At 5am on 8 December 2024, my father sent a voice note: rebels had surrounded Damascus. By 10am, the capital had surrendered. An Assad dynasty that had ruled for more than half a century was suddenly gone. 

After nearly 13 years in Turkey, my urge to return was immediate. I arranged a reporting trip with the Wall Street Journal and entered Damascus with the emotions of someone who is both journalist and exile: intent on getting the story, and unable to pretend it was not also my own.

Inside a former intelligence prison, the air carried the smells of mould, human waste, and blood. One former detainee walked us through basements and corridors, naming what happened where, reconstructing a system designed to stay secret. I read internal communications between security branches and held abandoned records in my hands – documents left behind in the scramble of regime collapse.

Months later, on a journalism fellowship in Oxford, I had nightmares of those basements. The reporting trip had been affirming, but it also left me with a fear that Syria could slide back into horror. I did not yet have language for that mix of relief and dread or know that this was the familiar shape of homecoming for many journalists like me.

For this project, I spoke to ten Syrian journalists and former journalists: some returned, some returning in stages, some staying away. Their testimonies converge on a single truth: “return” is not one act. It is a series of decisions made under pressure – shaped by money, safety, professional constraints, and the heavy social psychology of coming home to a place that has been both lost and reclaimed.

Return is not always physical

Of the nine journalists and one former journalist I spoke to, five had made a full return to Syria. One had returned partially, travelling between Syria and their countries of exile. Two were in the process of planning a return, while two had decided not to return but continues to analyse developments in Syria from abroad.

For some, “return” happens organisationally before it happens personally. Kholoud Helmi, co-founder of the independent newspaper Enab Baladi, cannot yet return permanently: her home was destroyed, and the work of sustaining an institution across borders is still unfinished. But her journalism has already returned. Founded in 2011 in Darayya, Enab Baladi operated from Istanbul after two co-founders were murdered in regime detention, including Kholoud’s brother. 

After the fall of Assad, copies began circulating openly inside Syria – seen in cafés in Damascus, carried without fear, even distributed inside the Ministry of Information. In January 2025, the organisation rented an office in Damascus and began hiring staff on contracts.

Others returned to reclaim an interrupted life. Idris M. was studying at Damascus University in 2010 when he was expelled after 300 days in detention for filming protests and participating in peaceful demonstrations. He left Syria around 2017. In 2025, he returned and re-enrolled at university. His homecoming was not fuelled by simple optimism. It was obligation: a sense that surviving and being granted a second chance imposes a duty to help shape what comes next.

One journalist told me: “My strongest feeling was not joy. From the first day I felt, OK, now the real work begins […] It’s always easier to take an engine apart than it is to put it back together.”

The social shock of being “from here”, but not quite

Those who returned, even temporarily, described a real relief upon arrival: relief at being on the ground, relief at not living as a second-class citizen abroad, relief at not constantly wondering whether a phone call or a quote had put someone inside Syria at risk.

But relief quickly meets a different reality: alienation at home. Iyad, who returns intermittently, told me that despite sharing the dialect, the clothes, the mannerisms, he is still read as someone who has lived abroad. Taxi drivers pick it up; neighbours sense it. His social world increasingly revolves around other returnees. “I’m still hesitant about staying permanently,” he said. “Integration is the hardest part […] I mostly spend time within my own circle. It’s not ideal, but it feels unavoidable.”

Several interviewees were careful to acknowledge that exile did not equal the suffering of those who remained in Syria. And yet exile carries its own costs: the exhaustion of unstable legal status, the slow grind of translation into another culture, the long uncertainty of not knowing when, or if, return will ever be possible. These unequal experiences of risk and sacrifice now shape who is seen as legitimate, whose voice is trusted, and who is treated as an outsider even when they come “home”.

Money, infrastructure, and the price of “one foot in, one foot out”

Even when fear recedes, practical barriers remain. The cost of restarting life in a country with broken infrastructure is high: housing deposits, furniture, transport, and the daily expense of getting around in a context where a car can become a necessity rather than a luxury. For those trying to keep “one foot in, one foot out”, the costs double – travel, rent in two places, and the psychological strain of perpetual contingency.

Hamza K., a journalist who worked in Istanbul with Turkish and Syrian outlets, told me he wanted to relocate but financing made the move difficult: years of rising costs in Turkey left little savings to cushion a transition. 

A new government, old habits, and journalism caught in the middle

At the time of writing, Syria’s transitional government is led by Ahmad al-Sharaa. The Minister of Information, Hamza al-Mustafa, told me he ultimately wants to abolish the ministry itself – framing it as a relic of authoritarian rule – and move towards a public-service model funded by taxpayers but serving the whole community, including opponents.

In the short term, he argues, the ministry is needed to manage transition: reforming the state news agency, building press offices inside institutions, and developing a society-driven code of ethics. He insists he is personally responsible for protecting journalists and that arrests should not happen “while I am present”.

Returning journalists, however, described a more cautious reality: uneven access, accreditation problems, restricted movement, and an underlying uncertainty about how much criticism will be tolerated as the new authorities consolidate. As one put it: today’s “margin of freedom” might shrink quickly tomorrow.

Inside state media, the compromises are immediate. Nadia K., now working at the state-owned Al-Ikhbariyya channel, described the strange disorientation of moving from opposition reporting into an institution that historically functioned as the state’s voice. Criticism, she said, can be necessary – but so can restraint, especially when institutions are damaged and trust is brittle. For some journalists, patience becomes part of the work; for others, it feels like the beginning of self-censorship.

Meanwhile, independent outlets face the same financial precarity as newsrooms globally – worsened by donor cuts and an unstable funding environment in which Gulf-backed donations often comes with political strings attached.

And across the landscape, return has revived an old debate in a new form: activism versus professionalism. Several journalists said younger reporters – and those who never left Assad-controlled areas – are sometimes more likely to side “with the people” rather than report with distance. Others argued exile can widen professional horizons, exposing journalists to newsroom norms beyond survival journalism. The tension is real, and it is not merely ideological: it shapes what audiences trust, which stories get told, and whether the public sphere expands or hardens into new orthodoxies.

The risk that ends the argument

If some narratives frame return as liberation, Suwayda tells a different story. Rayan, a Druze journalist who fled in 2022 and sought asylum in France, returned immediately after Assad fell. For the first time, he said, he could identify openly as a journalist. Within weeks, violence flared. Home became a trap.

His colleague Sarri Al-Shoufi, a photojournalist at the local outlet Suwayda 24, was killed after identifying himself to a soldier as an unarmed civilian. Later, Rayan received a video containing explicit sectarian threats against Druze journalists. For him, return became betrayal – a discovery that geography is not “home” if dignity and the rule of law are absent. He now advises Syrian journalists not to return.

Others, too, described a shift from cautious optimism to ambivalence after episodes of mass violence and the flood of polarised misinformation online. The country is no longer under Assad-style total control, but that does not mean safety is guaranteed.

What return demands of journalism

This is a brief summary of the conditions under which returning journalists hope to build a post-Assad public sphere – discussed in more detail in the full project below. Above all, those who go back must know that return will not restore the person who left, or the country that existed before war. Instead, my interviewees warned how the first visit back can collapse years of deferred mourning into a single moment.

If Syria is to avoid slipping into a new form of managed consent, journalism must do the unglamorous work of transition: documenting abuses, investigating corruption as reconstruction money arrives, explaining rights and remedies to citizens, and building shared reality across communities taught to see one another as enemies. It must also document the country’s grief, so as not to allow what happened be denied, sanitised, or repeated.