Thousands of Syrians tried to begin the long journey back to their homes yesterday after the end of 13 years of civil war, with huge queues forming to get into the country.
Dramatic pictures showed hundreds of Syrians with bags and suitcases gathered on the Lebanese border hoping to cross back into their country.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said there is already some evidence of Syrians returning.
It has verified 34,000 returning home in the first eight months of 2024 and says the ‘actual figure may be significantly higher’.
‘Spontaneous returns to Syria are expected to continue throughout 2025,’ the UN refugee agency added in its assessment of the country.
Video footage shows traffic jams are cropping up in some areas as refugees scramble to return home.
Syrian rebels seized the capital Damascus unopposed on Sunday, sending fleeing after a 13-year civil war and six decades of his family’s autocratic rule.
Thousands of people in cars and on foot congregated at a main square in Damascus waving and chanting ‘Freedom’.
Deposed president Bashar al-Assad and his family fled the country and have been given asylum in Moscow, Russian state media confirmed.
Top rebel commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani’s group was once Syria’s branch of al Qaeda but has softened its image to reassure members of minority sects and foreign countries.
Rob McNeil, deputy director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said that it is too soon to know what effect Assad’s deposition will have on Syria’s population.
He said: ‘The fundamental question is what happens next, and we obviously can’t know that. In the optimistic scenario, that this is the beginning of a period of greater stability for Syria, then we may actually see return migration beginning to happen.
‘The flip side is, if this is the harbinger of another period of greater chaos in Syria, then there is still a large number of people in the country who have not left, many of whom may feel unsafe and may try to leave the country.’
Mr McNeil said most of these refugees would likely seek safety in neighbouring countries, such as Lebanon and Turkey, and for those that did come to Europe it is expected that the majority would travel to Germany.
He added: ‘However a share of people might attempt to come to the UK, and if so the expectation would be that they would probably try to do so via the same way that other people try to enter the UK to claim asylum, which in recent times has commonly been small boats.’
Assad’s downfall spells uncertainty for the millions of refugees estimated to have fled Syria since the brutal civil war began 14 years ago, experts have said.
Almost 400,000 Syrians have left their homes since rebel forces launched a major offensive last week, sparking fears that thousands could flee to the UK and Europe in the coming months.
However experts believe that if deposed president Bashar al-Assad’s downfall leads to more stability in the country then it could have the opposite effect, with Syrians returning home in their thousands.
An estimated seven million Syrians have fled Assad’s murderous regime since the civil war began in 2011 – most of them to refugee camps in neighbouring countries such as Turkey and Jordan.
More than a million have since settled in Europe, with a majority in Germany. Between 2015 and 2021, 20,319 Syrian migrants came to the UK under a government relocation scheme.
A further 9,766 Syrians have been granted asylum in the UK in the last three years after arriving irregularly, with Syrian nationals making up about eight per cent of small boat arrivals in the last six years.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: ‘We can expect tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of those displaced, or who flee from the new regime, to make their way to the EU and UK – both legally and illegally.
‘Many will want to join the 20,000 who came in 2015/16 as part of the Syrian resettlement scheme.’
There are some signs that this may already be happening. Cyprus, one of the nearest gateways to Europe, has already seen a surge in Syrians fleeing from neighbouring Lebanon following conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, has also warned that ‘further military escalation risks mass displacement’ if the country descends into conflict following Assad’s downfall.
However, he said there is ‘cautious hope’ that it could mark a new chapter in Syria’s history, with those who previously fled the war now hoping to return to their country.
He said: ‘To those displaced, this moment renews the vision of returning to homes once lost. To families separated by war, the beginnings of reunions bring hope.’
Sir John Jenkins, senior fellow at Policy Exchange [must leave in if used] and a former UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that if stability is restored to Syria ‘there’ll be the basis for orderly returns – which is what Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan all desperately want’.
He added: ‘Now’s the time for a concerted international effort – led by Jordan and the Gulf states – to stabilise the situation in the interests of Syrians themselves.
‘That will serve our interests too. It will help Lebanon reduce Hezbollah’s influence. And it will create a buffer against Iran. If that doesn’t work, then brace yourself.’
The Assad police state – one of the harshest in the Middle East with hundreds of thousands of political prisoners – melted away overnight.
Bewildered and elated inmates poured out of jails after rebels blasted away locks on their cells. Reunited families wept and wailed in joy.
Newly freed prisoners were filmed at dawn running through the Damascus streets holding up the fingers of both hands to show how many years they had been in prison.
US President Joe Biden cheered Assad’s fall but acknowledged that it was also a moment of risk and uncertainty.
The US Central Command said its forces conducted dozens of airstrikes on Islamic State targets in central Syria on Sunday.
In a statement, the CENTCOM said its strikes were aimed to ensure that the Islamic State does not take advantage of the current situation in Syria.
Jubilant supporters of the revolt crowded Syrian embassies in various cities around the world, lowering red, white and black Assad-era flags and replacing them with the green, white and black flag flown of his opponents.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Assad’s fall was thanks to blows Israel had dealt to Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, once the lynchpin of Assad’s security forces.
‘The barbaric state has fallen,’ French President Emmanuel Macron said.
Supporters of the rebels who toppled Assad have entered some Syrian embassies around the world to hoist their flag.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the fall of the ‘barbaric regime’ and called for ‘peace and stability’.
Syrian opposition leaders had agreed to guarantee the safety of Russian military bases and diplomatic institutions in Syria, a Kremlin source told state media.
But some Russian war bloggers said the situation around the bases was extremely tense and the source did not say how long the security guarantee lasted.
A deal to secure Russia’s air base in Syria’s Latakia province and its naval facility at Tartous on the coast would come as a relief to Moscow.The facility is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and replenishment hub, and Moscow has used Syria as a staging post to fly its military contractors in and out of Africa.
Losing Tartous would be a serious blow to Russia’s ability to project power in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Africa, say Western military analysts.
Influential Russian war blogger ‘Rybar’, who is close to the Russian Defence Ministry and has over 1.3 million followers on his Telegram channel, said the situation around the bases was a serious cause for concern whatever Moscow’s official line.
‘Russia’s military presence in the Middle East region hangs by a thread,’ Rybar said.
Rescuers are battling to liberate Syria’s alleged hellhole the ‘Red Prison’, but rebels who freed caged women and children reportedly still can’t access the men trapped.
Saydnayah Prison near Damascus – nicknamed the ‘Human Slaughterhouse – is said to contain ‘highly secured underground’ cells in its Red Building.
Unverified footage reportedly shows rebels ‘opening cells one by one’ by breaking down walls, and they are said to have rescued ‘hundreds of inmates, including women and young children’.
But there are men trapped in cells three floors underground in a section named the ‘Red Prison’, some have said.
The military prison, dubbed the ‘industrial torture chamber’, has reportedly seen between 5,000 to 13,000 inmates hanged since 2011, according to AlJazeera.
Heartbreaking video showed a toddler walking out of the unlocked cell doors looking confused as rebel soldiers shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ – meaning ‘God is greatest’ – as they free hundreds of inmates.
It comes as an alleged Russian plot to spread fake news of an Assad ‘plane crash’ has been uncovered.
The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine posted on X to claim Russia ‘covered their trail’ of helping Assad escape by spreading false reports that he died in a crash.