Syrian refugees are beginning to return to Syria from Lebanon.

A child with the refugee convoy waves to the camera. Reuters. 

Syrian refugees who fled to Lebanon are beginning the process of returning home. Reuters. The first wave of 1200 refugees arrived from Lebanon and will return to their homes are areas that the fighting has ended. Lebanon says that they are the first of hundreds of thousands that will return to Syria. Lebanon hosted 1 million refugees, which was a more than a quarter of its entire population. As the fighting has wound down and the regime has taken back much of their territory, people are beginning to return. Russia is working on a plan to bring 1.7 million refugees home back to Syria. 

My Comment:

This is good news for everyone involved. The refugees obviously get to go home, Syria gets more of its people back ,which will be needed for rebuilding, and Lebanon doesn't have to deal with the burden of caring for these people anymore. It's good situation for everyone involved. 

It's also a testament at how effective the government has been lately in fighting the rebels and terrorists left in the country. The regime has taken most of the south away from the rebels and ISIS with all the rebels gone and only a few pockets of ISIS remaining. They accomplished this very quickly and there isn't much indication that the regime is going to slow down soon. Right now the only areas that are under rebel control is Idlib province, which will be the next target in the fighting. When that province falls the war will be essentially over. At least the civil war, who knows what will happen with the Turks and the Kurds? 

The UN says that Syria is still too dangerous for refugees to return. I don't know if I agree with that. It obviously is true where fighting is still going on but in the areas behind the lines life is much safer. Yes there was just a huge ISIS raid, but that was close enough to the front lines that it probably doesn't count. Much of the country is safer than it was even a few months ago. It is still more dangerous than the United States but it is probably safe enough to return as long as you didn't live where the front lines are.

These refugees really do need to go home though. If Syria is going to have any chance at all of recovering from this war they will need as many people to come back as possible. They will need unskilled workers for purposes of labor and they will need skilled workers for everything else. Without those people coming back Syria will be full of people that were either too stupid to or unable to flee. Though they would still have a backbone of people that stayed to fight, it wouldn't be enough. There would be a serious brain and labor drain that they might not be able to recover from. 

The rest of the world needs these refugees to go home as well. I can't imagine the burden these people are on their host nations. For a small country like Lebanon where 1 million refugees showed up, it must have been devastating to feed, house and employ so many people. Every one of those that go home is less of a burden, which means Lebanon can better provide for their own people. That goes for every country housing these refugees, including the ones in Europe. 

One does wonder what those people will find when they return home. Many of their homes will have been damaged, looted or destroyed in the fighting. And many of their relatives will be either dead, fellow refugees housed who knows where or fleeing from the regime. It will be a tough life but I am guessing it will be better than sitting in a refugee camp. 

Trying to build a country that has torn itself apart in a brutal civil war is not going to be a easy or fun task. But it is a task of purpose and one that has better rewards than sitting on welfare in some European country that probably won't accept you anyways. For those that can return doing so is the right thing to do.