ALEPPO: A month after clashes rocked a Kurdish-majority neighborhood in Syria ‘s second-largest city of Aleppo, most of the tens of thousands of residents who fled the fighting between government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have returned — an unusually quick turnaround in a country where conflict has left many displaced for years.
“Ninety percent of the people have come back,” Aaliya Jaafar, a Kurdish resident of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood who runs a hair salon, said Saturday. “And they didn’t take long. This was maybe the shortest displacement in Syria.”
Her family only briefly left their house when government forces launched a drone strike on a lot next door where weapons were stored, setting off explosions.
The Associated Press visited the community that was briefly at the center of Syria’s fragile transition from years of civil war as the new government tries to assert control over the country and gain the trust of minority groups anxious about their security.
Lessons learned
