Untangling Home Ownership in Syria After a Long War

0:00Today on State of the World, untangling homeownership in Syria after a long war.

0:09You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. What if you fled your home because of war and came back to find another family living in it? Should you get your home back? What if they've been there for years? During the more than decade-long civil war in Syria, millions were displaced in the country and millions more fled abroad as refugees. It's been almost a year since the war ended, and many Syrians are starting to come home. Some have found their houses destroyed. Others have found strangers living in their homes.

0:47NPR's Emily Fang takes us to Syria, where they're dealing with the thorny issue of sorting out ownership after a war. During the nearly 14 years of civil war, Syrians like 53-year-old Yasser Aboud were forced to abandon their houses.

1:05In his historically Christian village of al-Ghassaniya in northern Syria, Aboud 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.

1:39He 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. After that, Aboud says any remaining Christian villagers 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. 65-year-old Abdullah Ibrahim makes me a strong batch of cardamom-scented coffee 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-Ghassaniya, the same village a Buddha is from.

2:24Ibrahim 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 the 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.

3:01First, they asked$50 per land. 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. We wait until October. In October, they take the harvest, which is olives. And after that, we'll hand it totally to the people. 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.

3:46We went with Ibrahim to Al Ghassaniya as he went to claim his land. First, he stopped by an old farmhouse. Inside its 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

4:11that the property is now his again. Nadia Shekel, the woman living in this house, is quiet. She understands this is tantamount to an eviction. She says she will leave peacefully.

4:27She explains how her brother is rebuilding the ground floor of their own home just a few miles away, which she fled during the war, and a chain reaction of destruction and displacement that reverberates to this day. 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. And under the golden autumn sun, he gathers big handfuls of hard green olives for pickling to enjoy in the coming winter months.

5:08Harvesting 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.

5:26And his village held big celebrations. Maybe now, life after war can finally begin. Emily Fang, NPR News, El Ghassaniya, Syria

5:44That's the State of the World from NPR Thanks for listening