‘Syrian returns need to be voluntary’ – David Miliband

What happens now to the millions of Syrian refugees who escaped to Europe and other countries?

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee joins us from New York.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Syria must have been your biggest challenge over the last decade. What should happen now to the millions of people who are spread out around the world?

David Miliband: Syria has been on our emergency watch list for the last 13 years since the civil war began. We’ve never fallen for the argument over the last three or four years that the war was somehow over. We have about 850 International Rescue Committee staff who are working, 450 of them in the northwest of Syria where HTS was one of the large organisations and control, another 400 in the north east of the country. I think that the most important thing for people to understand is that the vast majority of Syrians who your colleague has just described, whether they’re in the Middle East or they’re in Europe, and we work in Jordan and Lebanon as well as in the UK and Germany, the vast majority of Syrian refugees do want to go home. They still talk about their homeland being Syria, but they were too scared to do so. And we’ve always argued that no one should be deported until it was safe for them to go home and they wanted to go home. And I think that you’ll see large numbers of Syrians looking very carefully at what’s happening, those who are mobile, especially those who are individuals, maybe their kids have grown up and are longer at school, they’ll be the first to think about going back. The imperative, I think though, is that this be voluntary. Because with compulsory deportations to a place that people don’t think is yet safe, we’re going to end up in an even bigger mess than we are at the moment.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So are you disappointed to see European countries, including Britain, pausing their decisions on asylum when, after all, people must still be afraid for their futures?

David Miliband: I think you can understand why it’s impossible for an asylum determination to be made at the moment. An asylum determination has to establish whether or not it’s safe to go home. Everyone is waiting to see how the Syrian situation develops. I know from our own teams on the ground that they’ve been working in a very coherent and disciplined way in the northwest of the country, over the last 12 years or so. They’ve been able to cooperate with the authorities, civil authorities were established in the northwest of the country so that there was no issue to do with terrorist designation. We worked alongside the civilian authorities in the northwest of the country. So there’s a track record there of an established presence that was able to govern that part of the territory. Obviously, the northeast of Syria is a very different kettle of fish. It’s a Kurdish area of Syria. I think it’s reasonable that European countries are saying we want to see the opportunity grasped. We’re not able to make a determination now, but I think it’s very important they stick with the idea that returns need to be voluntary. And in our experience, there’s a lot of Syrians who’ve already gone back, including from Lebanon. That started about six weeks ago, actually. But it’s picked up recently because I think many Syrians, often with attachments to local civil society organisations that still exist within Syria, want to make the most of the opportunity that’s been created.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But many of their homes remain destroyed. There is terrible devastation right across this country still, and cities like Homs and Hama have not been rebuilt since they were smashed up by the regime during the war. Do you think the outside world now is going to have to help Syria rebuild? And that means engaging potentially with HTS if they become a big part of the new stable government?

David Miliband: The short answer to that is yes. I’m sure that there has to be an international effort around the rebuilding of Syria, although I would say that in contrast with the situation before the Covid pandemic, before the pandemic the European Union and the UK actually had committed to help with the reconstruction of Syria. Now, with the invasion of Ukraine, the issues there, with the recovery from the pandemic, I think it’s much more sensible to look towards the Gulf as the area that will be sponsoring the rebuilding of Syria. On the wider question of governance, I think that the facts on the ground are that HTS are in control. And that means that engagement in the end is going to have to be essential, because our experience as a humanitarian agency around the world, whether it be in Afghanistan, whether it be in East Africa, in the end if you want to reach the people, you have to engage with the government.