Displacement and Property Seizure Continue to Affect Shia Residents in Homs

Shia residents in the Homs governorate continue to suffer violations affecting their property and communities following the ouster of the Assad regime in December 2024. 

In a context where legal and institutional mechanisms to achieve justice remain unstable, those affected by housing and property violations face limited options: temporary or permanent displacement, or entering legal paths with uncertain outcomes.

Property violations have been documented in several villages in the Homs countryside, most notably the villages of Al-Ghour and Umm Al-Amad, in addition to the Abbasiya neighbourhood inside the city of Homs. Some villages witnessed the displacement of their Shia residents, whether as a result of direct attacks or due to repeated pressure and threats, leading some to move to other areas inside Syria, while others headed to Lebanon during the first months following the fall of the Assad regime. A large proportion remain displaced to this day.

From the first days following the fall of the Assad regime, multiple patterns of pressure and violations emerged. Some occurred under the pretext of pursuing remnants of the regime, while others were linked to exploiting the changed balance of power on the ground and the absence of an effective role for institutions and security forces. Some Sunni circles previously associated with the Syrian opposition circulated a narrative linking the Shia community to  the Assad regime forces and formations supported by the Lebanese Hezbollah.

However, the violations were not limited to pursuing individuals with previous links to military or security institutions, but also affected civilians who had not engaged in any activity against the Syrian opposition. These incidents ranged from the direct destruction of homes, to the seizure of property, and threats or extortion.

In January 2025,  in the village of Al-Ghour in the northern Homs countryside, tank shelling turned into a path of displacement for its Shia residents. Firas, aged 52, told The Syria Report how his house was reduced to rubble after convoys of  General Security forces entered the village under the pretext of pursuing remnants of the Assad regime. According to his account, the operation not only involved limited security pursuits, but also house raids, tank shelling of other homes, sectarian slogans, and the intimidation of residents. Under the sound of gunfire, Firas and his family left their house for his brother’s nearby home, before he, his brother, and his nephew were taken to a square in the village, where they were beaten alongside a number of young men from the village before being released.

Firas said the convoy commanders ordered the destruction of houses left empty by residents, which led to his house being directly targeted immediately after he left it. He described the moment he saw his home destroyed as harsher than the attack itself, considering the loss of his home akin to uprooting his family’s memory and an identity tied to the house over years of renovation and expansion.

A local correspondent for The Syria Report noted that the majority of the village’s residents left that day, and although some later returned, most remain outside it to this day. Firas now lives in Lebanon with his family in a small house, working at a bakery, adding that he does not possess sufficient means to restore his home. 

The case of Al-Ghour village reflects a pattern of direct property destruction used as a means of collective pressure that goes beyond individual pursuit, making return conditional upon costly reconstruction and renovation beyond the means of most affected people.

Another pattern emerged in the seizure of vacant homes without military operations or official decisions. 

In the village of Umm Al-Amad in the eastern Homs countryside, administratively affiliated with the city of Al-Makhram Al-Fawqani, Ali, a man in his thirties, recounted how the house he inherited from his father was turned into a residence for a family from nearby Bedouin tribes in early 2025. Ali said he had been living in Damascus Governorate in search of a better livelihood before being surprised by a friend informing him that his home was now occupied. According to his account, this occurred in the context of exploiting the unstable balance on the ground after the fall of the regime, when someone took over the house without any legal justification.

The same approach prevails in some Alawite villages in the Lattakia countryside, where Bedouin tribes have settled, expelled residents, and seized parts of their housing. This is partly attributed to a sense of immunity among some Bedouin tribes resulting from the transitional administration’s tolerance of their conduct due to reliance on them in military operations.

Ali added that his friend approached the person occupying the house and informed him that it had owners living in another governorate, but the latter responded that it did not concern him, reportedly saying that an empty house belongs to whoever lives in it, and that its owner “should thank God that he was not also displaced for being Shia”. After friendly efforts failed, Ali decided in October 2025 to file a lawsuit for property usurpation following a series of contacts to settle the matter. He hired a lawyer to pursue the case before the courts and is awaiting its progress.

The issue does not always concern vacant homes. In the Abbasiya neighbourhood inside the city of Homs, which has a Shia majority, Samer, aged 41 and a government employee, recounted the details of his family’s forced eviction at the end of September 2025 from the house he had purchased around seven years earlier. He said that a member of a Bedouin tribe stormed his house at the beginning of the school year and forced him and his family to leave without allowing them to remove their belongings, including his children’s school books.

He adds that when he tried to object, the man placed a pistol to his head, forcing him to leave the house within 24 hours, without being able to move any furniture to ease the burden of housing elsewhere. Samer describes what happened as forced eviction under armed threat, amid the absence of any authority capable of immediate intervention to stop the violation.

Samer pursued a legal route by approaching the Clear Extortion Committee affiliated with Homs Governorate, but the employee there informed him that the committee could not yet intervene in “these sensitive disputes”. Feeling unprotected, Samer moved with his family to Damascus out of fear of further targeting in a governorate where he believes the effective role of its security institutions remains absent. In December 2025, Samer attempted again to contact the person who seized his home in order to reach a settlement, but the latter requested USD 5,000 in exchange for vacating and returning the house, leaving him with two options: to borrow money to recover his property, or remain displaced while awaiting a potentially lengthy legal process.

A lawyer from the city of Homs, who requested anonymity, told The Syria Report that Article 723 of the Syrian Penal Code criminalises property extortion. The article stipulates punishment for anyone who seizes a property or part of it without official ownership documents or the right of disposal, when the property is in another’s possession, with imprisonment of up to six months. There are harsher penalties if the act is accompanied by threats or the use of force. If the act is committed by a number of armed individuals, the penalty may reach three years.

Regarding the demolition of property, the lawyer pointed out that Article 718 of the same law stipulates imprisonment from three months to two years, in addition to a financial fine of up to SYP 200. The lawyer described this punishment as disproportionate to the scale of the harm.

The lawyer added that he has received a number of cases involving financial extortion linked to property extortion in Homs, explaining that extortion penalties may reach temporary hard labour depending on the classification of the act. However, slow procedures and weak practical implementation turn some of these lawsuits into paths that benefit the aggressor more than they deliver justice to rights holders, the lawyer said.

The lawyer also criticised the absence of an effective role by the Clear Extortion Committee in Homs in recovering properties seized after December 8, 2024, considering that the paralysis of this mechanism reflects a failure to protect the right to housing and indicates a fracture in the social contract between the governorate’s communities. Most property extortion cases recorded since that date have affected Shia and Alawite minorities, whereas prior to that date most cases affected members of the Sunni community, with a limited number of cases among Christians in the Al-Hamidiyah area. He said that this shift in patterns of targeting raises questions about the impact of sectarian affiliation on ongoing property disputes in an environment lacking effective deterrence.