"Go back to Syria? It would be suicide. If I hadn’t left, I don’t think I would be alive anymore. I’m waiting for the final judgment by the National Court for the Right of Asylum (CNDA), which will decide if I will have to leave the territory. I don't work now; I live off an allowance for asylum seekers.

Nabil*, 38, is a Syrian who lives in the French city of La Rochelle, but he continues to struggle with anxiety. His asylum request was rejected in September 2024 by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra). He appealed against the decision before the National Court for the Right of Asylum (CNDA). The court can either offer him protection or definitively reject his asylum request.

I’ve been fighting to live in Europe for 13 years. I’ve filed three visa requests for France between 2012 and 2015: a tourist visa, a student visa for the French Alliance, and later one for the University of Orléans. They were all refused.

The French Embassy in Syria closed on March 6, 2012, and Syrians like Nabil had to carry out their consular procedures in neighboring countries, like Lebanon.

I obtained a scholarship for an art school in Denmark in 2017, but again, I couldn’t obtain a visa. I finally obtained a student visa in Hungary in 2022 for a master's in French literature.

My life in Europe took a turn for the worse only a few months after I arrived. The February 2023 earthquake seriously damaged my family’s house in Tartous. My parents no longer had the means to finance my master's degree.

The earthquake, which struck north-western Syria and south-eastern Turkey, killed over 50,000 people.

Without any financial resources, I had to abandon my studies. Without my studies, the visa could no longer be extended: I had to leave Hungary in June 2023. Heading to Paris, then Poitiers, I filed my first asylum request in August 2023.

'My life completely depended on the asylum application process'

The request was considered unacceptable, and they wanted to send me back to Hungary. I made an appeal, but the appeal was also rejected.

Nabil was "dublined", like thousands of other asylum seekers in the European Union. The Dublin regulation is the European law that requires an asylum seeker to file their request in the first country they entered in Europe. In Nabil’s case, it was Hungary.

I was completely desperate in October 2023, and I took a bus to the Netherlands.

I spent eight months there, in a refugee camp near Groningen. There were four of us to a room, surrounded by cardboard walls, with no privacy.

These were months of constant uncertainty; I no longer had any control over anything. My life depended entirely on the asylum application process.

In June 2024, the Dutch authorities deported me to France. I went to Poitiers to file a new application. This time, I received a receipt stating: 'first asylum application'.

I had my interview at Ofpra on September 16. I was surprised by their insistence on my religious affiliation. I explained to them I was an atheist; that I did not identify with any community.

The family of former dictator Bashar al-Assad, who ruled the country with an iron fist for over 50 years, is from the Alawite minority, like Nabil. Alawites make up approximately 10 percent of the Syrian population. Members of this minority have been subjected to acts of violence since the fall of the regime on December 8, 2024.

The response from Ofpra came on September 16: rejected. According to Ofpra, Nabil had not "demonstrated that he would be exposed to a direct and individual threat to his life if he returned" home.

Following Bashar al-Assad's departure on December 8, several European countries, including France, suspended their asylum programs for Syrians, waiting to see how the situation evolved. By the beginning of January, some 700 applications were pending, according to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Since the fall of the regime, Alawites 'risk death in Syria'

Yet since the transitional authorities came to power, people identified as Alawites risk death in Syria. In Tartus, my mother no longer leaves her home: she fears being kidnapped.

Kidnappings of women, particularly Alawites, have increased since the fall of Assad. according to several local sources. A Syrian activist interviewed by France 24 said there were two to three disappearances per day.

My family urges me never to return. In Banias, Nawar, my mother's cousin, received death threats in March. Her son, Firas, had to hide in the attic of a Sunni friend for a few days. Around the same time, an entire family I have known since childhood was massacred in the same city.

It was the family of Ahmad Harfoush. There were seven of them, including a three-year-old baby.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,500 civilians, most of them Alawites, were killed between March 4 and 10 in the Syrian coastline area. These victims died during an operation by law enforcement and groups affiliated with the new authorities, carried out in response to a March 6 attack by Alawite gunmen on checkpoints of security forces.

In the city of Banias, militias affiliated with the government killed more than 100 people on March 8 and 9. Amnesty International investigated 32 of the killings, and concluded that they “specifically targeted the Alawite community”.

Nabil is from a village located about 30 kilometers away from Banias.

‘It’s your religious background that determines whether you live or not’

Before killing someone, the attackers ask: ‘Shou dinak?' – ‘What is your religion? They used to ask, 'Are you a rebel?' Now it's your religious background that decides whether you live or die."

The Alawite community was the backbone of Assad’s regime. Its members held important positions in the civil service and within the dreaded mukhabarat and shabiha, the Syrian secret services.

Yet Nabil comes from a family that silently opposed the former regime. He used to campaign against Assad, along with other Alawites.

"We distributed leaflets against the dictatorship, for freedom. Assad's police in November 2013 arrested me, threatened me, and then beat me.

I fear death in my own country, this time because of my religious background... Yet, I still haven't been granted asylum in France. One question obsesses me: 'Why?'

Nabil's future remains uncertain if his appeal to the CNDA is rejected: the prefecture could issue him an order to leave French territory (OQTF). For the time being, France is not expelling Syrians to Syria.

Contacted in early April by InfoMigrants, Ofpra said it had "resumed processing all the asylum claims [for Syrians]”. Several European countries have adopted the same approach.

*First name has been changed