Today, Explained - Will Syrians return home?

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Syrian refugees are celebrating the end of the Assad regime. But for Omar Alshogre and millions like him, going back to Syria is a complicated decision. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Rob Byers, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Syrians arriving at the border crossing between Lebanon and Syria to return home following the collapse of the Baath Party regime. Photo by Murat Sengul/Anadolu via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The most beautiful moment was when I was seeing the prisoners being liberated from Aleppo and further to Hama and to Homs. And then when they came close to Sayyidina prison, it got really serious in my heart because it was a place that I know very well. I spent almost a year there. That was when Omar El-Shogri was 19 years old. Today he's 29, he's living and working in Stockholm and he was watching as Syria's dictatorship fell. I didn't know that a human being could be so happy before. I'm telling you the joy was so unmatchable. I wanted to laugh so hard. I wanted to jump but I ended up crying like a baby and I, the joy of being

free. It's the first time I feel it. Now Omar has a choice to make, his happy life in Sweden or his newly freed country. Coming up on Today Explained. Amazon Pharmacy presents Painful Thoughts. The guy in front of me in the pharmacy line is halfway through an incredibly detailed 17-minute story about his gout, a story likely more painful than the gout itself. Next time, save yourself the pain and let Amazon Pharmacy deliver your meds right to your door. Amazon Pharmacy. Healthcare meds right to your door. Amazon Pharmacy,

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Before Omar El-Shogri got to Sweden, where he now works for the Syrian Emergency Task Force and for a tech company that makes self-driving cars, he had seen a lot of Europe, and a lot of Europe didn't want him.

Greece sent me to, you know, Macedonia, then Serbia, Serbia, Croatia, Croatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovenia, to Austria, Austria, to Germany, Germany, to Denmark, Denmark. Everybody was sending you to the next place. Nobody wanted to have you. Now, before all that, he was 15, and he was thrown in prison like thousands of other people for protesting Bashar al-Assad's regime. Omar was shuttled to something like nine prisons, but he ended up in Sidnaya, the most notoriously brutal.

His memories of Sidnaya are still very sharp. And I can tell you something. Pain makes you say anything. You don't think about the long-term consequences of your false confession that's going to be sentenced to execution or life in prison. No, you think about stopping the pain right now, because every cigarette they were burning me with, every bone they were breaking, every thing that was hurting in my body was not even caring about the future, just caring about right now. I want the pain to stop. So I gave them the false confession they wanted. And that false confession led to them to transfer me to 10 different prisons. Last one was Sayyid Naya. And the special thing about Syrian prisons is you always dream about them sending you to the prison before the one you are

at right now, because it just gets worse. And when you reach Sayyidina Naya, that's when you for sure know that you're never coming out. Sayyidina Naya is dark. Sayyidina Naya is painful. Not the pain itself. It's the fear when you hear people screaming and the gods keep torturing them. Because in Sayyidina, you're not allowed to scream under torture. So if you're screaming, that means they're beating you until you are quiet. Sometimes you're quiet by death. And sometimes you're quiet because you can't breathe anymore. Or you learn the lesson that you're not allowed to scream.

How old were you when you were in prison there, Omar? When I was in Sayyidina, it was my third year in prison. So I was 19 at that time, 18, 19. You were barely more than a kid. No, I was a kid because I was taken to prison first time when I was 15. And then last time when I was 17 and I was a minor when I was in prison, and I didn't grow up like anyone else would do. I was in cell, silent, under torture and starvation for years. I didn't feel like I grew up in that normal sense of growing up, so I was a little boy all the time.

And that actually was the privilege that I had because the prisoners around me cared about me because I was that little boy. In me, they saw their kids. Many of them were older. They saw their kids, but most importantly, they saw someone who could potentially survive and get out and reach to their families and tell their families that they need to do something to get them out or something. So the doctor took care of my wounds and taught me how to take care of his wounds. And the psychologist talked to me about how to treat our trauma so we don't die of the traumatic experience we're going through every day. And the teacher, how to improve our grammar, and the engineer was talking about how messed up that building was.

And this was all in prison, where you met the doctor and the psychologist and the engineer and the teacher, all imprisoned with you? Yes, yes. Political prisoners in Syria are usually the top and highly educated people of the country. Those are not criminals or anything. The regime put them in prison because the regime, those are a threat to the regime. Educated, smart people, knowledgeable people are the biggest threat for the regime. How did you get out of Sednaya prison? Look, I feel like, in a way, I never really got out, as in get out. But I was announced for execution in June of 2015 on a Tuesday.

