Arriving at the Syrian border, 33-year-old Mohamad Baghdadi saw a sign that welcomed him in his country. At least, the country where he comes from: Baghdadi has been living in Amsterdam since 2013 and has a Dutch passport in addition to his Syrian. For a moment the doubt struck. “What if I return to the Netherlands and it turns out that I could not have traveled to Syria,” shot through his head. It was a few weeks after the fall of the Assad regime in December and Baghdadi wanted to see with its own eyes that it was really true, that the dictatorship was really over.
He had looked up ‘two or three times’ to see if he would not lose his Dutch passport by traveling to Syria. On Google, on chatgpt. And yet, when he was at the border, he became nervous. What if he would no longer enter the Netherlands? For four years he had studied medicine in Damascus (to flee the civil war he had to break the study prematurely), he spent five years on the same study in the Netherlands (he is almost ready). “Then I would have to start again.”
Since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime at the beginning of December, various Syrians from the Netherlands went to their native country to investigate whether a permanent return would be possible. What would their country look like after fourteen years of war? What would be needed to return definitively? The Ministry of Asylum and Migration, or the return and departure service, does not keep up with how many people are involved. Most have a Dutch passport just like Baghdadi, say the four Syrians who NRC Speaked, and they don’t have to indicate their journey.
Syrians who have a temporary residence permit in the Netherlands are also there. But they don’t want to tell about it. “They are far too afraid that the Dutch government will find out,” says Baghdadi. If NRC Syrians in the Netherlands, via a Facebook group with 73,000 members, asks for an interview, the reaction is argwaning: it is an “ambush”, their story would “use right-wing parties in their favor.” Not imaginary: In a letter to the House of Representatives, Minister Marjolein Faber (asylum, PVV) wrote a month ago that when “Syrian asylum seekers or holders of a permit return to Syria, there are safe there and then being able to return safely, that an indicator is that asylum -related fears are no longer talking”.
Mohamad Baghdadi, Kutiba Kotait, Ahmad Al Hosain and Salim Abbara went to Syria for a week, two weeks, a month and indefinitely. They walked through the streets of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, they visited family in the countryside. A “kind of probation” already calls Hosain (56) his visit. Kutaiba Kotait went to bury his father in Syria, and to see if he could go back.
Pieces of the living room
There is a lack of running water throughout the country. “Every week people in Damascus came to sell water,” says Kotait (39). “Thirty dollars for one hundred liters.”
Kotait has completed a master’s degree in international criminal law in Syria and, as a lawyer, handed it up. He got into trouble, he says during a conversation in The Hague. He had to flee. When he came to the Netherlands, he controlled the language insufficient to work as a lawyer. He set up all kinds of things in The Hague: Shishabars, a restaurant. But in the fall of last year he was without work and he discussed with his wife about going back to Syria. She didn’t want to, but he decided to seize his father’s funeral to take a look.
Electricity is increasingly available – first it was about twenty minutes a day, now a few hours – but it is not yet reliable. A little more fuel is sold again, the market stalls are better filled, richer people are now going to cafés and restaurants again. And it is now safer than four months ago, says Salim Abbara (42), who moved back to Homs in mid -December. “Then all the shops closed at five in the afternoon, nobody was allowed to leave the street anymore. Every day there were Clashes on the street between Assad-Loyalists and the new government. That is really no longer the case.”
He does see that poorer Syrians are still hungry. Everywhere children beg on the street. The rents are high – in some neighborhoods between $ 700 and $ 800 a month – while the few jobs you can find in Syria do not produce more than 100 dollars a month. “There is not enough work here,” says Abbara. “On my own I do save me with the money that I earn as a trader – I sell everything to stores in Syria, clothes, shoes, electronic devices – and some savings that I took from the Netherlands, but a family would not work that.”
After two weeks, Kotait returned ‘shocked’ in the Netherlands. For Baghdadi it was a dream to be in Syria again, but he also saw that “everything had changed.” “I had friends, family, school, memories. Now I only had memories, the people were no longer there. If I had taken the decision to return definitively and could not have made to the Netherlands, I would have regretted.”
Ahmad Al Hosain walked past all the places he knew from the past: the markets, the old university where he worked as a professor of Arabic literature. Are the buildings still standing? Do people still live? Have they fled?
He visited his old house, which was destroyed in a bombing. “My daughters were with me and recognized pieces of the living room, from the terrace. I found a shopping list and homework from my oldest child. My children toys. We cried together.”
PostNL or Albert Heijn
On the street, Hosain already met people he had not seen for years. “Emotional encounters. My daughter cried every day.” You can now start a conversation with everyone in Damascus, he says. People feel like talking, also about the future of their country. “In coffee houses, people argue about freedom. About what needs to be done now. Demonstrations take place against unemployment.”
It is precisely with those conversations about the future that Salim Abbara has a hard time since he is back in Syria. He lived in the Netherlands for eleven years. “If I start here about what I have learned in Europe-about diversity in backgrounds and ideas, about the acceptance of, for example, the LGBTI community, about free elections, the concept of ‘coalition’-people then look at me with a big question mark.” Life in a dictatorship has taught them to think in black and white, says Abbara. It takes care of him. “If education does not get going quickly, will they accept the people who return from the European Union?”
It was a visit “to see if I really wanted to go back,” says professor Al Hosain. “And now I’m sure.” As soon as he can get his job as a professor of Arabic literature at the University of Damascus, he goes back. Kotait also wants to go back, however much he was shocked by living conditions. He misses his work as a human rights lawyer. “In the Netherlands there are three options for refugees: working in the hospitality industry, at PostNL or at the Albert Heijn. But the rule of law has not yet recovered in Syria, so I have to wait.”
“It’s really not going well at Syria,” says Mohamad Baghdadi. And then perhaps millions of people who have fled the country will come back, all of whom need facilities. He talks about a friend who, just like himself, made a short visit to his home country. “He bought three cows, because then you have milk.” Very wise, says Baghdadi. He has decided that he will in any case finish his training as a doctor in the Netherlands before he goes back. “You really have to prepare very well for a return.”