Unlike most of Aleppo’s informal settlements, which are located in the city’s eastern neighbourhoods, the Ansari Al-Gharbi slum is situated in the southwest of the city, connecting to its eastern neighbourhoods in Al-Karroum area to the south. This informal settlement also links what was formerly known as the Ansari village with the neighbourhoods of SalahEddin, Seif Al-Dawla, and Al-Zabdiyah in Aleppo.

Regime forces used Ansari Al-Gharbi as a gathering area for eastern Aleppo inhabitants before their forced displacement at the beginning of 2016. In this article, urban expert Dr Main Kafa details the history of this area and its most prominent features.

Originally, most of the informal settlement’s lands were private agricultural properties where construction was prohibited, except for two properties covering about six percent of the entire area. One property belongs to the Ministry of Awqaf (endowments) and the other to the Aleppo municipality, used as a landfill.

In the early 1970s, some construction contractors started buying land in the area and subdividing it into plots for unauthorised construction. The contractors planned and zoned the area, carving out streets 6-8 metres wide in some parts and narrower in others. By 1973, the built-up area in Ansari Al-Gharbi covered 6.7 hectares, and by 1980, it reached around 35 hectares, according to a Ph.D. thesis by Salwa Sakal from the University of Paris VII in 1984.

The contractors built multi-storey buildings, some reaching up to seven floors, each containing multiple apartments ranging from 60-150 square metres. Few buildings consisted of only one or two storeys. The neighbourhood’s inhabitants are a mix of people from different regions, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, mostly from the rural areas of Aleppo, Raqqa and Idlib.

In 2006, the Aleppo City Council tasked the Engineering Unit at the Faculty of Architecture in Aleppo University to conduct an updated study of the area to address what it described as “collective residential violations” through the implementation of the Building Violations Law No. 1 of 2003, which was in force at the time. The latest Building Violations Law No. 40 of 2012 repealed Building Violations Law No. 59 of 2008, which in turn had repealed Law No. 1 of 2003.

The study, completed in 2009, found that the area covered about 134 hectares, inhabited by approximately 54,000 people, resulting in a high population density of 403 individuals per hectare. According to the study, 10 percent of the inhabitants are renters under lease agreements, most of which are not registered with the municipality to evade taxes. Meanwhile, 90 percent of the inhabitants own their homes, the majority of which are apartments in unlicensed buildings.

Most of the ownership documents held by residents are purchase contracts, irrevocable powers of attorney, financial records, lawsuit notices, water and electricity bills, occupancy statements, or a copy of the Provisional land Register and property registration statement. The possession of official documents by some residents, such as those issued by the Provisional land Register or a property registration statement, suggests that some buildings, especially those extending from the SalahEddin neighbourhood, are licensed constructions, albeit with building violations related to the number of floors.

The study proposed widening streets to a width of 12 metres on one side, merging smaller plots, securing services, and demolishing unlicensed buildings in various locations to ensure sunlight and ventilation in the planning of residential complexes and neighbourhoods. It also suggested unifying the building code system in the area by adopting a five-floor limit for each building and demolishing additional floors, along with implementing three setbacks at a distance of six metres each, (a setback is the required separation between a lot line and a building).

The study was not ratified until 2013, due to delays in bureaucratic procedures and interventions by security agencies. Conflicts of interest among some officials, who purchased properties in the area intending to benefit from them after learning about the study’s content and proposed solutions, also contributed to the delay in ratification.

Before the ratification of the study, in 2012, Ansari Al-Gharbi fell under the control of armed opposition forces. This led the regime forces to bombard it causing widespread destruction, significant human losses, and waves of displacement. With the Russian military intervention in 2015, the area was subjected to intense aerial bombardment until 2016, culminating in a ceasefire agreement and the forced displacement of all inhabitants, including those from Ansari Al-Gharbi.

In mid-2017, the regime forces’ checkpoints surrounding the area allowed some displaced individuals to return to Ansari Al-Gharbi, while the local municipality used bulldozers to open up some streets and remove rubble. Overall, it is estimated that the war and the bulldozing operations in Ansari Al-Gharbi resulted in the destruction of about 40 percent of the total housing stock.

In 2019, the Ansari Services Directorate, affiliated with the Aleppo City Council, launched a cleaning campaign in the neighbourhood in cooperation with the Central Services Directorate and the neighbourhood’s residents’ committee. This campaign covered the main streets and their side alleys. The residents’ committee was formed in accordance with Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011, led by the mukhtar and members selected by the Executive Office from the neighbourhood’s permanent residents.

In 2019, new unauthorised constructions appeared in the neighbourhood after government officials and officers from the security and military forces controlling the area seized homes, buildings, and lands owned by those who were forcibly displaced or had fled. These individuals, without permits, built additional floors on these seized properties, expanded constructions at the expense of neighbouring spaces, or dug and constructed underground floors. They also took over lands that had buildings demolished by the city council as being structurally unsound, where contractors then erected new unauthorised buildings.

The earthquake on February 6, 2023 resulted in the collapse of many structurally unsound and damaged buildings in the slum, due to the indirect damage from previous bombardments by regime forces and their allies. In September 2023, the Aleppo Governorate issued the third table listing the names of those affected whose residential and commercial buildings and properties were demolished due to the earthquake in the Ansari area. According to the table, the number of demolished plots in Ansari Al-Gharbi totaled 1,081. A plot refers to a piece of land on which a building consisting of one or several floors is erected. The damage to these plots was total, rendering the buildings uninhabitable.

The governorate issued these tables based on the provisions of Legislative Decree No. 3 of 2023 and its implementing instructions, which relate to granting special exemptions and a package of facilities to those affected by the earthquake. This was in accordance with the minutes of the committee formed by the decision of the Minister of Local Administration and Environment No. 554 dated March 20, 2023, chaired by the Governor of Aleppo and ratified by the Minister of Local Administration and Environment.