They took me from my room, and they put me in another room, 48 hours preparation for execution. And then they take me, and they put me somewhere on the ground and then they load their guns and they aim and then the officer says, shoot! And they shoot. And I remember when it was like... in my ear. And I was so excited

because I was so afraid that death is going to hurt so painfully. And they shot me and it didn't even hurt. So I got so excited that death's finally dead and to heaven. I stood up, and I had no blindfolds, no chain metals around my hands or anything. And I stand up, and I had no blindfolds, no chain metals around my hands or anything. And I stand up, and I tried to open my eyes, and I couldn't. The light was so strong, and then I fainted. Then I woke up again.

I managed to very slowly open my eyes, and then I saw a tree. And I haven't seen a tree in a very long time. I haven't seen color in a very, very long time. When I saw color for the first time, it's like, oh, I want to cry of happiness. Nobody understand how important it is to see color. Like blue, I haven't seen blue in so long time. Those three years felt like 300 years.

And I got down to the ground because I was starved and I just want to pick anything grass anything doesn't matter I get down to the ground and I looked and I saw so much blood on my feet and I I always believe there is no blood in heaven and then I realized I may be still alive and that could be the worst thing that could ever happen to me because I was informed that my family died in a massacre so like I had my hometown was burned my school was bombed even me because I was informed that my family died in a massacre. So like I had, my hometown was burned. My school was bombed. Even the girl I was in love with, her house was bombed.

So she is probably dead. And like I had nothing, I had nothing to live for. I had nothing to get out for. So I either die or stay in my cell. And then a car comes, pick me up and takes me somewhere else and somewhere else and somewhere else. Just things move too quickly for me to understand. And then I was standing between my mother's arms suddenly. And I was like, I didn't know what was happening. I really was yet questioning whether I'm alive or dead in heaven or not. And then my mom, you know, looks at me and says,

my love, my heart, my son Omar, and she hugs me very hard. And, like, I ask her, didn't you, like, die? And she says, no, no, no, no, no. We smuggled you out of prison. Oh, my God. When she told me they smuggled me out of prison, I got so mad because I didn't get smuggled out of prison. Oh my God. When she told me they smuggled me out of prison, I got so mad because I didn't get smuggled out of prison. I was like executed. I told them, they were looking at me. It's like, what do you mean? I said, I was executed. They shot,

they executed me. I got so frustrated. I said, no, no, that was just a mock execution. The execution guards, head of the prison, everyone was bribed. My mom, no, no, that was just a mock execution. The execution guards, the head of the prison, everyone was bribed. My mom managed to reach everyone and bribe everyone to get me out of prison. So I was smuggled out of prison on my execution day, June 11th, 2015. And now it's nine years later. Omar has an adopted family in Sweden. He has friends to eat dinner with, even though he can't just go knock on their door at 7 in the morning to ask if they want to have coffee. Swedes don't like that.

That's something Syrians do. And so then there's Syria. I have to tell you about my hometown. My hometown is the most beautiful town that ever existed in the history of towns. I'm from the coast. It has the sea. It has the mountains. It has the rivers.

It has my grandma and then it has my sister who I haven't seen in 13 years and I haven't met her kids not even in a single time so I miss her and I miss my father and my brothers

who were killed and put in mass graves I would love to go there and sit and probably talk a little bit to my father and to my siblings. And I have so much things to do. That being said, that being said, I can't ignore the fact that I lived half of my life in Sweden and I have a family here. I have friends here. I have a job here. I have, I feel home in Stockholm. This is reality.

I can change. So I have two homes, one in Syria and one in Sweden. Both are very important to me. What's important for me is to rebuild Syria, contribute with the education I have, with the knowledge I have gained and the experience I have from democracies to help Syria. At the same time, I can't ignore the fact that I care very much about Sweden. So it will always stay as my home. So moving, being hybrid, you know, traveling back and forth, we'll see.

So things in Stockholm, things in Sweden have gone very, very well for you. I want to look at what is on the other side. I want to look at what might be in Syria for you. So we did an episode about this group, HTS, the group that overthrew al-Assad. They are an Islamist group. They have links to al-Qaeda. The leader says he would like to govern as a moderate, that he considers himself a moderate. What do you think of this group that overthrew al-Assad?

And is there anything that they could say that might make you more likely to want to return to Syria? The most important point to highlight here is the fact that regardless of who overthrow the regime in their military operation, it's the Syrian people who over 14 years fought to bring down the Syrian regime, which means nobody can come and then appoint themselves as a leader, regardless whether they are good or bad, you know, on this list or that list. It doesn't matter. What matters is the Syrian people went out to the street for 14 years, and they brought down the dictator Bashar al-Assad.

