AL GHASSANIYEH, Syria — Under a golden autumn sun, Abdallah Ibrahim picks handfuls of hard green olives, savoring a pleasure denied him for 14 years.
Barrel bombs and relentless shelling forced Ibrahim’s family and most villagers from Al Ghassaniyeh to flee in the second year of Syria’s civil war. Some residents stayed despite the arrival of Sunni Islamist rebels; others left after the village priest was killed. Ibrahim is among an estimated 7.4 million Syrians displaced inside the country during the conflict, and roughly 6 million who fled abroad. After the old regime was toppled last December, he and others began returning to their homes.
Many returnees were shocked to find strangers living in their houses. Some of the occupants were fellow displaced Syrians; many were foreign rebel fighters. “If people want to go back to their houses, they cannot live there. Their houses are taken over by somebody else,” says Ibrahim, 65. “We cannot live side by side with them.”
Sorting ownership after years of chaos has become urgent. Officials from the new government have urged refugees abroad to return, but they also need internally displaced Syrians to resettle in their original homes to clarify property claims and reassure minority communities — Christians and Shiites among them — that their homes will be restored.
Ibrahim returned last December, anxious that his family house might have been destroyed by Russian strikes or rebel artillery. The stone and concrete home survived, but he could not go inside. Foreign fighters had moved in. He found that many fruit trees had been ripped out and that the olive groves at the village’s foot were being harvested by fighters. Women, veiled in full niqabs, lived in his house; the male fighters mostly did not speak Arabic, so communication was limited. “I could not communicate with them,” he says.
This pattern repeated across Syria. As battle lines shifted and people fled, Syrian rebel fighters and foreign Islamists from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Morocco and other countries — including thousands of ethnic Uyghurs who fled persecution in China — occupied abandoned homes. Some fighters say they were told by commanders to take empty houses as a reward for helping “liberate” areas.
Earlier this year, all of Al Ghassaniyeh’s roughly 4,000 residents formally applied to Syria’s housing authority to return. Uyghur commanders then spent months securing alternative housing for hundreds of Uyghur families settled in vacant homes, a difficult task amid rising rental costs since the war’s end. Uyghur fighters interviewed in the area said they respected original owners’ claims and would leave if owners returned. “This is not our country. It has many religious groups and ethnic groups already living here, and all of us are equal. If the owners [of this house] come back, then I will leave,” said Bilal, a Uyghur fighter who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect relatives in China.
Still, many Syrians — particularly from minority groups — remain fearful. Denise Khoury, 75, who checked her mother’s house in Jisr al-Shughur, found foreign fighters living inside. “Our neighbors have drunk the milk of this Salafi ideology, and it has become part of their worldview. They do not want us there,” she says.
Even before the war formally ended, some rebel leaders acknowledged the need to address property disputes. In 2022, a Christian parish met with Ahmed al-Sharaa, then a militia leader who later became president, and were promised their rights would be restored. Louay Bisharat, a priest involved in the meetings, says officials recognized that Christians were entitled to recover what had been taken during the chaos. In 2024, Bisharat met with Asaad al-Shaibani, now foreign minister, and soon recovered some churches and lands occupied by fighters.
Complications go beyond occupation. During the conflict, some people sold property on behalf of absent owners or transferred deeds improperly. “During the revolution, there was a lot of playing about with property deeds,” says Zikwan Hajji Hamud, a real estate agent in Jisr al-Shughur. Fighters and families sometimes built new structures on occupied land, leaving the new state with no clear way to compensate them for improvements.
Negotiations over land and harvests have been difficult. At first, foreign occupants sometimes demanded payment — one proposal mentioned $50 per dunam (about a quarter-acre), which owners refused. Mediators, including clergy, worked to reach compromises. A Roman Catholic priest, Fadi Azar, who has long served Syrian parishes, helped negotiate arrangements for Christian landowners. In some cases, agreements allowed fighters to remain through the autumn olive harvest in exchange for a share of the yield. In one arrangement, two-thirds of the harvest would go to the occupants and one-third to the landowner until a set deadline.
In Al Ghassaniyeh, the situation eventually improved. After negotiations and a return process overseen by authorities, Ibrahim and other owners reclaimed their houses and land. The village held celebrations with music and drumming; though some buildings bore war damage and graffiti from passing fighters, residents could begin rebuilding. Ibrahim reported he was able to harvest some olive trees this year after reaching an agreement with those who had been on his land.
The broader challenge remains nationwide: restoring property to rightful owners, dealing with disputed deeds and compensating or rehousing occupants who settled during the war. For minority communities, assurances that they can reclaim their homes are central to whether they will return and rebuild their lives in postwar Syria.