At seven in the evening, we arrived at a church in Hama, Syria, for a friend's wedding. The courtyard filled with guests, and music soon echoed through the stone walls. The bride and groom entered to applause and cheers, followed by relatives in a procession of song. After the ceremony, young men and women performed Ewiha, a traditional Levantine wedding chant, trading verses that praised the couple. Each stanza ended with a zalghouta—the high-pitched ululation that has marked Arab celebrations for generations.
On the surface, nothing distinguished this wedding from countless others across the region. But after more than a decade of war, it felt like more than a family gathering. It was a quiet assertion that cultural traditions and social bonds endure, even as Syrians navigate an uncertain transition.
We were not in Syria for the wedding. As peace and conflict researchers, we have spent years studying displacement, refugee return, and post-conflict recovery. This trip, from June 1 to June 7, 2026, took us through Damascus, Rural Damascus, Aleppo, and Raqqa. It was part of a broader program that has included over 200 interviews with returnees, internally displaced people, officials, and humanitarian workers.
For years, researchers could only study Syria from afar, unable to conduct fieldwork in government-controlled areas during the Assad era. After the regime's collapse, we made short visits to Damascus, but this was our first chance to travel across the country and see how people were rebuilding their lives—and how the transition was unfolding beyond the headlines.
Hope and Hardship Side by Side
We saw destroyed neighborhoods next to reopened shops. Abandoned factories and damaged infrastructure coexisted with busy cafes and crowded restaurants. Communities struggled with unemployment, rising prices, and unreliable electricity, yet many people spoke cautiously of hope and new beginnings.
The contrast captures something essential about Syria today: hope and hardship coexist, as do recovery and destruction. The scale of the challenge is immense. More than 90% of Syrians live below the poverty line, and nearly 16.5 million people need humanitarian aid, alongside 2.5 million returnees. Almost a quarter of the country's housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, and the World Bank estimates reconstruction costs exceed US$200 billion. International support remains far below what is needed—as of mid-2025, the UN's humanitarian response plan had received only 14% of its required funding.
Food insecurity affects millions, and years of conflict have severely weakened the country's productive capacity. These figures explain the scale of the crisis, but they reveal little about everyday life. That became clearer during our journey—in conversations over tea, on long drives, and while walking through damaged districts.
Many Syrians welcomed the political changes, but few believed that political change alone would improve their lives. Economic concerns dominated almost every conversation. Basic infrastructure remains under severe strain, with large parts of the electricity, water, and sanitation networks still non-functional. More than two million children remain out of school, and a shortage of teachers continues to undermine education.
Yet the challenges are not distributed evenly. What struck us most was how fragmented people's experiences of the war had become. The contrast between affluent neighborhoods like Abu Rummaneh and heavily damaged areas like Jobar in Damascus could hardly be greater. In Abu Rummaneh, restaurants are full, cafes are crowded, and daily life appears relatively stable. Nevertheless, as one local resident told us: “We sit on the ashes, and everything remains extremely fragile.”
Elsewhere in Damascus, entire districts still bear the scars of war. We were struck by how many residents had not visited Jobar since the fall of the Assad regime, despite living only a few kilometers away. For many, the district remained a place known through photographs rather than personal experience. Even humanitarian workers and NGO staff based in Damascus rarely ventured beyond the central neighborhoods. In many ways, Jobar felt as distant to them as it did to visitors from abroad.
These uneven realities are further complicated by the ongoing return of displaced Syrians. During a brief break between meetings, we spoke with a returnee in Aleppo who had come back from Turkey. He told us: “I came back because it's my home, but I don't know if I can stay. There is no work, no electricity, and the future is unclear.” His words echoed a sentiment we heard repeatedly: return is an act of hope, but it is also a gamble.
The wedding in Hama reminded us that Syrians are not waiting for a perfect peace to resume their lives. They are rebuilding, one celebration at a time. But the road ahead is long, and the international community's engagement will be crucial. As we left Syria, we carried with us the image of a country that is neither fully at war nor fully at peace—a place where joy and ruin share the same streets.
