SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
During the Syrian civil war, millions of Syrians were displaced within the country and millions more fled abroad as refugees. It has been almost a year now since the war ended, and many Syrians are starting to come home. Some have found their houses destroyed. And others have found strangers living in their homes. NPR's Emily Feng and Jawad Rizkallah report on the thorny issue of sorting out what belongs to who after a war.
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: During the nearly 14 years of civil war, Syrians like 53-year-old Yasir Abboud, were forced to abandon their houses.
YASIR ABBOUD: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: In his historically Christian village of Al Ghassaniyah in northern Syria, Abboud says they were subjected to shelling, rockets and barrel bombs, so most people fled. Then other displaced Syrians moved in - rebel Syrian fighters, as well as Islamist fighters and foreign fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Morocco and even thousands of ethnic Uyghur fighters fleeing China. Here's their deputy commander, a man who goes only by his first name, Jalaldeen.
JALALDEEN: (Non-English language spoken).
FENG: He says Syrian rebel commanders told him, your fighters need houses, and you helped with liberating these areas. So go and live in empty houses whose owners left. So when they and other Syrians started trickling back home last December after the war ended, some of them were in for a surprise.
(SOUNDBITE OF ITEMS RUSTLING)
FENG: Sixty-five-year-old Abdallah Ibrahim makes me a strong batch of cardamom-scented coffee...
ABDALLAH IBRAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: ...And recalls finding the Uyghur fighters occupying his house and his olive groves last December. He's a longtime resident and the former mayor of Al Ghassaniyah, the same village Abboud is from.
IBRAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Ibrahim says the women living in his home wore full black niqabs, leaving only their eyes uncovered. The male fighters largely did not speak Arabic, so he couldn't communicate with them. They cannot assimilate with us Syrians, he declares. They are different.
This is why the land issue in Syria is so pressing. The new state wants displaced Syrians to come back to the country. But to do that, they need to clear up what belongs to who after the chaos of war and to reassure Syrian minority groups, like Christians such as Ibrahim, as well as Shiite Muslims, that they, too, can get their homes back.
FADI AZAR: First, they asked $50 per land.
FENG: This is Father Fadi Azar, a Catholic priest who helped with land negotiations. He says the Uyghurs wanted $50 a quarter acre because they argued they'd improved upon the land. After months of delays, Azar reached another agreement.
AZAR: We wait until October. In October, they take the harvest, which is olives, and after that, we'll hand it totally to the people.
FENG: To hand the land back once the Uyghur fighters took the olive harvest. Ibrahim, the former village mayor, was among those waiting. And this October, he got an update from the government. He could get his property back.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR CLOSING)
IBRAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: We went with Ibrahim to Al Ghassaniyah as he went to claim his land. First, he stopped by an old farmhouse. Inside, it's simple, whitewashed walls, a displaced Syrian woman and her brother had been sheltering throughout the war, renting it from the foreign fighters who occupied it. Ibrahim clears his throat and declares formally to her...
IBRAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: ...That the property is now his again. Nadia Shakhol, the woman living in this house, is quiet. She understands this is tantamount to an eviction. She says she will leave peacefully.
NADIA SHAKHOL: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: She explains how her brother is rebuilding the ground floor of their own home just a few miles away, which she fled during the war, in a chain reaction of destruction and displacement that reverberates to this day.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
IBRAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: Ibrahim had also just gotten back some of his olive groves. And he's been savoring this moment, the olive harvest. He planted the trees here himself more than 30 years ago in the red, chalky soil.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
FENG: And under the golden autumn sun, he gathers big handfuls of hard, green olives for pickling, to enjoy in the coming winter months.
IBRAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
FENG: "Harvesting olives is a joy we've been denied for 14 years," Ibrahim sighs. Weeks later, this November, Ibrahim texts back. All of his Christian neighbors have gotten their houses and land back, as well, from the Uyghur fighters.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FENG: And his village held big celebrations. Maybe now, life after war can finally begin.
Emily Feng, NPR News, Al Ghassaniyah, Syria. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
