Syrians who came home after al-Assad’s fall find a complicated reality

Coming Home to a Broken Syria: The Unseen Costs of Post-War Return

Usagevpn.com – The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in December 2024 triggered what many observers now describe as one of the most rapid large-scale repatriations in modern history. Yet for the millions of Syrians who packed their bags and headed back to a country emerging from decades of conflict, the reality on the ground has proven far more tangled than the optimism of liberation suggested. Two years into the transition, the gap between expectation and experience has widened into something approaching a crisis of daily survival — from wages that cannot cover a bus fare to classrooms that feel alien to children who grew up speaking another language.

A Barber’s Dilemma: Two Men, One Shop, Opposite Verdicts

In a small barbershop in Damascus, two former expatriates sit side by side, clipping hair and quietly weighing whether their decision to come home was wise. Samer, who had been working in Turkey, made roughly $1,000 a month before the regime fell. Today his earnings in Syria hover between $250 and $300. His colleague Mustafa, who returned from Egypt around the same time, lives rent-free in his family house and earns about $300 monthly — approximately double what his Egyptian salary left after Cairo’s housing costs were deducted. Mustafa sees no reason to regret his choice. Samer does.

“I regret coming back. In Turkey I was making about $1,000. Today my income doesn’t surpass $250-300.”

Samer’s frustration extends beyond the paycheck. He commutes roughly 20 kilometres each way between his home in Maraba, a rural suburb of Damascus, and the Mezzeh district where he works. The transport cost alone erodes what little margin his wage provides. Power outages, which he describes as constant, directly undermine his livelihood, since a barber’s tools depend on reliable electricity.

“My dream is to be able to buy a motorbike for $400, and I still can’t, just so I can save on transport fares. I ran into a harsh reality. Barbershops here do not offer the services I used to provide, and the wages are so low they do not even cover the cost of getting from my home in Maraba, in rural Damascus, to the Mezzeh district in the heart of the capital, a distance of around 20 km.”

“My whole life has changed: the cost of living is high, infrastructure is weak and there are constant power cuts, and electricity is essential to the work of a barber.”

Children Caught Between Two School Systems

Mawia al-Shaer brought her three children — aged six, eight, and ten — back from Germany, where all three had been educated in German-language classrooms. Upon arrival, they were enrolled in Arabic-language schools following a curriculum none of them had encountered before. The adjustment has been jarring.

“There is a big difference between schooling in Syria and in Germany. Private schools are extremely expensive here, whereas in Germany the service was free.”

Private institutions in Damascus now charge a minimum of $2,000 per child annually. State schools, by contrast, are overcrowded to the point of dysfunction. Al-Shaer cannot afford the former and distrusts the latter. Her fear is not merely academic; she worries that her children’s unfamiliarity with local norms, combined with their German-acquired manner of expression, will mark them as outsiders and expose them to bullying.

“This will make my children feel withdrawn and afraid and unwilling to go to school. Everything will change for them: the overcrowded classrooms, their inability to express themselves, which may expose them to bullying or class prejudice because of the different language and way of thinking they acquired in Germany.”

She now wishes she had visited relatives briefly and returned to Germany before the new school year began.

Savings Burned in a Post-War Economy

Amer Hassan arrived from Germany carrying more than $45,000 in savings, earmarked for opening a restaurant. He signed a lease, began fitting out the premises, and exhausted his capital before a single customer walked through the door.

“I got roughly halfway and then it all came to a halt. I couldn’t complete what I had dreamed of.”

Hassan, who holds German citizenship, says he intends to return to Europe. In Germany, he notes, government-backed loans and lower operating costs would have allowed him to launch the same venture with half the capital he spent here.

“If I had been in Germany, I would have received government support in the form of loans, and with half the money I spent I could have launched the business. Rents are extremely, extremely high, and labour costs are also high. I’ve gone back to square one.”

“I will return and try to start over there. Here I have run out of options and lost what I had built up during my stay and asylum in Europe.”

A similar pattern unfolded for Fares Ibrahim and his wife Lida, who returned from Sweden and invested $10,000 in rent plus $5,000 in equipment to open a tailoring shop in Damascus’s Shaalan district. Six months later, total profit had not reached $1,000. The shop closed. The couple is now searching for cheaper premises in a rural area where overheads are lower.

“We are now looking for premises in a rural area where the rent is lower, so we can get back on our feet.”

The Numbers Behind the Stories

By the end of May 2026, UNHCR tallied approximately 1.67 million Syrians who had repatriated from neighbouring host countries, alongside 1.92 million internally displaced persons who had returned to their areas of origin. Combined, nearly 3.6 million people have resettled, concentrated largely in Aleppo, Idlib, the rural fringes of Damascus, and the capital itself.

The economic backdrop makes their struggles structural rather than incidental. The World Bank estimates that Syria sustained $108 billion in direct physical damage during the conflict, with total reconstruction needs reaching roughly $216 billion — approximately ten times the country’s entire 2024 GDP. Homes stand damaged or destroyed. Grid electricity remains unreliable. Civil administration functions unevenly. Formal-sector employment is scarce, pushing returning workers into informal, low-wage roles that rarely match their prior skill levels.

For Samer, Mustafa, al-Shaer, Hassan, and Ibrahim, the question is no longer whether to come home. It is whether a country still stitching itself back together can absorb the ambitions, savings, and daily needs of millions who believed liberation would mean an immediate return to normalcy. So far, the answer, measured in bus fares, empty classrooms, and shuttered shopfronts, has been a qualified no.