And now it's a phase where we have to lead that phase to transition where we have election, and we choose the people that we believe in both in parliament and as president. And that's it, Period. Nothing else. Nobody else comes and says, I claim that power. You know, the Syrian people have brought down the dictator that's been established for 53 years and had allies like Russia and Iran and Arab Emirates and China and North Korea, all the dictators in the world, and yet the Syrian people brought him down. So imagine a new emerging potential dictator. Won't survive long, I tell you. The Syrian

people will not settle. Remember, every mother has lost a son in Syria. Everyone have experienced the struggle. So nobody would settle for any small solution. And nobody has the right to come and say, hey, I liberated you. No, we liberated Syria, all of us, with every struggle we had, by me by speaking up and someone else by holding their gun and fighting, protecting their families, and someone else by building, someone else by doing this. We all, all Syrians together, brought down the Syrian regime. And all Syrians together decide on the future of Syria. Anything else, I would start a

revolution against. My father was killed so we have freedom. My brother, my other brother, were killed to have freedom. My cousin, so we can have freedom and democracy, would not let anyone come and take it from us. And this is, I'm not talking now against any sort of group, I'm just talking in general, saying this, I would definitely never settle for less than having a real democracy in Syria. Omar, how old are you now? I'm 29, handsome and happy. 29, handsome, I can attest, we are on Zoom. And happy, you seem very happy. I've seen stories about people in Turkey, in Lebanon, lining up at the borders to just basically walk back into Syria, to try to get back in immediately.

When your mind goes to when might it be safe for us to return, what do you think? Firstly, lots of Syrians were not safe in Lebanon. Syrians were killed, were tortured, were kidnapped, and so on. Syrians felt safe in Turkey in the beginning, but in the last few years, they started to feel like they are discriminated against and face racism and so on. Of course, not from the whole country, but some incidents have led to build a perception that Syrians are not welcome in Turkey. So they were not feeling like they could stay longer. So the fact that Syria was liberated from the Assad regime was a great incentive for them to move immediately. So the streets towards Damascus were so crowded. That being said,

I don't think it's safe yet because nobody's certain. Nobody knows what's going to happen next week. So it's too early for anyone to return. I won't encourage people to do it yet. I won't do it myself. Omar El-Shugri, He works for the Syrian Emergency Task Force as their director of detainee affairs, and he's based in Stockholm. Coming up, millions of Syrians fled during the country's civil war. How others are thinking about the question

of when and if to return. Thank you. digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the order frame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message,

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My name is Dr. Amani Khadour. That's newly minted. I just defended my doctorate a few days ago. Congratulations. Thank you. You're having one hell of a month. Oh, yeah. It was hours before all of this unfolded. So it's been, you know, a whirlwind.

I'm the director of a humanitarian NGO called Syria Relief and Development. Many know it as SRD. I'm operating on the ground in Syria. And then I also hold an associate faculty position at Johns Hopkins at their Bloomberg School of Public Health. You are Syrian American. Do I have the right? Can you just tell me about your ties to Syria? My heritage is Syrian. My parents are Syrian, but I grew up in the U.S. my whole life. So grew up in the Midwest. And where are we reaching you today, Amani? I'm in Gaziantep, Turkey. So for those unfamiliar, it's in the southeast of Turkey,

one of the cities where that was the epicenter actually of the earthquakes that hit last year. I want to get a sense of the scale of movement that happened as a result of Syria's decade plus long civil war. There were people who left the country. There were people who moved around inside the country. What are we talking about in terms of numbers and where do people tend to end up? Let's talk about outflow first. This is a country that has probably six to seven million refugees outside of the country, one of the highest. For those that have been following Syria for the past decade plus, this is one of the highest numbers of refugees across the world, now probably closely tied with Afghanistan and Ukraine. But for quite some time it was Syria. A lot of these refugees ended up in surrounding countries.

