In Syria, refugees return to their land to rebuild

Eight o’clock in the morning at Zamalka school, the bell rings in the courtyard. The six hundred students line up, a little dissipated, before returning to their classrooms. Since the fall of Bashar El Assad on December 8, 2024, their number has almost tripled. In this neighborhood in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, devastated by war, families who had gone into exile abroad or elsewhere in the country are starting to return. After a civil war (2011-2024) which led to the displacement of more than 13 million people, more than a million refugees have returned. The coming to power of Ahmed Al Charaa last January, despite his former link with Al-Qaeda, was synonymous with hope for a large part of the population.

“Many families arrive from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon or Turkey,” says Mouna Al Sirmani, the director of the establishment. For teachers, it is sometimes complicated to deal with their students’ shortcomings or differences in level. The biggest challenge is with children who grew up in Türkiye. “They speak Arabic, but cannot read or write in their mother tongue,” she explains. Another major obstacle is the lack of school supplies. That day, a delivery of notebooks arrived at the school. The bill is paid by the establishment.

A bruised country to recover

Mouna Al Sirmani is proud to announce that she can count on 19 teachers and a few substitutes to teach the classes. Last year, some classes could accommodate up to 60 students. Major renovations have made it possible to open more classrooms. At the entrance to the establishment, craftsmen paint over the traces of the latest work.

Returning just after the fall of the old regime, Khaled Jawar was immediately able to send his daughters to one of the four primary schools in the neighborhood. He was one of the internally displaced people in the country, which still numbers more than seven million. Of his house which adjoins Zamalka, not much remains. He is focused on rebuilding it. “I built two new rooms, but it was to the detriment of finding a job,” he confides. For this former granite importer, this social downgrading is the most complicated thing to experience. With his neighbors, he set up a mutual aid system to be able to pay for electricity, purchased from a private company, because the public network does not yet serve this sector.

Hussein Tleij arrives from northern Syria, where he took refuge in 2019. “I wanted to return because I was tired of being a refugee,” explains this forty-year-old simply. Upon his return, he invested a large part of his savings to renovate a family store where he sells tires. His family paid a heavy price during the war. He lost his leg in the fighting and one of his five children has Down syndrome.

His wife was pregnant when the Jobar district, in which he lived at the time, was bombed by Bashar El Assad’s chemical gases. Today, going back is impossible. The entire neighborhood was reduced to ruins. According to the local council, which is carrying out a study on the renovations, the reconstruction would cost more than five billion euros.

Fractures between communities remain

A first rehabilitation project saw the light of day there, that of the restoration of a school. Joumoua Suleiman, 50, works there with his children. Jobar was his neighborhood before he sought refuge in Lebanon in 2018. Having left in search of a better life for his family, he returned as soon as he was liberated and thought he would be able to find his home again. He finds it… completely destroyed. “The situation was better in Lebanon, we were better paid, but I don’t regret my choice. It’s always better to be at home than to be in a foreign situation,” he explains.

Like the others, he wants to believe that the new power will take the necessary measures for reconstruction. Internationally, the Syrian president is reconnecting with Washington and European capitals to end sanctions and attract financial support. However, locally and despite improvements, community fractures remain deep. Ahmed Al Charaa must face dissension from the most extremist elements in his own camp, while civil society is growing impatient with the slow pace of transitional justice and the process of political opening. The government’s ability to meet these expectations will largely determine whether Syria can truly turn the page on almost fourteen years of conflict.