Sick of exile, refugees opt to return home
ALEPPO, Syria — Desperate to escape Syria’s terrors, Ammar Maarawi bolted. In early 2016, he paid smugglers and endured a dangerous sea crossing to Greece and an exhausting journey by train, bus and foot through Europe.
Two years later, the 36-year-old is back home in Aleppo. He returned last summer — depressed, homesick and dreading another winter, he couldn’t bear life in the German city of Suhl.
Germany, he said, “was boring, boring, boring.”
Maarawi is among a small number of refugees who have come back to Syria from among the more than 5.4 million who fled their homeland since the civil war erupted in 2011. So far, they are just a trickle, numbering in the tens of thousands.
But the stream of returnees may grow over the coming year as stability returns to Syria and as hostility grows to refugees in host nations. The Russia- and Iranbacked military of President Bashar Assad has retaken almost all major cities, and the Islamic State has been driven out of almost all the territory it once held.
Motivations for going back are many. Simple homesickness is one. Many refugees have burned through whatever savings they have and either can’t find or aren’t allowed to work. Hundreds of thousands languish in camps in the neighbor countries. Those who make it to Europe often get assistance, but some find the West doesn’t hold the opportunities they hoped — or they face discrimination or they feel alienated in a different culture with language barriers and harsh weather.
Still, the reasons to remain in exile also weigh heavily. The calm in some parts of Syria relies on tenuous local truces. Fighting still rages in some areas, including between Assad and rebels in the northwest and other pockets. Many young men won’t come back fearing they’ll have to do their compulsory military service. Even in parts where fighting has stopped, cities have suffered massive destruction. An estimated 6.1 million Syrians still in the country are displaced from their homes — so refugees are not the only ones waiting to go back.
The UNHCR has observed some 68,000 refugees who returned on their own from neighboring countries from January to October 2017, the most recent figures available, according to spokesman Andrej Mahecic. He said the number of returnees is dwarfed by those remaining in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe, and those still leaving Syria.