Is any part of Syria safe for deportations?

Should Syrians who have been found guilty of a criminal offence in Germany be sent back to Syria? The question has come up for renewed debate after a deadly knife attack in the western German city of Solingen by a Syrian man who had been meant to be sent back to Bulgaria, the country where he had arrived, and where, according to European rules, he should have been staying.

Attention is also focused on this question because of the fact that the far-right and anti-immigrant political party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, just triumphed in state elections in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony. Media reports about refugees who are supposedly vacationing in their homeland have also fueled the debate. But what is the situation in Syria?

Syria divided into four

Syria is currently divided into four areas controlled by different actors. The largest part — making up about 60% of the country — is controlled by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

A smaller part of Syria in the northwest is run by the extremist group, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, also known as HTS.

North from there, Turkey is in charge of two areas bordering on its own territory. Then areas in the north-east are run mostly by Syrian-Kurdish forces.

However none of those four areas can be considered safe, says André Bank, a senior research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, or GIGA, who recently wrote a paper on exactly this topic, together with another expert Ronja Herrschner.

"In my opinion, deportations to any of the four regions should currently be prohibited," Bank told DW.

In Bank and Herrschner's paper, "Syria Is Not Safe: A Look to Its Regions," the authors note that the Assad-controlled region is home to around 9.6 million people.

"They live under a personalized dictatorship dominated by the Assad family, 'one of the world's most repressive regimes'," which continues to use forced disappearances, military trials and torture "on a massive scale," the report says.

"The regime also refuses to provide information on the fate of more than 125,000 detainees," the authors add.

And those numbers are still rising, according to Carsten Wieland, an independent foreign affairs analyst who has written several books about Syria. Even today there are still cases where Syrians, who have been deported from Lebanon, simply disappear after they cross the border, he told DW. 

"Most likely they were arrested by one of the secret service agencies and then probably tortured or even killed," Wieland explains. "There's evidence of a whole series of these sorts of missing persons cases."

Wieland says the fact that Syrian refugees prefer to stay in what are often miserable conditions in Lebanon and Jordan rather than return to nearby Syria is another sign that the country isn't safe. "They're not worried about being able to return to a regular life in Syria," he argues. "They're worried about life and limb."

'Resistance can be life threatening'

The situation in northwest Syria, in the Idlib region, isn't much better. Around 3 million people live in this area, controlled by Hayat Tahrir al Sham. Over half of them — about 1.7 million — are displaced from other parts of Syria. Almost all are dependent on humanitarian aid supplied by the United Nations and more than 80% do not have adequate access to drinking water and sanitation, the GIGA paper says.

Some parts of Idlib in the south and east are also often still under fire from Russian air strikes. The Russian government began supporting the Assad regime in 2015, during the country's civil war. Since the start of the current conflict in Gaza, Russian airstrikes on Idlib have increased and, according to the GIGA study, around 16,000 people have been displaced by them, often for the second or third time.

Also of concern in this area is the fact that its run by HTS, who were formerly associated with the extremist group, Al Qaeda, says Wieland. Since officially splitting from Al Qaeda, the group have become slightly more moderate. "But of course, they're still worried about maintaining control — and especially over women, whose rights are explicitly restricted," Wieland adds.

Anybody in Idlib who disagrees with the basics of HTS' rule is in danger, he notes: "Resistance can be life threatening." 

The parts of northeastern Syria that are controlled by Turkey are not any safer either. Around 2.1 million people live here, including Syrian refugees who have been deported from Turkey. Human Rights Watch has documented abuses committed by the so-called Syrian National Army, which is backed by Turkey, alongside Turkish armed forces in this area.

"Ongoing abuses including torture and enforced disappearances of those who live under Turkish authority in northern Syria will continue unless Turkey itself takes responsibility and acts to stop them," Adam Coogle, the deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch wrote in a February report looking at abuses in the Turkish-controlled territory. "Turkish officials are not merely bystanders to abuses, but bear responsibility as the occupying power, and in some cases have been directly involved in apparent war crimes."

North-eastern Syria, which is controlled by Syrian-Kurdish groups like the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and its offshoot militia, the People's Protection Units, also isn't secure.

The PYD is associated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which is considered a terrorist group in the European Union and by Turkey. The Syrian Kurds have fought against a variety of different foes here, including the extremist "Islamic State" group, the Turkish army, the Syrian military and even other Kurdish groups. Within this part of Syria there is plenty of competition for power and influence.

According to the GIGA report, this has led to more political repression in Syrian Kurdish-controlled areas. These forces have been accused of forced recruitment, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and torture in prisons, it says.

The GIGA report concludes that therefore no region in Syria can be considered safe.

"I would absolutely answer the question, 'is Syria a safe country?' with a no," agrees Wieland. "And that's looking at all four regions."

This story was originally published in German.