‘Systematic’ destruction keeps Homs’ displaced from returning home

HOMS — For displaced Syrians in camps, cities and towns across northwestern Syria, the victory of the revolution with the fall of Bashar al-Assad on December 8 brought new hope: a chance, for the first time in years, to return home.

The day after Assad fled the country, many displaced people headed south, flocking to their hometowns to reunite with loved ones and check on their homes. Omar al-Musa, 30, made his way back to al-Houla, an area north of Syria’s central Homs city, where he met his father after 13 years of separation. 

Al-Musa’s family fled Syria for Lebanon after the 2011 revolution began, while he stayed in al-Houla for several years until he was displaced to northwestern Syria in 2018. Now a father of two, he currently lives in Azaz, a city in northern Aleppo controlled by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). 

He was not prepared for what he found when he returned to al-Houla. “The destruction is huge, and basic services are nonexistent: no electricity, no internet, no water,” he told Syria Direct. The family home needs restoration, and even “if it is repaired, it won’t accommodate us—we are five sons who left as children or youths, and now four of us are married with children,” he added. 

For many internally displaced Syrians—who make up around half of the six million people in the country’s northwest—the initial elation of returning home gave way to shock at the scale of destruction and poor services in their native cities and towns. Some went and saw for themselves, while others, unable to afford travel costs, pored through pictures taken by those who could.

“Syria was ours again, and we lived the joy of victory for several days. Then the crisis of displaced people returning to their destroyed homes began to emerge,” Umm Amin, a woman displaced from Homs city’s northern al-Waer neighborhood to Idlib, told Syria Direct. 

Homs is one of Syria’s most devastated provinces. A 2019 damage assessment by the United Nations Institute for Research and Training (UNITAR) found 13,778 buildings were damaged: 3,082 completely destroyed, 5,570 severely damaged and 4,946 partially damaged. 

Like many displaced Homs residents, Abu Amin, Umm Amin’s husband, visited al-Waer—186 kilometers from Kafr Dariyan, the town in the northern Idlib countryside where they currently live—alone. “We can’t even afford to visit the city,” she said. 

Umm Amin finally saw the home she was displaced from six years ago in pictures her husband took during his visit. “One room of the house was shelled directly and completely destroyed, while all the walls are cracked,” she said. “It is impossible to live in it without demolishing it and rebuilding.” 

Umm Amin’s husband works at a barber shop, and the family barely makes enough to get by. The cost of “rebuilding the house is around $15,000, and we don’t even have $50,” she added. 

Returning to Homs

Homs city, a center of the 2011 revolution, was systematically bombarded by the regime for years, leaving many ancient neighborhoods and archaeological and religious sites destroyed. As opposition forces dug into the Old City, massacres in and around Homs claimed hundreds of lives, including children. In 2012, more than 43 were killed in Karam al-Zaitoun, 220 in al-Khalidiya, and scores more in al-Houla and Deir Baalba. 

In May 2014, opposition factions besieged in the Old City of Homs for 700 days reached a United Nations (UN)-brokered agreement with the regime and left for the city’s northern countryside. 

Abdullah Masarra, 28, who is from al-Khalidiya, was among those evacuated. After witnessing the progressive destruction of his city, he was not surprised by the devastation he found there after returning to celebrate Assad’s fall, he told Syria Direct. 

Destroyed buildings overlook a park in Homs city’s al-Khalidiya neighborhood, 16/12/2024 (Syria Direct)

Masarra went through two bitter displacements from Homs: First, when he left al-Khalidiya for the northern countryside in 2014, and again when opposition factions reached another agreement with the regime in the summer of 2018. Fighters and anyone not willing to reconcile with Damascus were expelled again, this time for northwestern Syria. 

When the regime fell, Masarra returned to stand on the ruins of his home in al-Khalidiya. Then he turned back, rejoining his wife and two children in Azaz. 

“Our home [in al-Khalidiya] is a residential apartment, and the building is completely destroyed,” he explained. “The problem isn’t just rebuilding my home, which I have no ability to do, but rather rebuilding the entire building, or even the entire neighborhood. It is destroyed, along with all its infrastructure and services.” Beyond that, there is no work for him in Homs. 

“I hoped to return home, for my children—who were born in two places of displacement—to see where their father grew up, the city where he lived,” Masarra said. “They know nothing about their hometown.” 

Activist Anwar Abu al-Walid, who has been displaced from Homs’ northeasternmost neighborhood, Deir Baalba, since 2012, noted that “most who visited the neighborhood went back to their place of displacement. They could not settle there because of the scale of destruction to their homes.” 

“What happened in Homs, at the hands of the deposed regime and its sectarian militias, was systematic,” Abu al-Walid told Syria Direct. “It is clear that the goal was to prevent us from returning in the future. After liberation, everything has changed. People are determined to return, but this takes both time and intervention by the international community and organizations.” 

In 2010, around 85,000 people lived in Deir Baalba. Only around 10 percent have returned so far, Abu al-Walid estimated. “Most houses are completely destroyed. This is a heavy burden for people who wish to return, because rebuilding takes huge sums that people cannot secure,” he said.

Massive destruction in the Deir Baalba neighborhood of Homs city, 18/12/2024 (Syria Direct)

While many of those displaced from Homs cannot return home for the foreseeable future, Abu al-Walid has. He was forced away from his home in stages throughout the revolution in war: first from Deir Baalba to other parts of Homs, then to the northern countryside and finally to Syria’s northwest. He could only come back because “my family returned two years ago and renovated part of the house,” he said.  

Reconstruction a condition for return

Majed al-Othman, 39, has spent nine years displaced in northwestern Syria. “We suffered the summer heat and winter cold in tents, unimaginable suffering,” he told Syria Direct. 

As soon as Assad fell, al-Othman, a construction worker, left his camp near the Aleppo town of Qabbasin and headed for Homs. He decided to stay there, despite his shock at the destruction. “My house is destroyed, the services in Homs are very bad, but I stayed because I found work, and because living in my city with dignity is better than the camps,” the father of seven explained. 

He plans to restore one room of his house, hoping that “the current government, Arab states or the international community take responsibility for reconstruction” so others like him “return to their homes and the economy recovers.” 

Less than two weeks after Assad’s fall, Syria is still going through administrative chaos, despite calls for government workers and others to return to their posts. Municipalities are running at a bare minimum, prompting civilians to launch volunteer initiatives to clean streets. 

The issue of reconstruction appears to have been postponed so far, particularly since it requires regional and international support for a country exhausted by nearly 14 years of revolution and war. 

Safwan al-Kanj, who started working as head of the local council in al-Houla after Assad fell, has started to “make contacts with some organizations and capable people to improve necessary infrastructure, but we haven’t found the required response so far,” he told Syria Direct. 

“All services and systems are dilapidated: agriculture, industry, housing and infrastructure, including water and electricity networks,” al-Kanj added. “We look forward to help from brotherly and friendly countries for reconstruction and our country’s rebirth.” 

International Monetary Fund (IMF) spokesperson Julie Kozack said on Thursday that the body is closely monitoring the situation in Syria, and is “ready to support the international community’s efforts to assist serious reconstruction as needed and when conditions allow.” 

Until reconstruction begins, many who initially returned to Homs surveyed the conditions and “decided to return to the north, because the houses they left are uninhabitable,” al-Kanj said. 

“I cannot repair our home at my own expense, and if I could afford it it would take seven or eight months,” al-Musa said. This “frustrated me, so instead of settling in Homs, I took my parents back with me to Azaz, where at least I have stable work and there are services like internet, electricity and water.”

Ammar Hamou contributed to the writing of this report. 

It was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.