AL GHASSANIYEH, Syria — Under a golden autumn sun, Abdallah Ibrahim harvests fistfuls of hard, green olives with evident delight.

"We were denied this pleasure for the last 14 years," he sighs.

Barrel bombs and constant shelling caused his family and most of the residents of his village, Al Ghassaniyeh, to flee during the second year of the Syrian civil war, which began in 2011. Some stayed, even as Sunni Islamist rebel groups moved in — but they too left after the priest in this historically Christian village was killed.

Ibrahim is one of an estimated 7.4 million Syrians displaced within the country during the war. About 6 million fled abroad as refugees. But after the old regime was ousted last December, Ibrahim and other Syrians started trickling back to their family houses.

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