Abu Muhammad had already made his decision. He could no longer bear living in the desolate Rukban displacement camp in eastern Syria. 

When he entered a tent set up this week by UN and the government-affiliated Syrian Arab Red Crescent personnel on a rare visit to Rukban, he already knew how he would answer when a Red Crescent worker asked him whether he would like to stay in the camp or leave aboard an upcoming UN-assisted convoy. 

A grandfather in his 40s, Abu Muhammad said he would go back to the government-controlled area of Homs province, where his hometown is located, aboard buses slated to arrive at Rukban in the coming weeks. It was a decision he and his family had made together. Al-Monitor has withheld Abu Muhammad’s real name to protect his identity. 

He is among an estimated 11,000 to 24,000 displaced Syrians still trapped in the remote Rukban camp along the eastern Syrian-Jordanian border. They have spent years languishing in a desert no man’s land along the border since fleeing Islamic State attacks on their hometowns in eastern Homs province in 2015. The camp remains an informal settlement, scattered with makeshift mud homes. It sits within what is referred to as the 55-kilometer deconfliction zone of the eastern Syrian desert nominally controlled by a US-backed faction, Maghawir al-Thawra (Revolutionary Commandos Army). The US-led coalition's al-Tanf base is nearby. Outside this pocket are vast expanses of Syrian government-controlled territory.