Returnees Find Property Seizure, Extortion, and Destruction in Al-Tadhamon

A gradual return of families to the Al-Tadhamon neighbourhood, south of Damascus, began following the fall of the Assad regime, revealing a heavy legacy of violations committed during years of control by the regime, its security apparatus, and local militias.

Testimonies from residents and field investigations showed that the neighbourhood had been the scene of widespread illegal property seizures, extortion of residents through the requirement of prior security approvals for return and renovation permits, as well as the deliberate demolition of buildings to erase property landmarks and conceal crimes. This is in addition to the massive destruction of infrastructure and basic services, and the near-complete collapse of local authority, leaving residents facing the consequences of deliberate neglect and chronic corruption themselves. With men often dead, displaced or detained, these dynamics placed an even greater burden on displaced women, who often had to navigate complicated and sometimes dangerous procedures to reclaim their property, especially in the absence of protective legal frameworks and amid widespread corruption, leaving them highly vulnerable to exploitation and gender-based violence.

Al-Tadhamon is located in south-eastern Damascus and serves as the southern gateway to the capital, six kilometres from the city centre. The neighbourhood was established in the late 1960s when, following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, thousands of people displaced from the Golan Heights and Quneitra set up informal settlements on agricultural land belonging to the city of Damascus.

Over time, Al-Tadhamon attracted further waves of arrivals from across Syria, and until 2011, it continued to suffer from poor services and deteriorating living conditions. During the war years, some of the neighbourhood’s residents rose up against the regime. Armed opposition forces took control of its southern section in 2012, making Al-Tadhamon subject to siege and continuous shelling by regime forces, which caused widespread devastation. Later, in 2017, the Islamic State (ISIS) seized control of the southern part, before regime forces recaptured it in early 2018 through a military campaign that ended with the forced displacement of most of its inhabitants. From then until the fall of the regime in 2024, the neighbourhood remained under tight security control, and efforts at reconstruction or organising the return of residents failed.

Since the fall of the regime, around 800 families have returned to Al-Tadhamon. Some of them have made limited attempts to rehabilitate their homes, while others have only inspected their damaged properties. Many homes have been completely destroyed, and most returnees lack the financial means to carry out repairs, while others prefer to wait for improved economic conditions before starting any renovations.

In the southern section of the neighbourhood, controlled by the opposition before 2018, more than 65 percent of the area has been destroyed. Basic necessities such as electricity, water, telecommunications, and internet remain unavailable. Roads between the alleys have remained largely blocked, and residents have begun reopening them themselves. Governmental efforts have been limited to removing some of the concrete blocks previously placed by Assad’s forces for security purposes, without any real intervention to rehabilitate the infrastructure.

Parts of the sewage system remain exposed, and the neighbourhood’s streets suffer from accumulated debris and excavation damage caused by the battles, armoured vehicle movements, and previous security measures. Despite the regime regaining full control of the neighbourhood in mid-2018, no paving or road repairs have been carried out.

During the Assad rule, the security office, affiliated with the Military Intelligence Directorate overseeing Al-Tadhamon, and led by Saleh Al-Ras, known as “Abu Montajab,” played a prominent role in the systematic seizure of the properties of dissidents and absentees, by forming a specialised cell for document forgery and fraudulent property sales.

Members of the cell gathered information about vacant and abandoned properties and retrieved any ownership documents left behind. They then sold the property internally within the cell through a series of staged transactions, where a backdated contract would be drawn up between two cell members, followed by another sale to a third member, with the ownership appearing to pass through at least four different people. This method aimed to convince future buyers that the property had changed hands multiple times naturally.

The fraudulent sale operations exploited the absence of property owners, particularly in informal settlements or properties not formally registered, where fraudsters impersonated one of the heirs or owners after obtaining an inheritance certificate. They would then execute fictitious sales contracts with unsuspecting buyers in the presence of false witnesses. Later, lawsuits to validate the sales would be filed in court, using falsified notifications to prevent the real owners from attending and defending their rights. Courts, often in violation of the law, relied solely on witness testimony without verifying signatures or fingerprints, leading to rulings that validated the sales and transferred ownership based on fraudulent evidence.

Some residents told The Syria Report that obtaining security approvals to return to the neighbourhood or to renovate homes during Assad’s rule was subject to systematic extortion, conducted by networks linked to the security office headed by “Abu Montajab,” along with other figures from the Palestine Branch known as “Abu Ali Hassan.”

Ibrahim, one resident,  said that applying for security approval required paying substantial bribes, and it took about a month and a half for the approval to be issued after payment. Extortion continued during attempts to renovate homes, as financial levies were imposed for the entry of construction materials. For example, a fee of SYP 100,000 was charged for the entry of 100 kilogrammes of cement. No construction materials could be brought into the neighbourhood without paying sums of money to a person nicknamed “Mario,” in coordination with the neighbourhood’s mukhtar. Ibrahim pointed out that obtaining security approval was extremely selective and included only a very small number of residents, even among regime loyalists, making the return dependent on paying bribes and appeasing local power figures. 

Given the widespread violence and massacres in the area, many returnee households are now headed by women, making it particularly difficult for them to navigate the corrupt and exploitative systems required to reclaim property and rebuild.

Ongoing security investigations in Al-Tadhamon have revealed that the demolition of buildings during the years of Assad regime control was not random but was sometimes deliberately carried out to erase area landmarks and property boundaries or to conceal victims’ corpses. A security official told The Syria Report that some of those involved in the Al-Tadhamon Massacre admitted to participating in the demolition of buildings for this purpose. The official stated that demolitions specifically targeted some buildings on Al-Sabourat Street, around the Othman bin Affan Mosque, and the site of the Al-Tadhamon Massacre. As a result, many residents in the Slikha and Tabbab areas have found it extremely difficult to identify the locations of their homes due to the disappearance of key landmarks. In other instances, buildings were demolished to steal the iron from the rubble, as part of an organised looting operation that even targeted the structural elements of destroyed buildings.

The recent gradual return of residents to Al-Tadhamon has revealed the extent of the violations committed during the years of Assad regime and militia control over the neighbourhood: from the seizure of absent owners’ properties by organised networks, to the financial extortion of those wishing to return through a system of security approvals, to the demolition of buildings to erase landmarks and bodies. 

Despite residents’ efforts to recover their rights, the absence of state institutions, including the judiciary, and the continued dominance of local power figures from the regime era, hampers any real resolution of property issues. Amid widespread destruction and the lack of services, the residents of Al-Tadhamon are left facing a harsh reality, constantly reminded of the heavy legacy left by the regime, making the rebuilding of the neighbourhood and the restoration of rights an ongoing challenge with no clear prospect for resolution.