A Bitter-Sweet Homecoming: Syrian Kurds Return to Their Roots in Afrin

When Dilshad Hamdo walked into the home his father built 30 years ago in Afrin, Syria, there was no place to sit. The stone walls were intact, but the rooms had been stripped bare. Yet, standing in the empty space, there was still a strong sense of relief at being back home.

“I have a lot of memories in this house with my extended family. There is nothing like the house and the land,” Hamdo told Al Jazeera. Hamdo fled Afrin as a young man in early 2018 during a Turkish-led military offensive known as “Operation Olive Branch,” directed against the Kurdish-dominated People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Syrian Democratic Forces. In the ensuing chaos, tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds were displaced, and vacant properties were occupied by other displaced Syrians fleeing government bombardments in Homs and Damascus.

After the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, Syria’s transitional government announced it would facilitate the safe return of those who had fled. Internal security forces assisted the return of hundreds of Syrian Kurdish families from Hasakah to Afrin in April and May. When Hamdo's father checked their property, they found a displaced family from Homs living inside. Rather than engaging in a confrontation, the two families negotiated, and after paying 300 American dollars for travel money, the Hamdos successfully regained their home.

The transitional government in Damascus is actively promoting these returns. Khayro Dawood, the director of the Afrin region, stated that the state's priority is to stop the suffering by reaching out to those in camps, pointing to the implementation of Decree 13 as proof of a new era between Arabs and Kurds in Syria. What started as a trial run of 400 families has now grown into a wave of roughly 12,000 families returning to Afrin via state-organised convoys.

However, government decrees offer little comfort to residents like Zeina Sido, whose four-room house was gutted, looted, and repurposed into a shelter for animals. With no money to rebuild, Sido now lives in a nearby displacement camp. Despite the devastation and the bitter feelings of returning to wreckage, she refuses to leave the region again, holding onto the hope of eventually rebuilding her life on her own land.