Thousands of families, living in terrible conditions, had been surviving in camps for displaced people in northern Syria, near the Turkish border, for years. They slept in tattered tents that didn't protect from much, neither the summer heat nor the winter cold.

So the ousting of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after 14 years of civil war last December was an encouraging sign for the families in the camps. They hoped to leave the areas controlled by anti-Assad rebel groups and return to their homes elsewhere in Syria. But, as it turned out, many of those homes as well as surrounding infrastructure had been destroyed. 

Now those who have returned to where they used to live face multiple challenges, particularly from a financial perspective. After years of displacement, the families often have serious economic problems.

'Everything here is ruined'

"We may have lost our homes but we haven't lost our will to live or our ability to survive," Nadima al-Barakat, 36, told DW. She returned to her village in southern Syria and has ended up living in a tent on top of the rubble of her destroyed home.

As al-Barakat looked around her, she couldn't hold back her tears. "Everything here is ruined," she said. "Our possessions are destroyed, our houses and our memories too."

She said they only found out that their house had been razed to the ground after they returned. "We have no money to rebuild," she continued. "My husband was killed in an airstrike four years ago." And reconstruction would cost around $5,000 (€4,441), she added, money that she just doesn't have.

Some of the buildings and businesses in the area where al-Barakat lives were destroyed by fire, while others were reduced to rubble and looted by Assad regime militias. Basic infrastructure is lacking. Before anybody coming back here can live a normal life, there's a lot that needs to be rebuilt, al-Barakat pointed out — things such as electricity and water supply networks, schools and bakeries.

At the moment, much of that is missing. There are no sanitation facilities, no power supplies and no adequate medical services. There's no privacy in the tent either, and also an ongoing fire risk.

Building back, brick by brick

Raed al-Hassan is tired. For some time now, the 39-year-old has been rebuilding his family's destroyed home, brick by brick. He told DW that he and his family of six had left the Harbanoush camp for displaced people near the Turkish border to return to their hometown, Maarat Dibsah, in Idlib province.

He's been collecting the rubble from the ruins of his house and, using simple tools, reconstructing the walls piece by piece. Al-Hassan is even reusing the iron rods from the collapsed ceilings. The materials are not perfect, he conceded but "we have no choice." Reconstruction this way will take a long time, he said, complaining that "we need quick solutions."

Mohammed al-Raslan, 45, is another returnee. But for him, the high price of building materials has prevented any major attempts to reconstruct his home. He's only repaired it in a fairly makeshift way so that at least his family has a roof over their heads.

Hospitals, schools destroyed

"When I returned to Kfar Nabudah [northwest of Hama] with my wife and four children, I discovered that all that remained of my house were dilapidated walls without a roof," al-Raslan told DW.

First of all, he said, he covered the house with a tarpaulin and sealed the windows with pieces of concrete. "We Syrians are used to adapting to the most difficult conditions," he explained. Despite the condition of the house, life here is still better than in the camps, he insisted. "There's a lack of hygiene [in the camps] and widespread disease."

Returnees have to deal with many problems, al-Raslan said. These include high water prices and a lack of basic services, especially in the health sector. All nearby hospitals or clinics have been bombed or looted, he said, adding that what was really terrible was the fact that schools have also been destroyed and that there's nowhere to enroll students.

"Most of the villages and towns south of Idlib have been destroyed and need to be rebuilt," said Bilal Makhzoum, a local activist and spokesperson for the town of Maarat al-Numan, which is located on the route between the major city of Aleppo and the Syrian capital, Damascus. Still, between 15% and 20% of locals have returned to their homes. If basic services could be improved soon that would encourage more to return, he argued. 

Help wanted

Makhzoum said the process of trying to work out exactly how many people have returned was currently underway. The town has managed to distribute small aid packages and free bread to returnees, and plans to resurrect more than 200 damaged houses with the help of a charitable foundation, he added. The most urgent tasks in Maarat al-Numan were to rebuild destroyed housing and to restore state services, he said, promising that soon the streets would be paved, streetlights repaired and sidewalks cleaned up. 

Mahy of the returning families had set up tents on top of the rubble of their former homes, but that was obviously not a long term solution, Makhzoum said.

"We hope that as many organizations as possible will participate in reconstruction here," he concluded. "We can't do it alone."

This story was originally written in Arabic.