Sanctions are lifting, but Syrians still can’t go home

On May 23, President Donald Trump’s administration suspended the majority of sanctions on Syria, marking the most sweeping shift in the policy of the United States toward Damascus in over a decade. But lifting sanctions will not magically make Syria safe for return. For millions of displaced Syrians, their country remains a minefield — literally and bureaucratically.

The dangerous illusion of readiness

An estimated 14 million Syrians remain displaced, over 6 million of whom reside in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, and the European Union. Host countries, facing economic pressure and donor fatigue, have been calling for EU and US sanctions to be lifted. However, sanctions relief, while critical, brings with it the temptation to accelerate refugee repatriation. That would be premature. While the December 2024 collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime has created a new political opening, Syria is still unsafe and unprepared for the return of its displaced population.

Since Assad’s fall, millions of Syrians have imagined going home for the first time in more than a decade. The United Nations estimates that since December, 1.3 million people — refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) — have returned to their areas of origin. That number is notable, but it represents less than 10% of Syria’s displaced overall. For most, return is not yet viable. Many of those returnees are conducting “go-and-see” visits to assess whether rebuilding a life is even possible. In too many cases, the answer is no.

Returnees find towns in ruin — homes reduced to rubble, farmland laced with landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), water systems inoperable, clinics shuttered, schools abandoned. The war rendered many of these places uninhabitable; and little has been done since to restore them.

Sanctions are gone, but their legacy remains

That absence of recovery is not only the legacy of war, it is the consequence of policy. US sanctions, designed to isolate Assad’s regime, also isolated civilians from the tools they need to survive and rebuild. Humanitarian organizations are working to fill the void and have been unable to scale infrastructure or jump-start Syria’s economy. Now that sanctions are lifted, it will take time for hollow institutions to begin to provide a base layer of services and social protections. Until then, returning Syrians are faced with an impossible choice: remain displaced abroad, or return to conditions that guarantee neither safety nor dignity.

The situation is particularly dire when it comes to demining. Across northwest Syria, land remains heavily contaminated with mines and UXO — remnants of conflict that have killed or injured more than 1,000 people since December alone, many of them returnees. The White Helmets, the country’s primary domestic demining actor, cannot acquire critical dual-use items for identifying and disposing of mines at scale.¹ Why? Because these non-lethal items have been blocked by US export controls under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), which classify them as dual-use technologies. The result is that families walk into homes and fields unaware of the dangers beneath — not for lack of warning, but for lack of permitted equipment.

Even where land is safe, legal reintegration is paralyzed. In post-conflict areas like Homs, returnees attempting to reclaim homes or resolve property disputes face a civil registry system still dependent on paper records, many of which were destroyed during the war. Digitization is vital to restore legal identity, settle housing and land claims, and prevent new waves of displacement. For years, US sanctions blocked the transfer of essential computers, software, and IT systems. Vendors could not ship computer equipment, and cloud services, like Microsoft or Google, were denied to Syrian jurisdictions. Local councils, overstretched and underfunded, lack the tools to rebuild the very systems return depends on. This may finally change with sanctions relief, but it will take time.

Meanwhile, the health sector is collapsing in real time. Clinics in areas like Al Qaryatein and rural Homs operate with limited power, no equipment, or few trained medical staff. Humanitarian exemptions may exist on paper, but in practice, many critical items — imaging equipment, ventilators, diagnostic machines — remain off-limits due to US restrictions. Even when non-governmental organizations (NGOs) secure licenses, banks and suppliers often refuse to engage with Syria out fear of legal risk. The outcome is a humanitarian paradox: Returnees arrive in communities where illness is a death sentence, due not to conflict but to regulatory paralysis.

This crisis reveals a broader truth: Emergency aid alone cannot enable return. Food baskets and mobile clinics may preserve life, but they cannot build it. What Syria needs now is recovery infrastructure — construction equipment, legal systems, medical facilities, ICT capacity. These lifelines had been frozen by sanctions but may soon have a chance to see improvement.

