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.



Iran Leader Khamenei Sees His Inner Circle Hollowed Out by Israel 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
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Iran Leader Khamenei Sees His Inner Circle Hollowed Out by Israel 

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looks on, in a televised message following the Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via Reuters

Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei cuts an increasingly lonely figure.

Khamenei has seen his main military and security advisers killed by Israeli air strikes, leaving major holes in his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.

One of those sources, who regularly attends meetings with Khamenei, described the risk of miscalculation to Iran on issues of defense and internal stability as "extremely dangerous".

Several senior military commanders have been killed since Friday including Khamenei's main advisers from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite military force: the Guards' overall commander Hossein Salami, its aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh who headed Iran's ballistic missile program and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi.

These men were part of the supreme leader's inner circle of roughly 15-20 advisers comprising Guards commanders, clerics, and politicians, according to the sources who including three people who attend or have attended meetings with the leader on major issues and two close to officials who regularly attend.

The loose group meets on an ad-hoc basis, when Khamenei's office reaches out to relevant advisers to gather at his compound in Tehran to discuss an important decision, all the people said. Members are characterized by unwavering loyalty to him and the ideology of the regime, they added.

Khamenei, who was imprisoned before the 1979 revolution and maimed by a bomb attack before becoming leader in 1989, is profoundly committed to maintaining Iran's system of government and deeply mistrustful of the West.

Under Iran's system of government, he has supreme command of the armed forces, the power to declare war, and can appoint or dismiss senior figures including military commanders and judges.

Khamenei makes the final decision on important matters, though he values advice, listens attentively to diverse viewpoints, and often seeks additional information from his counsellors, according to one source who attends meetings.

"Two things you can say about Khamenei: he is extremely stubborn but also extremely cautious. He is very cautious. That is why he has been in power for as long as he has," said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute think-tank in Washington.

"Khamenei is pretty well placed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis which really fundamentally gets to one issue more important than anything else: regime survival."

KHAMENEI'S SON AT THE FORE

The focus on survival has repeatedly been put to the test. Khamenei has deployed the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia to quell national protests in 1999, 2009 and 2022.

However, while the security forces have always been able to outlast demonstrators and restore state rule, years of Western sanctions have caused widespread economic misery that analysts say could ultimately threaten internal unrest.

The stakes could barely be higher for Khamenei who faces an escalating war with Israel, which has targeted nuclear and military sites and personnel with air attacks, drawing retaliatory Iranian missile fire, insiders and analysts said.

The five people familiar with Khamenei's decision-making process stressed that other insiders who have not been targeted by Israel's strikes remain important and influential, including top advisers on political, economic and diplomatic issues.

Khamenei designates such advisers to handle issues as they arise, extending his reach directly into a wide array of institutions spanning military, security, cultural, political and economic domains, two of the sources said.

Operating this way, including in bodies nominally under the elected president, means Khamenei's office is often involved not only in the biggest questions of state but in executing even minor initiatives, the sources said.

His son Mojtaba has over the past 20 years grown ever more central to this process, the sources said, building a role that cuts between the personalities, factions and organizations involved to coordinate on specific issues, the sources said.

A mid-ranking cleric seen by some insiders as a potential successor to his ageing father, Mojtaba has built close ties with the Guards giving him added leverage within across Iran's political and security apparatus, the sources said.

Ali Asghar Hejazi, the deputy of political security affairs at Khamenei's office, has been involved in sensitive security decisions and is often described as the most powerful intelligence official in Iran, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the head of Khamenei's office, Mohammad Golpayegani, as well as former Iranian foreign ministers Ali Akbar Velayati and Kamal Kharazi, and ex-parliament speaker Ali Larijani, remain trusted confidants on diplomatic and domestic policies issues such as the nuclear dispute, the sources said.

The loss of the Revolutionary Guards commanders nonetheless decimates the top ranks of a military organization that he has put at the center of power since becoming supreme leader in 1989, relying on it for both internal security and Iran's regional strategy.

While the regular army chain of command runs through the defense ministry under the elected president, the Guards answer personally to Khamenei, securing the best military equipment for their land, air and sea branches and giving their commanders a major state role.

As he faces one of the most dangerous moments in the country’s history, Khamenei finds himself further isolated by the recent losses of other key advisers in the region as Iran's "Axis of Resistance" coalition has been hammered by Israel.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was personally close to the Iranian leader, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in September last year and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by opposition factions in December.