'We can’t go back': Syria's refugees fear for their future after war
Each day for as long
as he can remember, Abu Ahmed, a Syrian merchant, has hawked Qur’anic pamphlets
in central Beirut, one eye out for a buyer and another for the police. He has been in the
Lebanese capital for the past six years, as war consumed his homeland, casting
more than a million refugees like him into near permanent exile. Now, however,
as the seven-year conflict approaches what many believe to be an endgame in
Syria’s north-west, Abu Ahmed fears his meagre, but so far safe existence is in
jeopardy.
The blazing guns of
insurgency have largely been silenced in central and southern Syria, and politicians in
Damascus, Beirut and Amman are claiming with increasing vehemence that a ruined
country from which at least 6 million people have fled is now a safe for them
to return. Few Syrians in Lebanon
seem convinced. “I’ll serve my country proudly and shed my blood for it with a
smile on my face, but not like this,” said Abu Ahmed, 41, who hails from the
former opposition stronghold of Ghouta. “But not for this
chaos. We can’t go back because of [the risk of] neighbours’ petty revenge.
They snitch on you and call you a traitor and the next thing you know you’re
languishing in prison, for nothing. My town is filled with regime forces and
thugs. How do they expect me to return?”
International donors,
aid workers and diplomats are also wary of the insistence that postwar Syria is
safe, and of the motives behind the claims. Senior representatives of all three
say the relative quiet in Syria should not be confused with enduring order, and
that entreaties from the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad,
are unlikely to mean a warm homecoming... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/30/we-cant-go-back-syrias-refugees-fear-for-their-future-after-war