The enduring consequences of the sanctions complicate the prospect of long-term sustainable refugee return. In places like Homs, displaced Syrians are returning to cities and towns whose composition has been transformed due to demographic engineering along sectarian lines, wartime land grabs, and legislation like Assad’s infamous Law No. 10. Without functioning legal frameworks or dispute-resolution mechanisms, returnees will face difficulties reacquiring their housing, land, and property (HLP), which could lead to conflict with current occupants, who may themselves be displaced by returning families. This raises the potential for local-level violence along sectarian lines as communities work through post-conflict reconciliation. In March, sectarian clashes broke out in parts of Latakia and the Homs countryside, resulting in more than 1,300 deaths. This episode provided a glimpse into the fragility of local conditions, where triggers, like HLP issues, could spark violent escalations. Sanctions relief can help alleviate some of these conditions. The legal and technical tools required to resolve such disputes and manage HLP claims had heretofore been subject to sanctions but will now finally be accessible to the population. Nonetheless, it will still take time to stand up these services.

Sustainable returns take time and money

Sanctions entrenched misery, prolonged displacement, and prevented recovery. Syria now has a window, albeit brief and fragile, to rebuild, which should be protected. The premature mass return of millions of Syrian refugees and IDPs would derail any such efforts. Suspending sanctions was a clear signal that Washington would conditionally support Syria’s recovery, but the social protections that were underpinned by US foreign aid collapsed as a result of Trump’s US Agency for International Development (USAID) cuts, leaving millions of potential Syrian returnees both at home and abroad trapped in limbo. Furthermore, the expected benefits of sanctions relief for Syrians will not translate into real impacts for the millions who face prolonged humanitarian needs inside of Syria. Leaving the ongoing humanitarian crisis unaddressed could derail the president’s efforts to help the country recover and overwhelm the capacity of Syrian caretaker authorities to manage their many competing priorities. It also provides a window for competing states, like China and Russia, and non-state actors and terrorist groups, like ISIS, to fill the vacuum of public services and derail the objective of Trump’s policy to help stabilize Syria.

The Trump administration should, in support of its own objectives, organize immediate lifesaving assistance to Syria and neighboring countries. While bilateral assistance provided through the US Department of State would be ideal, the administration can also work multilaterally with EU and Gulf partners, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to corral and coordinate the humanitarian funds necessary to stabilize Syria until the benefits of sanctions relief translate into improved conditions on the ground. The administration is unlikely to commit to year-on-year humanitarian assistance, but it may be more willing to give aid for a limited period if it is messaged as a bridge between Syria’s current emergency and its eventual recovery. This way, it is not a blank check, but an investment in ensuring Syria’s long-term recovery stays on track.

The provision of aid must, in the meantime, also come with a parallel commitment to host countries. Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt — alongside the EU — continue to shoulder the burden of hosting millions of Syrian refugees, most of whom face the same challenges as those in Syria — high rates of poverty and reliance on aid. As public services strain under the need, host populations grow resentful, and international aid declines, the political pressure to push refugees back is rising. Several states have already begun deportations or floated policies that would coerce return under the guise of normalization. That must not happen. The US and the EU should make clear that any shift in sanctions policy is not a signal that Syria is ready for return. At the same time, they must step up financial support to refugee-hosting countries — ensuring they have the resources and political space to continue offering protection until conditions for return are genuinely in place. While this may be a hard sell for the Trump administration, the benefits of sanctions relief (as well as the economic ambitions of Gulf states in Syria) could be undermined if Syrians return en masse before the country is able to reach a baseline level of stability. Otherwise, this would ramp up more pressure on the Syrian caretaker authorities and overburden local communities already struggling to manage the first waves of returnees from inside Syria.  

Conclusion

The Trump administration helped put Syria on the right track by lifting sanctions, but sanctions relief is not sufficient. The administration’s rhetoric about aligning foreign aid with national interests following massive aid cuts has perhaps never been more aligned than in the case of Syria. Without sustained attention and near-term foreign aid, Syria may not have the chance to recover, and Syrians may not have the chance to return home.

 

Jesse Marks is the CEO of Rihla Research & Advisory LLC, a geopolitical advisory firm based in Washington, DC. He previously served as a Middle East policy advisory for the US government during the Trump and Biden administrations.

Photo of Jobar, Syria, taken on 3 June 2025 by Jesse Marks