FIn two weeks, Umm Hadi lives the nightmare again. It has been 12 years since he last saw his eldest son, detained by Syrian forces at the border crossing between Lebanon and Syria.
Now it has happened again. He says his youngest son, Hadi, was at the al-Tabusiya crossing on October 7, trying to escape Israeli airstrikes and return to Syria to reunite with his family, when he was arrested and taken away by government forces.
Sitting in a refugee camp in an opposition-controlled area in the northwest, Syrian Ummu Hadi is distraught.
“We are sitting here, waiting to learn their fate,” he says. When Israeli bombs started falling, Hadi sent her family back to Syria, but Umm Hadi says she was too afraid to return because she came from a regime-controlled village. Two weeks ago, after airstrikes intensified, his fear of the regime was replaced by a greater fear of never seeing his children again, so he decided to cross alone.
“He wasn't involved in anything,” his mother says. “He was a worker who raised his family. Like his brother, I fear he will lose power.
Hadi and his family have lived in Lebanon for more than a decade, being part of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees who sought refuge in neighboring Lebanon after the civil war began in 2011.
Last month, Israeli airstrikes against Lebanon reversed this flow of refugees. An estimated 425,000 people – mostly women and children – are returning to chaotic and overcrowded border crossings, the UN says.
About 70% of those crossing are Syrian, but Lebanese citizens – most believed to come from Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley – have sought refuge in a country still beset by economic conflicts. , division and violence.
For many Syrians returning home after years of exile, the journey home is perilous.
There have been reports of disappearances, interrogations, detentions, forced recruitment, bribery, beatings and harassment of returning refugees at border crossings and checkpoints in regime territory.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, government forces have arrested and detained Syrian refugees as they attempted to cross Syria.
Thousands of Syrians, too fearful of the regime's wrath or unable to return to their own towns, cities and villages, have to travel through regime territory to reach opposition-held areas in the north. – West of the country.
Asria Awad, an 80-year-old Syrian woman, managed to cross into opposition-held Idlib with 11 members of her family after a 10-day journey from Lebanon.
“We lived in Lebanon for 10 years, but we had to leave because missiles fell on us,” he says.
“We left without taking only the women and children of our family. We crossed into Jusia and I saw with my own eyes the security personnel at the border beating young people, removing them from buses and arresting them.
“My niece and her daughters were detained and we had to pay another $1,000 for their release. Our village is under regime control and our house has been destroyed. On the way here, the soldiers took a young man from our village, so we had to run to the fields of Idlib because it was not safe for us to return.
Farid Sulaiman and his wife Haifa Salal managed to pass through Syria to reach Idlib after a desperate and dangerous journey from Lebanon.
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“We have seven children and we do not want to return to Syria, but we have nowhere to go because the shelters in Lebanon do not accept us,” she says.
After surviving several bombings in Lebanon, Farid and Haifa Salal first took their family to the Masna border crossing, but say they were beaten by guards when they failed to provide the correct documents destroyed in the Israeli attack.
Farid says they were forced to pay smugglers to cross the border, but the Israelis bombed them when they tried to cross the border.
“The glass flew towards my children and almost killed them,” he says.
When they finally managed to enter Syria, Farid says they were taken off a bus at a checkpoint and arrested, only released after Haifa Salal handed over her jewelry to military personnel.
“The situation at all crossings and checkpoints is terrible due to intimidation and exploitation,” says Haifa Salal. “Nothing scares me more than the fear of my husband being arrested, but the situation of women [travelling alone] It's very difficult. We saw three women forcibly taken from buses and taken away by soldiers who never returned.
Now, although they have survived the bombs and checkpoints, the situation for many refugees returning to Idlib is dire.
United Nations At least 4.1 million of the 5 million people living in northwestern Syria depend on humanitarian assistance to meet their basic survival needs, and 1.9 million live in camps and temporary settlements.
“Unfortunately, the suffering of those fleeing the bombing of Syria does not end at the border,” says Rula Amin, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. “A new humanitarian emergency is developing in final destinations where most arrive with very few or no resources.
“They return to a country that has suffered 13 years of conflict, inflation, destroyed infrastructure, real estate and economic crisis. More than 7.2 million Syrians remain displaced inside Syria.
Farid doesn't know who to turn to. “I am from a village in Marat al-Numan, which is under the control of the Syrian regime, and I cannot return there because they are looking for me for compulsory military service,” he says.
“We have no home, no shelter, no clothes, no food. What should we do now?
