Impossible Choices: Navigating unsafe return in northern Syria

More than fourteen years of war have transformed large parts of Syria into one of the world’s most lethal landscapes. Across cities like Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, neighbourhoods are scarred by missile strikes and reduced to rubble. As Syrians return to the places they fled years ago, reconstruction is slowly beginning.

‘The worst thing that happens to Syrians is they become numbers,’ Bilal Abboud, a Syrian survivors’ rights advocate, told FairPlanet in a video call.

Abboud considers himself a lucky person. He was living in Al-Qusayr, one of the last neighbourhoods of Deir-ez-Zor held by government forces when it was besieged by Islamic State (ISIS). In 2015, his family fled to Damascus. Two years later, his life changed when a mortar shell exploded while he was returning home from college. His friend died and others were injured. Abboud was taken by Red Cross staff to a rehabilitation centre in Lebanon. To save his life, both of his legs were amputated.

Rehabilitation ‘played a huge role in my case,’ he said. It mobilised him into advocacy. At twenty-eight years old, Abboud is studying civil engineering and working in landmine and explosives risk education.

‘It’s really challenging for victims to get back to their normal lives,’ Abboud said. Many students using prosthetics struggle to get around the city, and are dropping out of school. ‘They lock down their dreams and stay at home, or have small projects,’ Abboud said. He’s seen even the most willful people affected.

Invisible wounds are only beginning to show. Abboud recalls a boy he met in Damascus, who was playing football with his neighbours and siblings. Setting up a makeshift goalpost, ‘they pushed it hard onto a mine,’ Abboud said. It exploded, killing all of the boy’s siblings. When Abboud met the boy, he wouldn’t speak. ‘He couldn’t get back to school.’

‘Many people tried to commit suicide,’ he continued. ‘They had been using prosthetics that broke. They don’t have the money, and many projects have closed. They are seeing their families shattered.’

The economic crisis in Syria is mounting, with over 2 million internally displaced persons facing cuts to food aid. Some farmers have been unable to get prosthetic legs, Abboud said, risking explosives in their fields over letting their families starve.

But Abboud sees potential everywhere.

‘We have to think about how to design the landscape to be friendly for people living with disabilities,’ he said – be it expanding public transit, or normalising ramps and elevators. It’s hard enough to use some ramps even without prosthetics, he teased.

‘Foreign investors are not going to know the Syrian context, so the government should implement laws that protect people with disabilities,’ Abboud added. In 2025, Syria mandated a 2 percent quota for inclusive employment. He thinks this could be increased with remote training and employment for people living in older neighbourhoods that aren’t easily rehabilitated.

‘Our shattered souls have to regain life,’ Abboud said.

A Changed Landscape

Burial holds deep religious significance in Islam and is governed by strict traditions. In Deir ez-Zor, even a cemetery had to be cleared before expansion, having been turned into a battleground during the ISIS siege. When David Francis, an explosives expert and Technical Field Manager for the Syrian chapter of Humanity and Inclusion, arrived with his team, they spent the next two weeks uncovering explosives. Everything had to be detonated before families could safely bury their loved ones. ‘The explosions were heard at the governor’s office,’ Francis told FairPlanet in a video call from Raqqa.

The exact extent is unknown, but about a third of Syrian communities are contaminated with explosives, with at least 141 known minefields, particularly in areas previously controlled by ISIS and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebels, like Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo and Idlib.

Since December 2024, when humanitarian mine action began in earnest, at least 841 people have been killed (257 children) and 1,534 injured (600 children) by explosives according to figures shared with FairPlanet by Syria Mine Action. Most were in farmlands or pastures, with Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) reporting people endangered while pursuing basic livelihoods like collecting truffles.

When the government took over Kurdish SDF-controlled areas this winter, renewed conflict set clearance back. Fighting in Aleppo caused almost 140,000 people to flee, including to overcrowded emergency shelters that were unequipped for winter. Humanitarian teams withdrew and clearance was paused until the spring.

Then flooding around Aleppo and Idlib, and Deir-ez-Zor, damaged thousands of hectares of farmland. Land surveys need to be redone as some explosives have been washed away, Francis said. Some canals have ‘become littered’ with explosives. ‘If you leave it too long, the vegetation will grow again and you won’t be able to get in safely,’ he said.

