As a post-Assad Syria reopens, Syrians ask: Can we go home?

Ghalia al-Asaali stands tall in prayer over the grave of her son, while her husband fights back tears.

This moment of private mourning, eight years after their son died fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, was made possible only because rebels seized the capital, Damascus, less than a week before.

The roads leading to the local cemetery where Ms. Asaali’s son is buried were sealed off until now.

Mr. Assad’s ouster is reopening the country for Syrians to visit from outside and for internal travel. The reopening extends to the mourning of fallen rebels, who typically used a nom de guerre to avoid government acts of revenge against loved ones.

“This is the first time that I can say my son is a martyr, that I can say his full name, that I am his mother,” Ms. Asaali, dressed in a black coat, says behind sunglasses.

With pride, she recounts how her son kept fighting in the Jobar district even after being wounded three times, until a mortar round killed him in November 2016. It was a battle that brought rebels to the gates of Damascus.

Before the civil war, Syria had a population of approximately 23 million. More than half were displaced within the country in a search for safety, an experience that tens of thousands of families repeated multiple times.

Seven million Syrians became refugees. A burning question for host nations in Europe and the Middle East now is whether they will return. For Syrians, the question is still: Can we?

Dominique Soguel

Ghalia al-Asaali stands in the ruins of Jobar, outside Damascus, where her son is buried, Dec. 15, 2024. He was killed in combat, fighting forces loyal to then-President Bashar al-Assad in November 2016.

Revisiting homes, and families

With the collapse of the Assad regime, roads that many Syrians considered impassable due to checkpoints, which represented the risk of arbitrary arrest or forced conscription, are now clear.

The power shift has opened an opportunity for Syrians to return to their homes – if they have one left standing – and to hug long-lost relatives. Displaced Syrians are rushing to meet young relatives born during the war and to pay respects to those who died.

Reunited families are comparing life in areas held by Mr. Assad’s forces with those controlled by armed groups who opposed him.

The possibility of returning home marks a momentous change.

Adnan Shaaban, a London-based Syrian businessman, raced to Syria via Lebanon to get a first taste of freedom in Syria. He believes millions will return to rebuild the country, drawing on entrepreneurial skills honed abroad.

Mr. Shaaban says he finally feels safe in Syria now that Mr. Assad and his security apparatus are gone.

To pray on his first Friday back, he deliberately chose a mosque in Kafr Susa, a Damascus neighborhood that witnessed some of the first anti-government demonstrations in the capital in 2011, as well as attacks on worshippers by Syria’s security services. The mood was joyful as volunteers rolled out carpets and sprayed them with jasmine.

“I think within a few weeks we are going to see a lot of changes,” Mr. Shaaban says. “Within three years, we are going to improve. Within five years, we are going to have a great country.”

A community’s bleak remains

But in many regions, return is simply impossible. That’s the case in eastern Ghouta, a district in rural Damascus that experienced years of punishing siege between 2013 and 2018. Agreements allowing for the wartime evacuation of armed Islamist fighters and their families contributed to the emptying out of the enclave, which Mr. Assad said was in the hands of foreign-backed terrorists.

Today, few buildings are intact in the eastern Ghouta section of Jobar, a quick drive from the capital’s center. Entire blocks are cement silhouettes, like a child’s sketch if the sky were paper. The interiors of the three-to-five-story buildings have long been stripped clean of usable metal.

Craters and crushed tombstones at the local cemetery speak to the intensity of bombardment.

Bassam Khabieh/Reuters/File

A man walks on the rubble of damaged buildings in what was then the rebel-controlled area of Jobar, in the eastern Ghouta district outside Damascus, Syria, March 2, 2016.

Residents recall that the first mortars hit Jobar in June 2011, only a few months after pro-democracy Arab Spring protests kicked off across the region. They say demonstrations retained a peaceful character for two years even though the crackdowns were increasingly heavy-handed. Tank shelling replaced gunfire, turning a trickle of death into a steady stream.

