The syrian force displacement in the middle east: Past, present and future

By Siqiao Liang

In early 2011, the Syrian civil war erupted. Numerous militias emerged. Civilians died. People fled. In the past decade, Syrians have become the biggest group of refugees in the world. Most of the displaced Syrians live within the Middle East region. This book asks two big questions: first, what are the challenges for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey toreturn to Syria and how can they be overcome? Second, what
are the livelihood challenges for Syrian refugees in these countries and how can they be overcome?
The Syrian Forced Displacement in the Middle East is an exhaustive essay based on more than two hundred days of fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey through interviews with more than a thousand refugees and locals, as well as officials from government, nongovernment, and international organizations between 2019 and 2023. It narrates Syrians' refugeehood and suggests steps to move forward in the issues of refugee protection and refugee return.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metrópolis Libros
• Release date: Jan 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9786316505521

Book preview

Preface

I thank all the Syrians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Turks, as well as people of all nationalities who participated in or supported my research over the full five years from 2019 to 2023. I thank my family and closest friends.

I thank Dr. Garay Menicucci, the knowledgeable historian of the Middle East who introduced me to the studies of the region and of refugees. Dr. Menicucci supervised my research from 2019 to 2021 at the Affiliated High School of Peking University, Beijing.

Over the period of 2021 to 2023 at New York University Abu Dhabi, I took courses and had numerous conversations with migration studies Professors Kristin Surak, George Jose, Sarah Valdez, David FitzGerald, and Susan Ossman, legal studies Professor Rosemary Byrne, as well as my advisor Professor Laure Assaf.

In 2022, I conducted research at the Jordanian Higher Population Council, during which I encountered various local, national, and international organizations and participated in several conference events. The development of this book project also benefited from my participation in the 2022 conference Exiles, Migrants, and Refugees from Syria convened by Professor Dawn Chatty.

I thank Haewon Yoon from New York University Abu Dhabi and Zijie Zhang from Emory University for reviewing my chapter drafts. I wrote this book when I was 20 years old. There could be mistakes. I welcome all criticisms and suggestions. The conclusions this book presents derive only from my personal research. This book project is not affiliated with any institution.

I cherish all my memories from working on this book project, from my fieldwork during the pandemic and the earthquake. To pursue my research, I moved to live in the Middle East for four years. There were two times when I almost lost my life for this project, once in an imminent car accident in Jordan and once from a bacterial infection in Turkey.

Lastly, I come from China. I published my first refugee studies book Ways of Refuge (2023) in Beijing. This is my identity as a researcher, as Chapter 5 will show: I believe in the capacity and the potential of Chinese people, young adults in particular, to contribute to global refugee protection; I believe in the values of Chinese culture in contributing to the solution of the refugee issue.

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

The Syrian Forced Displacement in the Middle East

In early 2011, the Syrian civil war erupted. Numerous militias emerged. Civilians died. People fled—from the war, from poverty, from ISIS, from opposition forces, from the Syrian government, and from the US and Russian troops. Many moved across international borders. By 2023, 6.8 million Syrians were recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), becoming the biggest group of refugees in the world¹. Numerous other internationally displaced Syrians were not registered with UNHCR. Most Syrian refugees live in the Middle East: 3.6 million in Turkey², 1.5 million in Lebanon³, 1.4 million in Jordan⁴, 268,000 in Iraq⁵, 148,000 in Egypt⁶. Outside these countries, the highest number of recorded Syrians, about a million, live in Europe⁷.

This book is about Syrian refugees in the Middle East, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey in particular. I chose these three countries in consideration of several regional and international factors. First, all three, sharing long borders with Syria, are commonly the first countries, oftentimes also the final destinations, where displaced Syrians settle down. When refugees are in these neighboring states, their return is more concerning and imminent. Second, in all three countries—and only in these three—are Syrian refugees numbered in millions. In total, the three states host three-quarters of all Syrian refugees globally and some 90% of all Syrian refugees in the Middle East region. Thirdly, all three are arguably middle-income countries located in the Global South, without sufficient capacity to host this many refugees. More of their similarities will be discussed in the rest of the book.

In this book, I try to narrate Syrians’ refugeehood and suggest steps to move forward. The book asks two big questions: first, what are the challenges for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to return to Syria and how can they be overcome? Second, what are the livelihood challenges for Syrian refugees in these countries and how can they be overcome? I first asked myself these questions in 2019, and I am still working to find the answers. But to partially understand these, I spent more than two hundred days conducting fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. I met up with and talked to more than a thousand refugees and locals. I approached numerous government, nongovernment, and international organizations. I hereby present some outcomes.

