they might now exercise caution. “What if you go back and then need to take your family again?” said a man from Idlib. “Better to wait and see.”
And in Syria’s northeast, specifically, the war is clearly not yet over. That part of Syria is still controlled by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. The SDF is led by the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in neighboring Turkey. Months after the fall of the government in Damascus, Turkish-backed Syrian forces continue to clash with the SDF, and Turkey has threatened to intervene militarily.
Importantly for refugees hailing from Syria’s northeast, the SDF forcibly conscripts young men in its areas of control. While Syrian army conscription may be finished, then, conscription by the SDF is not—and new recruits risk being thrown into a battle for control of Syria’s northeast.
In Akkar, a truck pulled into a refugee settlement as the author sat with residents originally from northeast Syria. When the driver rolled up the tarp covering the back of the truck, dozens of young men jumped out and dispersed among the tents. They had just left Syria’s northeast to avoid being drafted by the SDF, camp residents said.
Material Considerations
These Syrians also faced more practical, material concerns in weighing whether to return. Many said their homes had been destroyed, or comprehensively stripped and looted. “If my home were restored, I would go back tomorrow,” said a woman from Idlib. Their home areas also lack minimal public services, including schools, bakeries, and accessible medical facilities.
Syrians also voiced concerns about returning to an economically ruined Syria—to areas with no paying work, with which they could support their families. A man from Deir al-Zour wondered aloud how he was supposed to afford bread if there was no work. “You have no income to live on,” he said. In some rural areas, farmlands are seeded with unexploded ordnance and landmines. And return is itself a major expense, in addition to the investment necessary to repair a ruined home.
One man from Idlib said relatives now living in displacement camps in northwestern Syria had gone to check on the family’s hometown. “They said it’s a ghost town, and that the economic situation is dead,” he said. “At least here, there are people, and your whole family is together.”
Most Syrians in Akkar do not live comfortably. A man from the Raqqa countryside described a winter storm that, days earlier, had blown away the tarps covering tents in his settlement. “When it blows like that,” he said, “you hold your kids tight, so that if the scaffolding falls, it falls on you.” UNHCR aid is hardly lavish: the agency provides cash assistance to Syrian refugees of up to $145 per family, in addition to some in-kind assistance and support for health care and education. Refugees have to supplement UN support with other income, including from construction and farmwork. But as difficult as this life is, for many Syrians it may still be better than returning to bombed-out hometowns with no work at all. “Anyone who wants to go back today, he’s got to go back from zero,” a man from Raqqa said.
Most of the Syrians interviewed for this commentary said they knew or had heard about others who had gone back to Syria since December but had then returned to Lebanon. These would-be returnees said their home areas were not habitable; household basics cost too much, and there were no jobs.
Enabling More Returns—in Time
Some Syrian refugees have returned from Lebanon since Assad’s fall, although there is no ready, official estimate for the number of Syrians who have gone back. UNHCR has said crossings by Syrians from Lebanon have continued at a “low but steady” pace, with approximately 1,000 to 1,500 cars crossing daily between Lebanon and Syria at official border crossings and a less easily quantifiable number of Syrians traveling back and forth via unofficial crossings. Almost 90,000 people also fled from Syria to Lebanon after December 8, including more than 60,000 Syrians and 20,000 Lebanese who had been resident in Syria.
Humanitarians believe more Syrians will return from Lebanon in the spring and summer, when the weather is more forgiving and the school year in Lebanon has concluded. Only limited numbers of internally displaced Syrians in northwest Syria’s camps have returned home since December 8, likely for similar reasons.
More returns will take time, in addition to real, meaningful efforts to improve living conditions in Syria. UNHCR head Filippo Grandi has sounded the right notes of caution, saying that his agency will support returnees, but emphasizing that any returns should be “sustainable.” Following a meeting with Aoun in January, Grandi said that Syria’s interim authorities had welcomed returns but requested that they be “gradual”—not a mass return that the country cannot absorb. Grandi said that the number of refugees in host countries would decrease, but, for now, many would remain.
Rushing returns would be both inhumane and—for countries like Lebanon that would like to see Syrians go home—counterproductive. Syrians will not be encouraged to go back if people who prematurely return then report that conditions inside Syria are impossible, or if they are forced to move again in Syria or leave the country once more.
Improving living conditions inside Syria and removing the more material obstacles now standing in the way of refugee return requires action by Syria’s international partners. What happens next in Syria will be largely decided by Syrians; the success of the country’s political transition is for Syrians themselves to determine. But Syria’s reconstruction and economic revitalization are far, far beyond the means of the country’s interim government. The international donor community needs to contribute substantially to recovery in Syria and, additionally, relieve the sanctions now choking Syria’s economy.
Lebanon is not able to provide assistance to Syria; it has its own economic crisis and postwar reconstruction to manage. What Lebanon can do, though—if Lebanese leaders can manage public expectations and rhetoric about returns—is work with the UN to keep major donors focused on supporting Syria’s recovery. Because if Syria can be made livable again, Syrians will not stay in Lebanon. “We don’t want our children to have this same program,” a man from Raqqa said. “We want them to learn, to live in their own country. That’s the dream of all Syrians.”
IMAGE CAPTION: Syrian families living in Turkey walk towards the Cilvegozu border crossing to cross into Syria on December 13, 2024, days after Syrian rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad. Source: Burak Kara/Getty Images
Tags: syria, syrian refugees, syrian war