Syrians Still Finding Their Way in Sweden, Five Years on

Five years later, Syrians are still trying to integrate, some more successfully than others. AFP
Five years later, Syrians are still trying to integrate, some more successfully than others. AFP
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Syrians Still Finding Their Way in Sweden, Five Years on

Five years later, Syrians are still trying to integrate, some more successfully than others. AFP
Five years later, Syrians are still trying to integrate, some more successfully than others. AFP

They arrived in unprecedented numbers, pushing a strained Sweden to shut its borders as anti-immigration sentiment flared. Five years later, Syrians are still trying to integrate, some more successfully than others.

Abdallah Saleh, a 24-year-old Palestinian who fled Damascus in 2014, finally arrived in the southern Swedish town of Malmo in September the following year after a harrowing journey.

Ten months later, he got his first job as a cashier.

Saleh spent three years learning Swedish and English, taking adult education classes and working on the side.

Now, he's just been accepted into a computer science program at Halmstad University.

"It's been my dream since high school," he tells AFP, beaming.

In 2015, the Scandinavian country took in the highest number of asylum seekers per capita in the European Union, at 163,000. A third of them were Syrians.

"Every day the line of asylum seekers was never-ending. At the end of the day, they were knocking on the window, saying 'please, help us'," recalls a former case handler at the Migration Agency.

Experts say it's too early to tell how well Syrians as a group have integrated, citing a lack of data.

But they say the early signs are pretty positive.

Pieter Bevelander, a professor of international migration at Malmo University, points to 2016 statistics: "Of the Syrians who received a residency permit in 2010, 70 percent now have a job."

"We can expect a similar result for those who arrived in 2015," he suggests.

This is especially the case since Syrians' education level is about the same as Swedes', noted Stockholm University professor Eleonora Mussino.

- Tougher rules -

Sweden was however quickly overwhelmed with the huge influx of migrants knocking at its door.

It ended up adopting a temporary law in 2016 making permanent residency and family reunifications harder to get, offering three-year residency permits instead.

The law expires in 2021, but the hot-button issue is now up for debate again in parliament, which will likely replace it with a permanent law.

Sweden -- a country of 10.3 million people, of whom 12 percent were born outside the EU -- has welcomed large numbers of immigrants since the 1990s, primarily from the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iran and Iraq.

But over the years, public opinion on immigration has hardened.

According to AFP, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party has in two decades grown to become the third-biggest party, hovering around 20 percent in opinion polls.

"It's an analytical mistake to think that the Swedish attitude to immigration was generous before 2015 and that it changed after the migrant wave," Joakim Ruist, an immigration expert at Gothenburg University, says.

"This tolerance has in reality always been fragile: everybody knew that a large part of the population didn't want refugees in the country," he adds.

- Influx slowed -

Jonas Andersson, a Sweden Democrats MP, tells AFP "the temporary law was necessary but it was just a small step in the right direction."

"Sweden needs to tighten its legislation," he insists.

Since the temporary law came into force, the number of Syrian arrivals has plummeted, to just 5,500 in 2016 and even fewer in the following years.

The same trend can be seen in the number of asylum requests granted.

Hala Alnahas knows that all too well.

With a dentistry degree from Damascus University, she now practices in the small Swedish town of Mariestad.

She has only been granted successive temporary residency permits, despite a shortage of dentists in Sweden.

Her request for permanent residency was recently denied because of a single document missing from her dossier.

"It was a shock, because I pay my taxes, I earn a decent living, I have my own apartment and I don't need anybody's help," she says.

- Hurdles to integration -

Other Syrians say they feel like they're living life on the sidelines.

Unemployed since arriving in Sweden, Ali Haj Mohammad, 45, is struggling to get to know Swedes.

"I get the impression they don't want to talk to refugees. My Swedish isn't very good, but how can I improve it with no job and when I spend my free time with other Syrians or Iraqis?", he complains.

According to Teodora Abda, the head of Sweden's Syrian Association, Syrians' integration "has failed" because of a lack of housing and their limited social contact with Swedes.

"Those who arrived five years ago chose to live with members of their own families," often in immigrant-heavy suburbs, "rather than find themselves alone in northern Sweden" where authorities might have placed them, she explains.

Disadvantaged neighborhoods with strong immigrant populations are rife with social woes and unemployment -- leading to social exclusion, parallel economies and, increasingly, gang shootings.

