Growing numbers of politicians in Europe say it is time for more than a million Syrian refugees in the continent to return to their homeland after the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad. Syrians say it’s more complicated than that.
Those who fled the 13-year civil war pointed to the political uncertainty after a rebel offensive swept into Damascus over the weekend — and the damage to infrastructure and housing that has made many parts of the country uninhabitable.
“Everyone I know wants to wait and see,” said Omar al-Hajjar, a 54-year-old mason from Aleppo who is one of the roughly 970,000 Syrians now living in Germany. “The situation in Syria is very tough.”