Syria's notorious Rukban camp closes after last families return home

Isolated desert camp housed thousands of people and was cut off from the world for years

Children wave goodbye to former neighbours as a lorry leaves Rukban in January. Matt Kynaston / The National

Syria’s desert refugee camp has closed after a decade of hardship for those living there, after the last remaining families returned home this weekend.

The camp, known as Rukban, was a dark reminder of the country’s brutal civil war. It was established in 2014 to house desperate people fleeing ISIS and bombardment by the former government. They lived under a crippling and punishing siege for years.

For years, residents were cut off from the rest of the world with little or no aid entering the area. The former regime of Bashar Al Assad rarely allowed supplies to enter the camp and neighbouring countries also blocked access to the area, isolating Rukban for years.

“The closure of the camp represents the end to of the most severe humanitarian crises faced by our displaced people,” Raed Al Saleh, Syria’s minister of emergency and disaster management, said on X. The camp was situated in a “de-confliction zone” controlled by the US-led coalition fighting ISIS, near the borders with Jordan and Iraq.

Syrian Information Minister Hamza Al Mustafa said that “with the dismantlement of the Rukban camp and the return of the displaced, a tragic and sorrowful chapter of displacement stories created by the bygone regime's war machine comes to a close. Rukban was not just a camp, it was the triangle of death that bore witness to the cruelty of siege and starvation, where the regime left people to face their painful fate in the barren desert,” he said.

Residents were trapped in a patch of desert that had no infrastructure, no hospitals, schools, or nearby towns. A single road cut through the desert, part of an international route stretching from Baghdad to Damascus.

For years, the UN and other humanitarian groups were largely unable to bring aid in. Food, water and other essentials were only available via smuggling at exorbitant prices, and there was almost no access to medical care.

At its peak, the camp housed more than 100,000 people, but around 8,000 people still lived there in mud-brick houses before Mr Al Assad's fall last December.

After last December, only a few families – those who lacked the money to return home – were left inside the camp. Jordan suspected the camp had been infiltrated by ISIS sleeper cells and closed its border crossing after a deadly attack in 2016.

Yasmine Al Saleh was one of those celebrating the Eid Al Adha holiday and her family's return home after nine years of living inside the camp. She told the Associated Press that, while her home in the town of Al Qaryatayn, east of Homs, was damaged, she was indescribably happy to go back to her town.

“When I first entered my house – what can I say? It was a happiness that cannot be described,” she said. “Even though our house is destroyed, and we have no money, and we are hungry, and we have debts, and my husband is old and can’t work, and I have kids – still, it’s a castle in my eyes.”

Supplies came into Rukban from smugglers who traversed Syria’s eastern desert from government-held territory, but most of their routes were cut off late last year. Many former residents were so desperate to leave the camp that they headed to government-held territory, risking arrest and forced conscription to the Syrian army.

Since the fall of Mr Al Assad's regime 1.87 million Syrians have returned to their homes, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has said. The IOM says the “lack of economic opportunities and essential services pose the greatest challenge” for those returning home.