Nearly two years after Bashar al-Assad's ouster, the Syrians who rushed to go back home are discovering that what they left behind is no longer what they remember — and that coming home to a country fresh out of war comes with its own challenges. "I regret coming back," Samer told Euronews. "In Turkey I was making about $1,000.
Today my income doesn't surpass $250-300." Samer* returned from Turkey after the fall of al-Assad's regime. His colleague Mustafa returned from Egypt at the same time. Working side by side in the same Damascus barbershop, they have reached opposite conclusions about whether they made the right choice.
Mustafa lives in his family home and pays no rent. He is back working for the barber who trained him. There he earns around $300 a month, or roughly twice what remained after Cairo rent ate into his Egyptian wages.
He does not regret coming back. "My dream is to be able to buy a motorbike for $400, and I still can't, just so I can save on transport fares," he said. "I ran into a harsh reality.
Barbershops here do not offer the services I used to provide, and the wages are so low they do not even cover the cost of getting from my home in Maraba, in rural Damascus, to the Mezzeh district in the heart of the capital, a distance of around 20 km," he explained. "My whole life has changed: the cost of living is high, infrastructure is weak and there are constant power cuts, and electricity is essential to the work of a barber." The end of al-Assad's rule in December 2024 prompted one of the fastest mass returns of refugees and displaced people in recent history. By the end of May 2026, UNHCR counted roughly 1.67 million Syrians who had returned from neighbouring countries, alongside 1.92 million internally displaced people who had gone back to their areas of origin.
That adds up to nearly 3.6 million people mostly in Aleppo, Idlib, rural areas near Damascus and the capital itself. They all returned to a country the World Bank estimates has sustained $108 billion in direct physical damage, with reconstruction needs of around $216 billion — or roughly 10 times Syria's entire GDP in 2024. Homes remain damaged or destroyed, power cuts are frequent, civil administration is dysfunctional and formal employment is scarce.
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