Homs – Dina Abdullah
With tears of joy, a trembling body, mixed emotions, and an inability to sleep, Rand al-Homsi experienced the details of the fall of the Syrian regime and the escape of Bashar al-Assad to Moscow. At that moment, she knew that her return to her city, Homs, in central Syria was inevitable.
Al-Homsi described her first moments upon reuniting with her city, saying, “I knelt in prayer to God when my feet touched the soil of Homs. It was a cherished victory bestowed upon us. For years of exile from Homs, we had great confidence that we would return someday.”
Two months have passed since al-Homsi (36 years old) returned to the al-Waer neighborhood of Homs, her hometown where she had lived for nearly three decades. This return was like a dream come true, but Homs is “sad and destroyed,” needing support to revive its life, as she expressed.
Currently, al-Homsi and her family are temporarily staying in a house near their previous residence in Homs while they finish renovating a small house, the last remnant left intact there before they were forced to leave eight years ago, in a harrowing tale of displacement experienced by thousands.
Death under siege or submitting to displacement
Al-Homsi was not the only one to leave the besieged al-Waer neighborhood in Homs. On March 18, 2017, the first batch of the besieged left the neighborhood towards the city of Jarablus in eastern Aleppo countryside and other areas.
The exit followed an agreement, organized by Russia, for the evacuation of opposition fighters from the neighborhood towards the northern Homs countryside controlled by the opposition, or to Idlib or Jarablus within the safe zone in northern Aleppo near the Turkish border, in exchange for lifting the siege.
Those besieged in al-Waer suffered greatly during the four years of siege preceding their evacuation, enduring hardships that began with a lack of available resources for survival, such as food and drink, and ending with shells and rockets falling upon them during any military escalation.
Al-Homsi and her family were among the first batch to leave al-Waer accompanied by her injured husband, his family, and her two children, embarking on a journey for a new life in search of safety and living with dignity and freedom, leaving behind a home and memories turned to rubble and ash by the brutal machinery of war.
“I remember that day when the aircraft was hovering above al-Waer, and shortly after, a rocket fell in the neighborhood where I lived. My husband sustained severe injuries leading to severed tendons in his right foot, which resulted in a permanent disability. After that incident, we decided not to stay in Homs,” the lady told Enab Baladi.
Simultaneously, as the residents were being evacuated from the neighborhoods of Homs, religious figures including the director of Homs Awqaf at the time, Issam al-Masri, and Father Michel Naaman, attended and entered the buses of civilians preparing to leave, addressing them with “love for the homeland and loyalty to it,” which led to verbal altercations between the residents and them, ending with their expulsion from the buses.
Adaptation for life continuation
Al-Homsi and her family began their displacement journey in Jarablus, eastern Aleppo countryside. From one house to another, they, like millions of Syrians, suffered difficulties in settling down and moving between residences until they finally settled in a house where they spent about five years before the regime’s fall.
She also experienced living in a tent during her years of displacement, spending about seven months there and giving birth to her only daughter in that tent.
The new conditions in Jarablus impacted al-Homsi’s family, as well as many displaced families forced to leave everything behind for survival.
Her children had to drop out of school to help their injured father and work alongside him to meet the family’s needs, while al-Homsi would go to buy supplies and drinking water while the boys worked with their father at a private workshop.
The hardest moments she experienced there included the deaths of her father and older sister in Homs, and her inability to attend their funerals, she said.
The last group of those displaced from al-Waer in Homs arrived at the Zughra camp in western Jarablus countryside on May 22, 2017, numbering 201 families, totaling 1003 individuals.
Incomplete joy
Umm Fawaz returned with her family to the city of al-Qusayr in Homs countryside, but with their tents prepared on the remains of their homes destroyed by Bashar al-Assad’s forces, they began a new journey of suffering amid the ruins and difficulty of living, after years of displacement in the Lebanese Arsal camps.
Umm Fawaz’s situation reflects that of hundreds of thousands of families, waiting for hope of return and safe shelter after the fall of the Assad regime, living between the cold of tents and the dream of returning to their destroyed homes in their original cities.
Despite the arrival of the holy month of Ramadan in Homs after years of displacement and deliverance from the Assad regime, the volunteer in the Syria Civil Defence, Raed al-Obaid, feels a deep bitterness because his home is destroyed and uninhabitable.
Al-Obaid had hoped to return in better conditions and gather with his family at the Iftar table, but the ousted Assad forces and their allies destroyed cities, towns, and homes in most Syrian governorates, shattering the dreams of Syrians of housing and security.
Despite the difficult circumstances, hope remains for a future in which Syrians can rebuild all the destruction and devastation, according to al-Obaid.
Efforts to restore life
Homs is the largest Syrian governorate in area and is among the most devastated in Syria. There are no recent statistics on the extent of the damage, but according to an atlas published by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in 2019, there are 3,082 buildings completely destroyed, 5,750 severely damaged, and 4,946 partially damaged, totaling 13,778 damaged buildings.
The Damascus provisional government appointed Abdul Rahman al-Ama as the governor of Homs, and government institutions began to gradually resume their normal work. However, the old destroyed neighborhoods continue to suffer from the lack of electricity in some areas, a lack of water access, and no landline communication.
The governorate launched the “Homs is Our Homeland” campaign aimed at bringing life back to the city once again, which included several activities such as repairing and installing street lighting in vital areas of the city, rehabilitating al-Hamra Park (Duck Square), and removing war debris.
The Ministry of Interior in the Damascus interim government, in cooperation with the Military Operations Administration, conducted a wide sweep operation in the neighborhoods of Homs city in search of war criminals and those involved in crimes who refused to hand over their weapons and review settlement centers.
The campaign targeted war criminals and those evading justice, along with hidden ammunition and weapon caches, following reports of the presence of elements from the former regime’s forces in several locations in Homs who had not surrendered their weapons weeks after the settlement centers opened to avoid escalation.
The campaign included heavy gunfire into the air, causing panic among women and children, as well as the arrest of several individuals, all of whom were men, including civilians, while recording violations related to the unofficial confiscation of vehicles.
People of Homs recall displacement suffering on ruins of their homes Enab Baladi.
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