Displaced Syrians trickle back to Aleppo

Latakia, Syria, July 10: For years as fighting raged in Syria’s Aleppo, property agent Saer Daqaq had fleeing residents knocking at the door of his beachside offices, seeking refuge in his flats in coastal Latakia.

A popular seaside resort largely untouched by the country’s six-year civil war, Latakia became a haven for those escaping Syria’s second city, so much so that part of it was even dubbed “Aleppo Beach”.

But since fighting for Aleppo ended last year, Daqaq’s offices just steps from the waters of the Mediterranean have been much quieter.

With the Army’s recapture of Aleppo in December, many displaced residents are now finally heading home after years away, though others who have set up businesses or whose homes are destroyed are staying put for now.

With their faded white paint, the apartment blocks in northern Latakia’s “Blue Beach” area have hosted thousands of Aleppans who fled fighting in the country’s former economic powerhouse.

They were once so numerous that the area was informally rechristened “Aleppo Beach”, but since the army’s recapture of the city, demand for flats to rent has plummeted.

“Between 40 per cent and 50 percent of them have gone back,” said Daqaq.

Up to 700,000 Syrians displaced from Aleppo city and the surrounding province once lived in Latakia, but more than 30 percent have now left, the local governorate says.

“In the last six months, not a single family from Aleppo has come to rent an apartment, whether for a month or a year,” said Daqaq, 42, sporting a close-cropped beard.

The area “is half empty”, he said, before returning to a game of cards with his friends.

On the balconies of apartment buildings, tarpaulin sheets bearing the logo of the UN refugee agency UNHCR have long replaced curtains, and tangles of electrical wires hang haphazardly at building entrances.

Latakia’s population nearly doubled.