Even as legacy explosives are cleared, improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, replace them. A suicide belt factory was found in Deir ez-Zor, Francis reported, ‘with repurposed rifle grenades.’ ‘It was very clear these were not legacy. These were new,’ he said.

He sees an absurd normality settling across Syria, with people living alongside weapons that can blow up at any moment. There is a field near a school in Deir ez-Zor where clearance started last year, he shared, where farmers have been tossing explosives and ordnance into a crater. While the field is usually ploughed, 'this one spot is heavily overgrown.' Nobody will go near it.

‘Everybody in the village knows what’s there,’ he said.

Impossible choices

‘It is essential that when we rebuild a house, or a school, or a hospital, we take into consideration that persons with disabilities are left behind, and they should not be,’ Noor Bimbashi, Jordan-based advocacy and policy advisor at Humanity and Inclusion, told FairPlanet. ‘They should be an integral part of Syrian society,’ she said, with nearly a third of Syrians today living with a disability.

Last year, the return of nearly half a million Syrian refugees was celebrated despite ‘hardly any efforts at mine clearance,’ with the UNHCR closed services to Syrians in Lebanon in December 2025, anticipating ‘confirmed or presumed return.’

Bimbashi described once overcrowded refugee camps in Idlib and Aleppo as emptying. But Deir ez-Zor ‘is completely destroyed,’ she said, and reconstruction is slow. On both sides of the Euphrates, the region was long neglected by public health services and has seen meagre humanitarian assistance. MSF, who work with Deir Ez-Zor National Hospital, report that people live ‘in shells of houses and completely unsafe buildings.’

‘We are speaking of an impossible choice,’ Bimbashi said. ‘Shall we stay in a refugee camp with little privacy and decreasing aid? Or return home where contamination is huge, but there are way more limited resources than at a refugee camp?’

Funding cuts also caused two hospitals in Qamishli and al-Hassakeh to close, pushing people toward Raqqa National Hospital. Though the Syrian government dedicated $10 million to rehabilitating three hospitals near Raqqa earlier this year, traveling between communities can take hours, only to find long waitlists for prosthetics and rehabilitation services.

‘At the mental health level, it was already a burden,’ Bimbashi continued. ‘Patients are not only arriving at hospitals because of their injuries. They are also arriving stressed, asking “will the support continue, will we be able to continue our treatment or not?”’

Not Conducive to Return

Since 2024, the UNHCR reports that 1.67 million Syrians have returned from neighbouring countries. Progress is ‘real, but fragile,’ UN Humanitarian Chief Tom Fletcher has said, calling large-scale return ‘a very positive sign of change.’ But lack of funding, he added, strains Syria’s infrastructure as ‘today’s gaps risk becoming tomorrow’s irreversible crises.’

That cautious optimism is tempered by the explosives littering communities. ‘There is a great concern that now refugees will be pushed to return, and refugees who have never encountered ordnance contamination,’ said Aida Burnett-Cargill, the Syria Mine Action’s Area of Responsibility coordinator and part of the Syrian victim assistance working group.

Former Al-Qaeda leader and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa (formerly known as al-Jolani and rebranded as a moderate) has prioritised Syria’s unification, including a ‘no-tent and no-camp’ return policy favouring returnees’ direct integration. Holding its first parliamentary session in July, the transitional government will be tested.

Inclusive disability policy requires closer collaboration between ministries, Burnett-Cargill said, stressing the need for comprehensive disability data. Syria’s devastated health network, meanwhile, has heavily depended on non-governmental organisations and ‘unstable funding.’

Scarce trauma care also impacts explosive clearance operations. Ambulances typically clearance teams. Burnett-Cargill called this ‘more or less an eye-mask prescription.’ Outside of a ‘golden hour’ to reach a hospital, victims face inevitable amputations or die.

‘Mine action is a prerequisite to any and all humanitarian recovery, reconstruction and development,’ said Aida Burnett-Cargill. ‘From the mine action perspective, Syria is not conducive to return.’