One factor that pushed the community’s young men to arm themselves, residents say, was the violation of the sanctity of the home by regime agents conducting searches. Homes were shattered by airstrikes and barrel bombs.

The physical and psychological damage from the five years of siege is both vast and apolitical.

Mohammed Majid, an electrician, never took part in demonstrations and was forcibly conscripted to fight for the Assad regime. His home is destroyed, so he now rents a flat in a nearby suburb. But he is helping in the cleanup efforts of a local charity funded by Jobar natives in Syria and beyond.

“There is no hope for us to come back,” he says, broom in hand. “It would take $20,000 or $30,000 for any family to repair their homes. We don’t have such sums in our pockets. Life was beautiful before [2011]. Now we have nothing.”

Emotional returns

Residents say there is no chance for the community to return without massive international investment. Jobar, which encompasses an area of approximately 18 square miles, requires a complete overhaul of its infrastructure. So do vast chunks of territory in larger cities like Homs and Aleppo, which experienced similar levels of destruction since 2011.

For those who can return home, it is a moment of overpowering emotion.

Mamdouh al-Khansour says he wanted to bring his family home for years to Douma, also in eastern Ghouta, which he left in 2014. The intensity of that desire sparked recurring nightmares that he would do so, only to find himself stuck and hunted by the security services in the streets of a community that was a target of the Assad regime’s infamous chemical attacks.

Dominique Soguel

Mamdouh al-Khansour and his son Abdullah sit together in the living room of their family home in eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Dec. 14, 2024. They were able to return from northwest Syria after rebels toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“It’s like a dream to be sitting here next to my sister,” he says. “This is the first time she meets my wife and my children.”

When Mr. Khansour left Douma, bread was a dream, fresh food nonexistent, and fuel unavailable. His family rationed pickled vegetables to survive, taking turns going hungry. Relatives sold their homes and wedding gold just to buy flour.

Mr. Khansour, an electrical infrastructure engineer, fled taking a desert road to the rebel-held region of Idlib in the north.

Life there, he says, was wonderful in comparison. It improved in recent years as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the hard-line Sunni group that is now the de facto rulers of the country, focused on restoring services and a sense of law and order.

He moved freely, worked, and treated his family to an occasional restaurant outing or food delivery. But the fear in their bellies never left, because Assad forces bombed Idlib, too.

“Every day our bags were packed because we lived with the fear of being bombed to death until the last days of the Assad regime,” Mr. Khansour says. “My son Abdullah would turn yellow with fright.”

Eight-year-old Abdullah, lying on his father’s lap, pipes up with pride because he didn’t even flinch at the crackle of assault rifles on the street moments earlier. “I was not afraid just now,” he quips. He can tell that the shooting by neighbors across the street, also reuniting after years of separation, is driven by joy rather than by murderous intent.

Electricity coming back

The family is debating whether to move back to the outskirts of Damascus, but is in wait-and-see mode. The boy only wants to if he can bring his classmates along.

Dominique Soguel

Muslim cleric Abdulrahman Abuqafah stands at the entrance of the Al-Shukr Mosque in eastern Ghouta, Syria, a former stronghold for rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad, Dec. 15, 2024. “Slowly we will repair by the grace of God,” he says.

Residents’ quality of life has not improved overnight thanks to the new rulers, but there is a sense that burdens are more evenly distributed.

Electricity, for example, that had been available for just one hour per day or every other day under Mr. Assad is on every six hours. The family counts on batteries and generators for lights.

There are still many repairs to be made. The living room window that was blasted open is now an exit for the pet cats.

But it could be worse. The apartment across the street was bombed. The nearby Al-Shukr Mosque is nothing but a burnt shell.

“When the regime entered here, they burned all our homes, and whatever was left was stolen,” explains Imam Abdulrahman Abuqafah, gazing at the mosque’s remains.

There is no labor or funds to rebuild, but he is a man of unshakable faith.

“Slowly we will repair by the grace of God,” he says.