For many Syrian refugees in Europe, joy at the fall of Assad has been tempered by immediate calls for them to go home.
Bashar Assad’s fall was met with delight by many Syrians across Europe. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
December 12, 2024 4:01 am CET
BERLIN — When Osama Sabsabi learned that opposition forces had captured the city of Homs, where he grew up, he did something that would have been unthinkable just days earlier: He booked a ticket home.
“We, the Syrian people are experiencing an indescribable joy,” said Sabsabi, who describes himself as an activist against the fallen regime of exiled President Bashar Assad. “I’m so looking forward to seeing the members of my family who are still alive.”
Sabsabi, a 29-year-old member of the Syrian diaspora in Berlin, travelled to Jordan, where he was making plans to cross the border to see his wife and siblings in Homs — and to visit the burial site of his father, who, he related, was tortured by Assad’s men and later killed in battle resisting government forces. He said he intends to help rebuild the destroyed family home.
Many European politicians have already made clear they want to see Syrians living in Europe follow in Sabsabi’s footsteps and return to their homeland. As far-right forces in Europe rise, and a major federal election looms in Germany, Europe’s increasingly anti-immigration forces now see an opportunity to undo the unprecedented refugee influx of 2015 and 2016, which was largely wrought by the war in Syria.
Send them home
While Assad’s fall was met with delight by many Syrians across Europe, the news of the dictator’s demise had barely broken before politicians across the continent began talking about whether it was time for Syrian refugees to return home en masse.
In Austria, the interior minister announced preparations for “an orderly return and deportation program to Syria,” while in Germany — the EU country that has taken in the most Syrian refugees — conservative politicians demanded the government establish a plan for the return of Syrians.
“As a first step, I would say we make an offer. How about the German government saying: ‘Anyone who wants to return to Syria, we’ll charter planes for them and give them starting money of €1,000,’” conservative German politician Jens Spahn said on television on Monday. He also suggested that the countries that have taken in the most Syrian refugees plan a “reconstruction and return conference” in the spring to facilitate repatriation.
“If this situation now changes and the de facto reason for asylum no longer applies, there will no longer be a legal reason to stay in the country,” said Markus Söder, a prominent conservative leader and the premier of Bavaria, on a podcast this week.
Only one day after rebel forces ousted Syria’s dictator, a number of EU countries — Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and the U.K. — said they will halt consideration of Syrian asylum applications.
Fears grow
Sabsabi, who arrived in Germany in 2015 amid a wave of nearly 500,000 asylum seekers, has one advantage many Syrians lack: He’s a German citizen, which ensures he is free to return to Berlin, where he lives along with a brother and sister.
Other Syrians have no such security, and the talk of returns has many of them feeling deeply unsettled, especially considering the profound uncertainty over what will happen next in Syria.
Since Assad’s fall, Tareq Alaows, an activist for the German refugee advocacy organization Pro Asyl, has received a number of worried messages from Syrians in Germany.
“They now have the feeling that tomorrow [Chancellor] Olaf Scholz will come and revoke their residence permit,” or that the interior minister “will come, collect them and put them on a deportation plane,” he said. “Many people are not only unsettled and frightened by the debate but are disappointed,” added Alaows, who himself fled Syria.
Many politicians in Germany argue that it’s too early for talk of returns, including center-left Chancellor Scholz himself.
“Perhaps if things go well, many people will say of their own accord that they now want to take part in the reconstruction of their country,” Scholz said this week on German public television. “But for now, the situation in Syria is still very dangerous.”
Germany’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, a member of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), also warned that an exodus of Syrians would have considerable consequences for Germany’s labor market, particularly its healthcare sector, which has come to rely on Syrian nurses and doctors.
“Entire areas of the healthcare sector would disappear if all Syrians working here were to leave our country now,” the SPD politician said. “For us, it is important that we offer Syrians who are here, who have a job, who have integrated, who are free of criminal offenses, whose children go to school, the opportunity to stay here and be there for our economy.”
Around 6,000 Syrian doctors work in Germany, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wrote on X. An election debate about their future in Germany would “deeply disappoint and unsettle” them, he added.
Insensitive and unnecessary
Across Europe, Syrians expressed similar feelings — a mixture of joy over Assad’s fall, worries about the future of the country, and disappointment with much of the European political discourse on refugees.
“Although we have seen the celebrations all over the world [of] the end of the Assad dictatorship, the situation in Syria remains deeply unstable, and for many, returning home now feels both unsafe and unwise,” said Ayman Alhussein, a Syrian filmmaker and refugee living in London.
“It’s hard to justify how swiftly Europe and the U.K. moved to suspend asylum decisions,” he continued. “I was hoping that countries would rush to send aid and provide guidance on how it can be built again, and sanctions on Syria haven’t even been lifted yet. But unfortunately, refugees have long been treated as political cards, and this feels like yet another example of that. The decision is not only insensitive but also entirely unnecessary.”
In a heavily immigrant area of Brussels, Mustafa Tahiri, a 33-year-old who works in a vegetable shop, also expressed worries about Syria’s future given the uncertainty, saying it would take years for the country to become safe again.
“I don’t think I want to go back,” he said. “I have my nationality and job here.”
From Jordan, Sabsabi said he had witnessed many Syrians voluntarily returning “full of hope and optimism.”
Still, he plans to remain in Syria only temporarily, he said, and will return to Berlin, where he works as a coordinator for a food delivery service.
“Later, I will think about returning permanently with my family,” he said. “Because Syrian traditions and family ties are deeply rooted in us.”
Ketrin Jochecová and Nathalie Weatherald contributed reporting.