Syria's civil war has left more than 130,000 people dead and forced millions to flee to neighboring countries like Jordan. As fast as Turkey's government could build the dozens of refugee camps along its borders with Syria, they were filled to capacity. Almost four million Syrian refugees have settled in countries neighboring Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. And then the rest ended up in many, many places, Europe, the U.K., the U.S., Canada. Migrants and refugees received a warm welcome

after arriving on a train from Austria to the German city of Munich. How do you feel about being in Germany? I feel happy. We're from Syria. The 10,000th Syrian refugee is about to land in the US today. In Canada, the government is taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees and groups are already arriving in Toronto. But I would say the bulk really of refugee hosting countries for Syrians have been the surrounding ones including Turkey where I reside right now. And then in terms of inflow within the country

across the various governorates, the majority of displaced communities have been in the Northwest. This is one of the highest displaced populations across the world right now. Within the country it's about six or so million displacements and in the Northwest it's housed about four million. So these four million have come from other parts of the Northwest as a result of aerial attacks to civilian infrastructure, hospitals, clinics, schools, marketplaces, some were fleeing forced military conscription, particularly young men of military age. So really a mixture of reasons. But the Northwest in particular, I would say, really housing the majority of the displaced.

What are you hearing from Syrians who were displaced outside of the country now that Bashar al-Assad is gone? Do they want to go home? I think yes, but there's a caveat. So absolutely, I think without, you know, getting emotional about this, you can feel the hope and you can see the resilience of the Syrian people across the world right now. Scenes of people celebrating in almost every country and real solidarity. I think this is a moment in history. This is a moment in time for people. And before discussing kind of what's next, the apprehension that others might be questioning Syrians about is let's let Syrians have this

moment. Let's let them celebrate, rejoice, feel the joy, feel the pain, feel the suffering, excuse me, feel the loss and the family separation, the detainments, the persecutions. This is a bittersweet moment for a lot of people. And I think it's really important to let them process all of this. But on the other hand, when a lot of Syrians are now either wanting to return or at a minimum just get permission to enter the country to reunite with parents that they haven't seen for 10 years, young men and women that had to leave the country, separate from their families out of safety or simply because of how much economic deterioration there was. It's also, for me, I'm very cautious about what this means when, you know, many say they want to return. Is the time necessarily now? No. Is there a firm timeline? I also don't know. What I would say, especially to host countries, is, you know, this is not a moment to exploit asylum policies. This is not a moment to sort of weaponize this, you know, critical point in time and immediately start discussing returns, especially if they're not,

you know, this trifecta, voluntary, safe and dignified for people. This has been a contentious issue in some European countries. Have any of them come out since al-Assad was forced out and said, we actually plan to do things differently now? So it's been a dizzying few days. I believe Austria has. I am cautious to mention names of other countries. But even prior to this moment in time, a few countries have been looking at their, you know their migration policies. So this is not a secret. Anyone can Google this.

Germany has been looking at its migration policies. Holland has been looking. Denmark previously is really trying to understand what are the conditions in Syria so that they can also, I don't know if it's reframe or recalibrate their own migration policies and determine, is it safe for returns and can Syrians be sent back now? If people were to choose to go back, what are'm going back to, you know, mom and dad or my brothers and sisters that were, you know, five years old before and now they're teenagers. Like the heartwarming story. So many of my colleagues, my team, you know, are going back right now and reuniting with family. And it's so touching. I think a lot of people had lost hope. There was a clear disillusionment, I would say, with the international system, very demoralized before this. But I do worry that what people are going back to now, you know, the country needs reconstruction, it needs development, it's been destroyed. So there really isn't in certain areas much to go back to. That's not the case for all parts of Syria. Inflation has hit the country hard. So generally economic insecurity in Syria and outside, which also adds to some of the push-pull factors for some Syrians that have struggled also outside of the country, especially in neighboring countries, unable to afford basic services, basic amenities. You have decimated infrastructure, so public infrastructure,

schools, very little job prospects, and across the health system, obviously, and I'm a public health practitioner, so this has been my area of focus for many, many years now is the hospital and healthcare infrastructure that's almost completely collapsed in certain areas. We talked to a young man named Omar earlier in the show who's 29 years old. He said his hometown is the most beautiful place in the world. But he's been in Europe since he was about 19 or 20. He has a whole life there. And so this is going to be a very, very hard call for someone like this young man. I imagine you're going to hear those types of stories again and again and again over the coming months and years. who've had children that have been born in other countries now, and there's this identity, you know,

where we know, we hear there's something called Syria, that we're originally from there, what that actually means, you know, they may be too young to process that. It's a tough decision then to kind of uproot them all over again, especially when some people, you know, some of the ones in Jordan and Lebanon, you know, they're on their fourth or fifth, sixth displacement. They've started their lives over multiple times. So some also just want stability in any form. So to then also be introduced to a different form of stability all over again, I think it's just there's only so much a person can handle. Dr. Amani Khadur is the director of Syria Relief and Development.

She's also an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Avishai Artsy made our show today. He was edited by Amina El-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and Rob Byers. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.