Khalid Abdelkarim Sheikh grimaces as he shuffles through the wreck that for generations his family called home, carefully stepping over shattered concrete and debris.
He had dreamt of returning to his house ever since Assad regime forces five years ago drove him and tens of thousands of others out of Saraqib, a small city in north-west Syria. The opportunity finally materialised after rebels toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad in December.
Sheikh’s initial emotion was jubilation: the euphoria of liberation and the hope of normality after being among the millions forcibly displaced during Syria’s brutal civil war. Then reality struck.
“When I first came, I cried because I remembered my home as it used to be. Now look at it,” said Sheikh, 68, pointing to the shell of the single-storey, two bedroom house, pockmarked with bullet holes. “It smells of blood, gunpowder and barrel bombs.”
Saraqib is a microcosm of the destruction blighting cities and towns across Syria, underscoring the Herculean task facing the government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel movement, in seeking to rebuild a bankrupt, hollowed-out state.
Few parts of the country were spared as the Assad regime, supported by Russia, Iran and Iranian-backed militants, bombed and laid siege to rebel-held areas during more than 13 years of conflict. After driving out the inhabitants, regime forces gorged on looting — stripping piping, electrical fittings and whatever else they could sell for scrap.
The devastation is “reminiscent of the way swarming locusts would leave farmland and forests stripped of all edible greenery, leaving nothing but bare earth and branches”, the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry said this month. It described “systematic pillage” co-ordinated by regime forces, including the notorious Fourth Division led by Assad’s brother, Maher.
The result of the destruction in Saraqib is that 68-year-old Sheikh is home, but not in his house. Instead, he and seven family members, including the thin two-year-old grandson on his lap, are surviving the winter cold in makeshift tarpaulin tents.
It is a bittersweet tale repeated across the city. Two months after regime forces fled, Saraqib is a city without windows and doors: no building was left untouched by the ravages of conflict. There is no electricity or water, nor, for the most part, people. Instead, there are mounds of indistinct grey rubble as far as the eye can see.
HTS’s ability to rebuild will affect how quickly millions of others can return. More than 6mn Syrians fled the country during the war, of a prewar population of about 20mn. That fuelled toxic debates about immigration in Europe, while adding to economic and social pressures in resource-poor neighbouring Arab states. Another 7mn were internally displaced.
Even before Assad’s fall, there was growing pressure from countries including Turkey and Lebanon for refugees to return. Since Assad’s regime collapsed, about 270,000 refugees have come back from abroad, and some 600,000 internally displaced people have gone home, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
But the agency’s assessment of displaced people last year found that at least 4.5mn people’s homes needed to be repaired, with many of those seriously damaged. That is just a glimpse of the scale of the harm.
“The returnees we are meeting here face huge challenges to rebuild their lives,” said Céline Schmitt, a UNHCR spokesperson. “Many of them are telling us they want to go back to [their homes], but it’s very difficult for them. Syria is still in a humanitarian crisis.”
When news filtered through that HTS fighters had liberated Saraqib on November 30, three days after the rebels launched their offensive, residents returned in droves, jamming highways into the city. They hugged and danced to revolutionary songs. Friends and families reunited. Tears flowed.
But the rubble was so high in places that they could not move through the streets.
The Syrian Civil Defence, or White Helmets, a volunteer rescue organisation that worked in rebel-held areas during the war, helped clear the worst of the rubble, abandoned weapons and unexploded ordnance.
But two months later, it is largely the most desperate who have returned. “You really have to start from scratch,” said Abul Karim al-Razaz, a civil engineer from Saraqib who estimates that just over 300 families out of a prewar population of 45,000 are back, mainly those who have “nothing”.
“They are trying, maybe installing a door, putting in some shutters,” he said. “They put carpets and blankets where there are no doors, so they can move here instead of paying rents elsewhere.”
Old generators chug as men begin the arduous task of repairing some of the damage around what was the main market in the town centre, one of the city’s only pockets of life.
A makeshift fruit and vegetable stall has been set up opposite a restaurant that opened in the ruins, lamb carcasses hanging from its ceiling, smoke rising off charcoal-fired grills. A store selling paint, piping, toilets and construction materials is doing a steady trade.
Some local and international non-governmental organisations have visited to inspect the damage, but have yet to provide assistance.
The HTS-backed civil administration in Idlib has also promised to “come soon,” said Razaz. But unless western powers lift Assad-era sanctions on Syria, “we don’t expect any help”.
Others point out that Syria’s interim administration simply has too many challenges to deal with, and too few resources to manage the crisis alone.
It is further hobbled by western sanctions on the state. The US has issued six-month waivers on sectors including energy, water and electricity, while the EU said it will ease sanctions on a step-by-step basis, depending on the actions of the interim government. But Syrians say they will only be able to fully tackle rebuilding the state when the sanctions are lifted.
The interim government’s media office said it was “too early” to discuss the topic.
“They are doing really their best to provide services and to support the communities,” said Ahmed Ekzayez, chief of programmes at the White Helmets.
But he said there were “millions of tonnes” of rubble needing to be cleared across Syria. “I ask myself, ‘Where we should start?’” Ekzayez said. “And what type of criteria can we put when we are discussing with donors? We cannot ask the donor for $1bn, otherwise they will tell us, ‘You are crazy.’”
During the war, Saraqib changed hands multiple times. It was briefly under Isis rule, and was repeatedly bombed by Russian jets. Iranian calendars, empty rice sacks and a Koran printed in Iran litter an area where Iran-backed militias and fighters from Lebanese militant movement Hizbollah had set up a base to fight for the regime.
While many ponder what to do, some drive around Saraqib in search of happier memories. Among them is Laith Abdullah, who points to a green patch of scrub where his home once stood. All that remains of the house is a patch of wall on which he painted graffiti more than a decade ago that reads “We liberated Syria . . . ?”
“I went to my house and cried. All that’s left is this dirt,” he said. “It’s where my brother died, where my neighbours died.”
Yet whenever he can, the 44-year-old, who lives in Taftanaz about 15km to the north, drives back. “It means everything to me,” he said. “I have to be here. My uncles, my aunts, there’s nobody left here. But it’s my street.”
Before Assad forces seized the town, Abdullah would gather with friends on Fridays for picnics in parks. They have resumed the tradition amid the rubble.
“The thing that gives us energy, that keeps us going, is that we see each other, we talk to each other,” he said. “If you bring back services, you will see what we can do.”
Until that happens, Sheikh’s family is fending for itself.
He buys water to fill large steel tanks on breeze blocks beside the tents. The family, who had previously sought to make a life in Jindires in the north, now while away the hours on an old mattress, chickens picking through the rubble. One of Sheikh’s sons ekes out a living through odd jobs.
Yet Sheikh was adamant that he is “going to hold on as long as possible”. His tent on his own land, he said, is “better than a castle in Jindires”.
He said: “Our land was liberated, so why not come back? We were living in a tent there, so why not here?”
