Thousands of families, living in terrible conditions, had been surviving in camps for displaced people in northern Syria, near the Turkish border, for years. They slept in tattered tents that didn't protect from much, neither the summer heat nor the winter cold.

So the ousting of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after 14 years of civil war last December was an encouraging sign for the families in the camps. They hoped to leave the areas controlled by anti-Assad rebel groups and return to their homes elsewhere in Syria. But, as it turned out, many of those homes as well as surrounding infrastructure had been destroyed.

Now those who have returned to where they used to live face multiple challenges, particularly from a financial perspective. After years of displacement, the families often have serious economic problems.

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"We may have lost our homes but we haven't lost our will to live or our ability to survive," Nadima al-Barakat, 36, told DW. She returned to her village in southern Syria and has ended up living in a tent on........

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