Roadmap & Research Methods

The first section (Chapters 1 & 2) of the book explores the obstacles that prevent Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey from returning to their homeland. Following the evolution of the structure of governance in Syria from the dawn of the civil war to today, the section seeks to map out how, in a realistic way, the governance of Syria could be further developed for the interests of Syria as a whole while facilitating refugee return. Chapter 1 first introduces conflicts and governance during the Syrian civil war. It then describes the de-escalation of war and the creation of the current delicate stability in Syria. The chapter examines the legitimacy of the current Syrian government as well as its current governance. To study these, I made a critical examination of the Middle East Journal’s chronology over the whole decade-long period of 2010-2020. The chronology is based primarily on news released by major global and Middle Eastern media channels. To capture the sociopolitical and international dynamics in and around Syria during the civil war, I also examined key texts including Christopher Phillips, The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East, Nikolaos Van Dam, Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria, Baczko et al., Civil war in Syria: Mobilization and Competing Social Orders, Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience, Leïla Vignal, War-torn: The Unmaking of Syria, and Romano et al., Conflict, Democratization, and the Kurds in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Chapter 2 deals with the future governance of Syria. Following Chapter 1, it identifies the gap between the Syrian government and Syrians against it—many of whom are refugees; it identifies the gap between the existing governance and a more ideal version of governance. The chapter involves examining both the ostensible aspirations of refugees and the root needs for governance in solving the prolonged regional refugee displacement. It probes the perspectives of refugees on the Syrian civil war, the Syrian government, and the conditions upon which they would return. Following these, the chapter identifies the priorities the Syrian government should focus on now. While Chapter 1 considers the causes of the prolonged displacement of Syrian refugees in the Middle East, Chapter 2 draws a roadmap for their massive return. To do so, I mainly rely on three of my datasets: 177 qualitative interviews I conducted in Turkey from December 2022 to March 2023 (Code: I-101 to I-277); 55 qualitative interviews I conducted in Jordan from June to August 2022 (Code: I-601 to I-655); 23 qualitative interviews I conducted in Syria, Lebanon, France, and Switzerland from July to August 2022 (Code: I-501 to I-523). All the interviews lasted from 10 minutes to 2 hours, with an average of around 20 minutes.

The second section (Chapters 3 & 4) of the book explores the livelihood challenges of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The section establishes a framework to understand and categorize the various challenges they encounter. Chapter 3 frames the forced displacement of Syrian refugees in the Middle East as a protection crisis for the rights of refugees. The chapter identifies numerous factors causing this crisis that are internal to human societies and categorizes them into five dimensions: legal barriers, socioeconomic challenges, sociopolitical challenges, transregional -historical constraints, and international political constraints. To explore these, this chapter involves the examination of hundreds of journal articles and book chapters published in the past decade on the Syrian forced displacement in the three countries. The chapter also relies heavily on my personal datasets: the same three I used in Chapter 2; 52 qualitative interviews I conducted in Jordan from April to November 2019 (Code: I-801 to I-852); my field observations and interviews with 36 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey from April 2019 to March 2023 (Code: I-901 to I-936). Chapter 4 characterizes the exacerbation of the protection crisis by exploring the impact of external, namely natural, factors on Syrian refugees. Chapter 4 includes two case studies: the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake. To study the disproportionate impact of the pandemic, I rely on my data from interviews with 20 refugees in Jordan and Lebanon from May 2020 to May 2021 (Code: I-701 to I-720). Furthermore, over the years of the pandemic, I was organizing an online tutoring project to support refugee students in Jordan in their preparation for the Jordan college entrance examination. This required me to work with and talk to numerous refugee students and NGOs in Jordan on a daily basis, which provided me with first-hand knowledge of refugees during the pandemic. To study the disproportionate impact of the earthquake on refugees, I conducted fieldwork in Nurdağı—the town at the earthquake center—and Gaziantep city nearby. In Nurdağı, I conducted fieldwork in both the refugee camp and the Turkish settlement established after the earthquake. In the refugee camp, I witnessed the establishment of education facilities and helped with the first week of refugee students’ classes. I was able to visit all camp facilities and familiarize myself with the details of the whole settlement. I talked to between 5% and 10% of all refugee residents in the camp. I visited 18 Syrian households to conduct interviews (Code: I-401 to I-418). On average, each household had four to five members. In the Turkish settlement, I lived and ate together with local families. They introduced me to all the facilities in their settlement and the details of the town. In total, I interviewed 17 Turks, including both service workers in the Syrian camp and ordinary Nurdağı residents (Code: I-419 to I-435). I met with and talked to more. In Gaziantep city, I visited different types of communities and interviewed 69 Syrian refugees in total (Code: I-301 to I-369). All this in-person fieldwork was conducted in March 2023, but from February through August of that year, I continued tracking the situation in Nurdağı and Gaziantep through my personal connections with Syrians and Turks there.

