600,000
Syrians Returned Home in 2017, Mostly to Aleppo:
UN
By teleSUR
August
15, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- In the first half of 2017, 602,759 Syrians
displaced by conflict have returned home,
according to reports by the United Nation's
International Organization for Migration
Well
over half, approximately 67 percent, of the
returning refugees have been to the Aleppo
Governorate, where an estimated 405,420
individuals have been registered by the IOM as
having returned. Hama Governorate has recieved
the second highest number of returnees, with
75,209 individuals resettling in their homes.
Within
the Aleppo Governorate, Aleppo City recieved the
highest number of returnees. Backed with Russian
support in a successful offensive to retake the
city, the city was returned to Syrian Government
control in December 2016 after having previously
been under control of the armed opposition.
According to the IOM, the vast majority, 97
percent, of those returning have been able to
return to their own houses. The rest are either
with hosts, squatting in abandoned houses, in
informal refugee settlements, or renting.
While
the rate of return for those displaced by the
war is steadily increasing, the IOM notes that
there are still high rates of displacement in
many areas of the country. They estimate that
during the same period of time, from January to
July of 2017, 808,661 Syrians were displaced.
“IDP
returns have mainly been spontaneous but not
necessarily voluntary, safe or sustainable. As
such, they cannot, at present, be considered
within the context of a durable solutions
framework,” the UN-based organization wrote.
While
the majority of returnees are able to return to
their own secure housing, many still face poor
access to clean water, health services, and food
due to the massive destruction of basic
infrastructure that has taken place.
Around
84 percent of those returning home were
internally displaced within Syria and are
returning due to the shifting boundaries of the
conflict. Another 16 percent returned from
Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, or Iraq.
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Why
Are Syrian Refugees Running Back To This Evil
Dictator Who Likes To Kill Them?
By Caitlin
Johnstone
Al Jazeera,
not often known to rock the establishment boat
when it comes to the official narrative about
Syria, has
published an interesting new report on some
recent findings of the International
Organization for Migration. According to IOM,
nearly 603,000 Syrian refugees returned to their
homes in Syria between January and July of 2017.
And, naturally, those hundreds of thousands of
displaced Syrians who are returning home are all
returning to areas that are securely protected
from the bloodthirsty tyrant Bashar al-Assad by
the Freedom Fighters and Moderate Rebels who
oppose him, right? They’d never willfully return
to an area ruled by a sadistic dictator who
routinely drops barrel bombs on his own people
for no reason and kills children with poison
gas, would they?
Well yes, if you believe the things that the
western mass media have been saying about Assad,
they would. IOM reports that of those displaced
Syrians returning home this year, about 400,000
of them were coming home to their city of
Aleppo, which was fully recaptured by pro-Assad
forces in December.
You remember
Aleppo, don’t you? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t; corporate media outlets
hardly ever talk about it anymore. It’s almost like they want us to forget the
horror stories they told us about how the city that had been occupied by good,
noble freedom fighters was about to be taken by an army of depraved psychopaths
who wanted to
rape women, burn children alive, and
shoot civilians in their homes. Back at the tail end of 2016, though, it was
all you ever heard. If the west didn’t intervene to stop Damascus and Moscow
from retaking East Aleppo from the good-hearted rebels, everyone there would be
raped, tortured, and butchered by the army of the Syrian government.
But oh my my, it
sure is odd and peculiar and funny and interesting that hundreds of thousands of
Syrians can’t wait to get back there. This same bloodthirsty government which
wanted nothing more than to slaughter, rape and destroy them still controls the
region, but people have been running back to rebuild their city anyway.
What’s up with that?
Could we really have been misinformed about what’s been happening in Syria on
such a massive scale? Could the near-unanimous perspective of pundits and
politicians everywhere, the perspective that Bashar al-Assad is a sadistic
tyrant who enjoys slaughtering civilians, be so dead wrong that the behavior of
Syria’s own people seem to contradict it so directly
Continue
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