Syrians displaced by war are returning to find homes occupied by foreign fighters

Syrians displaced by war are returning to find homes occupied by foreign fighters

Emily Feng

Jawad Rizkallah

November 25, 2025 / 8:35 am

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 abroa