The third section (Chapter 5) of the book seeks to shed some light on solutions to the stalemates of the protection and the return of Syrian refugees in the Middle East. As a response to the second section, this chapter demonstrates possible ways to advance the realization of the rights of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. At the micro level, I explore the role of social nonmovement and informal economic networks of refugees. To study these, I again rely on my own datasets, in addition to the examination of existing literature and frameworks. At the meso level, I explore the role of communities, with a particular focus on transnational communities and transnational solidarities. To study this, I shift to a practitioner perspective. I conduct two case studies. Both were projects supporting Syrian refugees in the Middle East that I organized in China for years. Lastly, as a response to the first section and to the ultimate issue of refugee return, at the macro level, I explore the prospective, positive role of China.

Author’s Datasets & Coding

Note: Most of the interviews were conducted in Arabic and English. Some of the interviews were conducted in French and Turkish. Sometimes an Arabic-English or a Turkish-English interpreter helped the author with the interviews.

1 UNHCR. (n.d.). Refugee Statistics. Retrieved from: www.unhcr.org (2023, September 10).

2 UNHCR. (n.d.). Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Turkey. Retrieved from: www.unhcr.org (2023, September 10).

3 UNHCR. (n.d.). UNHCR Lebanon at a Glance. Retrieved from: www.unhcr.org (2023, September 10).

4 Jordan Times. (2014, September 25). Higher Population Council says Syrian refugees number 1.4 million.

5 UNHCR. (n.d.). Operational Overview Iraq. Retrieved from: data.unhcr.org (2023, September 10).

6 UNHCR. (n.d.). Refugee Context in Egypt. Retrieved from: www.unhcr.org (2023, September 10).

7 UNHCR. (2021, March 18). Syria Refugee Crisis – Globally, in Europe and in Cyprus.

Section I

Syrian Refugees and Syria—Challenges and Prospects of Return

Chapter 1

Governance and Conflicts during the Civil War

This chapter examines the changing governance of Syria throughout the civil war. The first part identifies key forces during the war and their supporters. The second part examines the relations among the three most important forces. The third part examines the governance of different actors in Syria and concludes that, by 2023, the Syrian government remains as the most realistic and appropriate option for Syrian governance. The part ends with a preliminary analysis of opportunities and challenges for the government to enhance its governance to unify the country and Syrian people, thereby paving the road for the next chapter, where I introduce the prerequisites for the return of Syrian refugees in the Middle East.

Part 1: Key Forces in the Civil War

This part identifies six key groups of actors, out of hundreds of forces, in the civil war: the Syrian government backed by Russia and Iran, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) backed by Turkey, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) backed by the US, the Islamic State (ISIS), the Nusra Front, and the Islamic Front. Though with changing names, all of them were active throughout most periods of the war.

Figure 1: Key Actors during the Syrian Civil War.

Source: Organized by the author.

The Syrian government, Russia, and Iran

The Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad since 2000, has been Syria’s only legitimate representative in the United Nations throughout the decade-long civil war. Even at their apogees, none of the other Syrian forces ever received a comparable level of international recognition. Yet recognition did not necessarily translate to good governance. Some Syrians started to express dissatisfaction with the regime in late 2010⁸, followed by digital campaigns requesting government reform⁹. The campaigns soon developed into protests requesting the resignation of President al-Assad and clashes between pro-government groups and protestors¹⁰. Opposition groups expanded in the coming years, with which the Syrian government had constant clashes¹¹ and occasional ceasefires¹². The government had no hesitation in combating both moderate and extremist opposition groups¹³. The government once lost most of the Syrian territory to different opposition forces but managed to regain it as of the end of the 2010s through land-people exchange deals with opposition groups¹⁴, by force¹⁵, and through negotiations of annexation¹⁶.

The Syrian regime has been supported by Russia and Iran. Russia first sent military assistance to regime forces¹⁷ and then sent troops directly in 2015¹⁸. The Russian-Syrian coalition fought together against moderate opposition forces¹⁹ and ISIS²⁰. Iran provided the Syrian government with military and economic support during the civil war²¹. Many Iranian soldiers died in Syria fighting alongside pro-government forces²². The Iranian Shi‘a government’s support of the Syrian ‘Alawi government, grounded on the fact that both faced the threat of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, contributed to the agenda of the Shi’ite Revolution²³. Iran mobilized Shi‘a fighters across the region to fight Syrian opposition groups²⁴. In addition, Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah deemed the Syrian regime indispensable for the regional anti-Israel campaign. The collaboration of the Syrian regime, Iran, and Russia has been driven both by their common sectarian-ideological interests opposing extremist Sunni Islamism and by the hostile US foreign policy²⁵.

Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Turkey

Syrian opposition groups formed the Syrian National Council (SNC) in Turkey in late 2011²⁶. The SNC recognized the Free Syrian Army, the coalition of opposition forces, as the military organization of the rebels, while the latter recognized the SNC as its political organization²⁷. The FSA was recognized by the US, France, the European Union, and 1/3 of the Arab League countries in 2012²⁸.

Turkey has been a key supporter and protector of the FSA since the beginning of the Syrian civil war²⁹. Weapons were transported to FSA fighters from Turkey³⁰. Because of its support for the FSA, Turkey had conflicts with the Syrian government as of the dawn of the 2010s³¹, which Syria considered military intervention³². The FSA and Turkey also fought against ISIS³³. Though once having a Kurdish leader ‘Abd al-Baset Sayda³⁴, the SNC and FSA (subsequently known as the Syrian National Army, SNA) later clashed with Kurdish forces³⁵, resonating with Turkey’s military action against Syrian Kurds in northern Syria³⁶. The FSA claimed to have no connection with the Nusra Front that bombed numerous civilians³⁷, but its allies Southern Front³⁸ and Turkey³⁹ might have coordinated with the Nusra Front.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the United States

Northeastern Syria has been dominated by Kurds, who lead the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Syrian Kurds, an ethnic minority, have their distinctive needs. Kurdish leaders avowed for minority rights during the Arab League meeting⁴⁰, and a key force in the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), sought to establish an autonomous state⁴¹. Although the Syrian regime once granted citizenship to Kurds in eastern Hasaka in 2011⁴², confrontations took place continuously⁴³, especially after the overall victory against ISIS⁴⁴. Nevertheless, the tension between the regime and the SDF seldom turned into large-scale clashes⁴⁵.Additionally, clashes between Kurdish forces and Islamic forces occurred from time to time⁴⁶. While the Kurds collaborated with some moderate opposition groups in certain areas, they could clash with other groups in different places⁴⁷.

Many confrontations the SDF engaged in during the civil war were with ISIS, for which it fought alongside and gained substantial assistance from the United States⁴⁸. The US, officially standing firm in combating ISIS, deemed the SDF indispensable⁴⁹. Moreover, Turkey frequently attacked the SDF. Turkey was historically fighting against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish force which it designated as a terrorist organization⁵⁰. Turkey worried about cooperation between PKK and Syrian Kurdish forces since the beginning of the civil war⁵¹. In fact, Syrian Kurds did seek help from PKK to combat ISIS⁵². Thus, while Syrian Kurds were fighting against ISIS, Turkey attacked both⁵³ and became a critic of the US⁵⁴.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)

The Syrian government, the FSA, and the SDF have always been in a hostile relationship with ISIS. ISIS started its major expansion in Syria in late 2013⁵⁵ and has attacked government-controlled areas numerous times since then⁵⁶. In the oil field in northeastern Syria, ISIS encountered both the Syrian government⁵⁷ and Kurdish forces⁵⁸. The conflicts between ISIS and the Syrian government as well as the Kurdish force lasted through the 2010s⁵⁹. Similarly, the FSA rejected ISIS in 2014⁶⁰, and clashes occurred between them frequently⁶¹.

Yet ISIS had intricate relationships with other opposition forces. ISIS once collaborated with some, but by early 2014, it was at odds with forces such as Suqur al-Islam⁶². In 2014, ISIS attacked some groups belonging to the Islamic Front⁶³, especially Ahrar al-Sham⁶⁴. ISIS and the Nusra Front, both militant Islamist groups, clashed in early 2014⁶⁵, though soon mediated by the jihadi group leadership⁶⁶. Later that year, with the Nusra Front making some compromises⁶⁷, the two coordinated with each other⁶⁸. They again fought together against the Syrian government in 2016⁶⁹ and bombed Damascus in 2017⁷⁰.

As of late 2017, Syrian government forces, Kurdish forces, Russian and US troops all stormed ISIS⁷¹. Both the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) affiliated with the government and the SDF made substantial progress, although there was little evidence of coordination between them⁷². The two forces kept excavating the remaining ISIS fighters as from then⁷³, and the Syrian regime took control of Dayr al-Zawr⁷⁴. ISIS began to fade as a major actor in Syria at the end of 2017. There were still occasional attacks, but the government and the SDF were able to take control swiftly⁷⁵. The general victory against ISIS was achieved by early 2019⁷⁶.

The Nusra Front

The Nusra Front is linked with the al-Qaeda organization. With some fighters from Europe⁷⁷, it started its major expansion in Syria also in late 2013. The Nusra Front was in many ways similar to ISIS. Both were designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the US, and Russia⁷⁸, and both were in conflict