What’s preventing Syrian refugees’ return home? Distrust of Assad.
Some mornings Bassam al-Masri walks to a farm at the edge of Jordan’s northern border town of Ramtha and looks across the Yarmuk River valley into Syria. On a clear day, he can see the mosque where he preached and the remains of his house in Daraa 7 miles away.
Although the Syrian refugee could walk to his hometown in two hours, it remains, for him, as unreachable as ever – no matter the recent reconciliation between Arab states and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the resulting promises of safe returns.
“The only guarantee that we could return safely is for Assad to go,” says Mr. Masri, among millions of Syrians living in the Middle East and Europe who long to return home but fear they cannot. “As long as he is present, we are permanently separated from our homeland. He cannot be trusted.”
In interviews and polls, Syrian refugees say they have seen nothing that
