Athens, Greece – Bashir is a Syrian Muslim who has lived in Greece since 2014. He married a fellow Syrian in the country, and three months ago, they had a son. After years of picking olives and oranges, learning Greek and a trade in metalwork, and finally buying his own equipment to start work as an independent trader, Bashir felt his life was finally coming together.Two months ago, the authorities handed him a piece of paper asking him to restate his reasons for coming to Greece and why he should now return to Syria.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBashir, who requested to withhold his surname, had been granted asylum in Greece in 2015 because of the civil war then raging in Syria. The war ended in December 2024, and Bashir became one of 1,200 Syrians whose asylum cases were reopened in February.“It’s a catastrophe,” he told Al Jazeera. “I don’t understand how this can happen. If they decide I should leave the country, should my family stay here?”Bashir’s lawyer said only men are currently receiving such notices – and not just from Syria but Afghanistan, another country whose civil war is deemed to have ended, with the Taliban’s sweeping victory in August 2021.But neither Syria nor Afghanistan is necessarily safe to return to, said the lawyer, Angeliki Theodoropoulou.“We believe this has to do with t …
