No Return to Homs: A Case Study on Demographic Engineering in Syria

The Syria Institute and PAX published a new report today entitled: “No Return to Homs: A case study on demographic engineering in Syria.” No Return to Homs explores the mechanisms and impacts of state-directed population displacement in Syria through a case study of Homs city, which in 2014 became the first major urban center to succumb to the government’s siege and destroy strategy. Former residents of Homs city were interviewed to understand how the state-directed population displacement strategy was carried out in Homs city, and how it impacts the future of that city today. The ‘Homs model’ has served as a blueprint for the destruction and depopulation of other key locations such as Darayya in Rural Damascus and Eastern Aleppo today.

This report shows that the government’s displacement strategy in Homs city is a form of demographic engineering, which seeks to permanently manipulate the population along sectarian lines in order to consolidate the government’s power base. Under these conditions, international support for government efforts to rebuild the Homs neighborhoods that it intentionally destroyed and depopulated may serve to incentivize similar atrocities elsewhere by paying the government “war crimes dividends,” instead of holding it accountable.