Will 14 mn Syrian refugees return home now that Assad regime has fallen?

Following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad's regime , Syrian refugees spread across the world are looking at the situation in their homeland with hope and doubts.

While several are hopeful of an eventual return now that the decadeslong dictatorial rule of the Assad family is over, many are doubtful if the fall of the Assad dynasty would actually lead to stability. They have examples of Libya, Iraq, and Yemen where uprisings against dictators plunged the country into crisis that have not yet been solved and where conditions are now much worse than during the ousted dictators’ reigns.

Understandably, humanitarian organisations have warned refugees to not return to Syria at once and wait for the situation to become clearer.

Just one day before the Syrian opposition forces entered Damascus, forcing Assad to flee to Russia with his family, Bill Frelick, the Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said that “sending refugees back to destitution and danger is not an option that can be squared with the basic principles of humanity and human rights law”.

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Frelick further said, “As the violence in Syria spikes again, host societies that have accepted Syrian refugees should be thankful that they did not send them back before it was safe to do so.”

How civil war displaced Syrians

The Syrian Civil War (2011-) was a seismic event not just for West Asia but for the world.

The disruption that Assad’s crackdown on Syrian pro-democracy demonstrators in 2011 led to a refugee crisis for the West unprecedented in decades.

Since 2011, the United Nations (UN) maintains that more than 14 million Syrians have been displaced since Assad triggered the civil war. Of them, the UN says that 7.2 million Syrians have been internally displaced within Syria and around 5.5 million Syrians fled to neighbouring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. Of these nations, Turkey alone hosts around 3.3 million refugees.

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Among non-neighbouring countries, the UN says that Germany hosts around 850,000 refugees and media reports say that Canada hosts around 44,000 refugees.

Of the refugees scattered the world over, the UN says that only 5 per cent people in designated refugee camps where they may be accorded safeguards and amenities meant for them. The figures say that as many as 70 per cent Syrian refugees live in poverty.

Syrian refugees start returning to Syria

Even as human rights organisations prescribe caution, waves of refugees from Syria’s neighbouring countries have started marching to their homeland.

The Daily Mail has reported that “huge queues” have started forming at Syrian border crossings of people making way to their homeland following the collapse of the regime that led to their flight.

Turkey has also opened border crossings to facilitate the passage of refugees settled in the country into Syria.

Photographs have also surfaced of people marching to Syria from crossings in Lebanon.

Muhammed Zin, 28, who fled Damascus in 2016, told AP, “Assad was shooting us, killing us. I will return to Syria now. Thank God, the war is over.”

Another refugee, Malak Matar, who has been preparing to return to Damascus, said, “You feel yourself psychologically free — you can express yourself. Syrians have to create a state that is well-organised and takes care of their country. It’s a new phase."

While the return of refugees to Syria has been boosted by Assad’s ouster, there has been a trickle in the months leading to the opposition forces’ offensive last year. The Daily Mail quoted the UN refugees agency as saying that around 34,000 refugees returned to Syria in the first eight months of 2024 and “spontaneous returns to Syria are expected to continue throughout 2025”.

Not just in Syria’s neighbourhood, but refugees are now hopeful in places as far as Canada.

Ghena Ali Mostafa, 24, who fled Syria in 2012, said that she now has a country to return to — something she never thought would be possible in her lifetime.

“Today I have a country that I can go back and build. Today I do not need to be a refugee anymore. Today I have a home and this home is waiting for me…I never thought I will witness this moment in my 20s. I thought maybe my kids or maybe my grandkids will witness this moment. But for me to witness this moment, for me to have a home that I can go to, for me to have a hope that I could be reunited with my dad,” Mostafa told CBC News.

But fears of another wave of outward migration remain

Even as Syrian refugees displaced by the Assad’s regime’s actions look forward to a return to Syria, the escalation in fighting from last month has led to another round of internal displacement.

If the fighting among opposition factions escalates in coming weeks and months, then, instead of a return of refugees, the country may see another round of outward migration similar to the one see after the beginning of the civil war in 2011.

The Daily Mail has reported that as many as 400,000 Syrians have already been internally displaced since the opposition forces launched their offensive late last month. It noted that such a displacement has sparked fears that thousands could flee to the United Kingdom and Europe in the coming months.

Rob McNeil, the Deputy Director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University told the newspaper that what happens in the coming time will determine whether refugees return to Syria or more Syrian flee the county.

“In the optimistic scenario, that this is the beginning of a period of greater stability for Syria, then we may actually see return migration beginning to happen. The flip side is, if this is the harbinger of another period of greater chaos in Syria, then there is still a large number of people in the country who have not left, many of whom may feel unsafe and may try to leave the country,” said Mr McNeil.

While there are hopes that the new regime would not match the brutality of Assad’s regime, the confidence is not very high. The main opposition group set to lead the new regime, the  Islamist authoritarian Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was a branch of Al Qaeda as late as 2016. Even after formally cutting ties, the group has frequently been accused of repression in territories it has long controlled in Syria .

There are fears that non-Sunni religious and ethnic minorities, such as Kurds, Druze, and Alawites, may face renewed persecution. Thousands of people, particularly from the Alawite sect of Shias, have fled from central Syria towards western Syria to escape the HTS fighters.

Alp Mehmet, the Chairman of MigrationWatch UK, told Daily Mail, “We can expect tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of those displaced, or who flee from the new regime, to make their way to the EU and UK — both legally and illegally. Many will want to join the 20,000 who came in 2015-16 as part of the Syrian resettlement scheme.”