Sweden -- traditionally homogeneous and now with a high-skilled labor market -- can be challenging for people arriving from war-torn countries, especially those with no skills.

For 38-year-old Majda Ibrahim and her family, who came to Sweden in 2013 just before the big migrant wave, the road to a new life has been arduous, but worth it.

"In the beginning, it was really hard, our life was turned upside down," she says at the family's three-room apartment in Skogas, a Stockholm suburb, home to many immigrants.

Her husband works as a cleaner and their five children are enrolled at school.

After numerous hotel stays, social-services meetings and a slew of black-market sublets, they finally have a place to call home.

"It's the first time in seven years that we have a real apartment lease," says her 16-year-old daughter Alia Daoud in perfect Swedish.

"Now we all have Swedish citizenship," smiles Majda.



People Returning to Sudan’s Capital: Khartoum is Not Habitable

Destroyed combat vehicles stand on a street at the Sharg Elnil area, which was recently liberated by the Sudanese army, in Khartoum, Sudan March 15, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
Destroyed combat vehicles stand on a street at the Sharg Elnil area, which was recently liberated by the Sudanese army, in Khartoum, Sudan March 15, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
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People Returning to Sudan’s Capital: Khartoum is Not Habitable

Destroyed combat vehicles stand on a street at the Sharg Elnil area, which was recently liberated by the Sudanese army, in Khartoum, Sudan March 15, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig
Destroyed combat vehicles stand on a street at the Sharg Elnil area, which was recently liberated by the Sudanese army, in Khartoum, Sudan March 15, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

Destroyed bridges, blackouts, empty water stations and looted hospitals across Sudan bear witness to the devastating impact on infrastructure from two years of war.

Authorities estimate hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of reconstruction would be needed. Yet there is little chance of that in the short-term given continued fighting and drone attacks on power stations, dams and fuel depots.

Not to mention a world becoming more averse to foreign aid where the biggest donor, the US, has slashed assistance.

The Sudanese army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling since April 2023, with tens of thousands of people killed or injured and about 13 million uprooted in what aid groups call the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Residents of the capital Khartoum have to endure weeks-long power outages, unclean water and overcrowded hospitals. Their airport is burnt out with shells of planes on the runway.

Most of the main buildings in downtown Khartoum are charred and once-wealthy neighborhoods are ghost towns with destroyed cars and unexploded shells dotting the streets.

"Khartoum is not habitable. The war has destroyed our life and our country and we feel homeless even though the army is back in control," said Tariq Ahmed, 56.

He returned briefly to his looted home in the capital before leaving it again, after the army recently pushed the RSF out of Khartoum.

One consequence of the infrastructure breakdown can be seen in a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 deaths out of 2,729 cases over the past week alone mainly in Khartoum.

Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, are similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, once the center of service provision, reverberates across the country.

Sudanese authorities estimate reconstruction needs at $300 billion for Khartoum and $700 billion for the rest of Sudan.

The UN is doing its own estimates.

Sudan's oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels-per-day and its refining capabilities ceased as the main al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3 billion in damages during battles, Oil and Energy Minister Mohieddine Naeem told Reuters.

Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all its crude and relies on imports, he said. It also struggles to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports.

Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country's main port city.

All of Khartoum's power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and said earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks to stations outside Khartoum were stretching its ability to keep the grid going.

LOOTED COPPER

Government forces re-took Khartoum earlier this year and as people return to houses turned upside down by looters, one distinctive feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to uncover valuable copper wire.

On Sudan's Nile Street, once its busiest throughway, there is a ditch about one meter (three feet) deep and 4 km (2.5 miles) long, stripped of wiring and with traces of burning.

Khartoum's two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine.

Those who have remained in Khartoum resort to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. But there are few hospitals equipped to treat them.

"There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted and what remains has been deliberately destroyed," said Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, putting losses to the health system at $11 billion.

With two or three million people looking at returning to Khartoum, interventions were needed to avoid further humanitarian emergencies like the cholera outbreak, said United Nations Development Program resident representative Luca Renda.

But continued war and limited budget means a full-scale reconstruction plan is not in the works.

"What we can do ... with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation," he said, like solar-power water pumps, hospitals, and schools.

In that way, he said, the war may provide an opportunity for decentralizing services away from Khartoum, and pursuing greener energy sources.