Displaced Persons Dream of a Safe Way Back to North Syria

Returning Back Home... Displaced People`s Dream Searching for a Safe Way to North Syria

Despite the fall of former President Bashar al-Asad`s regime late last year 2024, hundreds of thousands of displaced people of `Afrin and Ra’s al-`Ayn in north Syria are still unable to return to their homes and property. The real owners of the homes and agricultural lands face risks, including looting money and being arrested or killed if they claim their property controlled by pro-Turkish displaced persons.

In 2011, Syria entered a large-scale armed conflict that led to one of the world`s largest humanitarian crises, with more than 7 million internally displaced, and more than 6.6 million refugees outside Syria. This conflict has not only destroyed infrastructure and housing, but has created a complex reality of human rights violations, including the right to housing, land and property, especially for vulnerable groups such as women, internally displaced persons and minorities.

Millions of families lost their homes as they were destroyed in shelling or seized by armed groups in conflict zones. Displaced persons have lived in harsh living conditions, often in overcrowded camps or uninhabitable housing lacking the basic decent life.

The majority of armed groups, affiliated with, or opposed to Bashar al-Asad regime have committed land and property violations, but, in some areas, these violations took place in a systematic manner with the aim of demographic change, most notably in `Afrin and Ra’s al-`Ayn, which were controlled by Turkey and its loyal factions Syrian National Army in military operations “Olive Branch” and “Peace Spring,” in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have managed areas with Kurdish-majority population in Hasakah governorate, Kobani and `Afrin regions since the previous regime`s withdrawal in 2012. The area has expanded as the SDF, supported by the Global Coalition of ISIS militants from Manbij, Raqqa, Tabqa and Dhayr al-Zawr countryside.

Turkey, which considered the Kurdish forces as “terrorists,” has pursued systematic policies of demographic change. Either through its direct military intervention and its bases and intelligence, or by ordering the loyal Syrian factions that it supports.

The region witnessed forced displacement of the population through several means: threats, attacks, forced abandonment of their property by force of arms, arrests, torture, extrajudicial killings or silence toward the theft of their property and subjection to decisions imposing illegal levies and extortion.

Violations included:

• Destruction of houses or converting them to military headquarters;
• Seizure of residential and commercial estates and agricultural land without any legal document or compensation;
• Felling trees and forests and to sell as wood, or setting them on fires to collect and sell as charcoal;
• Imposing levies on the remaining population, forcing them to share the seasonal harvest of their agricultural land, especially olive seasons, with armed factions, and using arbitrary arrests and torture as means of pressure to force compliance of property owners;
• Preventing the return of displaced persons to their homes by imposing incapacitating security conditions or inhibiting them from reaching to their areas.

It is estimated that 600 thousand persons from `Afrin and its countryside, north Aleppo, and the area between Ra’s al-`Ayn (north of Hasakah) and Tal Abyadh (north Raqqa) are displaced. Armed men from pro-Turkey SNA factions seized the houses and property of those displaced persons and/or settled families brought from different regions in Syria in them.

The crisis of displaced persons of `Afrin and Ra’s al-`Ayn who were forcibly displaced from their homes did not end with the fall of Bashar al-Asad`s regime in December 2024, as in other areas. Those displaced people suffered a second displacement from south `Afrin and nearby camps in the Shahbah area of northern countryside of Aleppo.

Approximately 100 thousand displaced persons have been displaced again to the Autonomous Administration area east of the Euphrates, which already suffers from population pressure and a lack of basic resources and services that prevent the establishment of new camps and havens. Thus, the situation of displaced persons there has become extremely precarious.

Displaced families in Raqqa, Kobani, Hasakah and Qamishli live in shelters or temporary housing lacking basic services, without job opportunities and impeding accessing to education and health care.

These families have suffered further through the summer, with the spread of diseases due to the lack of health conditions and water, particularly with Turkey`s policy of cutting off water from its sources as a weapon of war, reducing water pumping from Allouk wells (in Ra`s al-`Ayn countryside controlled by Türkiye) in previous years. This policy caused water scarcity in large areas of Hasakah, which has afflicted camps housing Ra’s al-`Ayn displaced persons.

Turkish practices and pressures deprive the inhabitants and displaced persons in these areas of the most-basic housing and stable life, even after including pro-Turkish Syrian factions to the Ministry of Defense within the new Syrian government.

Despite some understandings between the Transitional Government in Damascus and the SDF, still no effective mechanism guarantees the right of return and property restitution for displaced persons from `Afrin and Ra’s al-`Ayn. The absence of accountability and justice efforts and the appointment to senior positions of faction leaders who committed violations in the New Syrian Army reinforces impunity.

The current situation in `Afrin and Ra’s al-`Ayn reflects accumulated human suffering and deprivation of rights, and augurs new crises and threats against displaced persons that prevent stability in adequate housing or decent work. Explosions or bulldozers have destroyed property left behind or controlled by displaced persons and obstructed their owners’ tenure claims through coercive policies aimed at obstructing any just solutions to a safe and dignified return.

Helez Abd al-Aziz, Insight

Note: As of 15 May 2025, UNHCR estimates that over half a million (501,126) Syrians have crossed back to Syria via neighboring countries since 8 December 2024. In addition, 1,200,486 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned to their homes in Syria, including 344,733 returning from IDP sites since early December 2024 according to the latest data of the IDP Task Force.

Photo: Syrian families arrive at the Cilvegözü border gate to cross into Syria from Türkiye, near Antakya, Türkiye, 10 December 2024. Source: AP Photo.