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Tremors in Salamieh and Lessons Learned from the 2023 Earthquake

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The Hama governorate experienced several seismic tremors in August, the strongest of which occurred shortly after midnight on August 11 and 12, registering 5.3 on the Richter scale. The epicentre was in the village of Tal Al-Durra, near Salamieh, approximately 30 kilometres east of Hama. While these tremors did not result in the collapse of residential buildings, they caused material damage and cracks in homes.

As the tremor exceeded 5 on the Richter scale, Syria’s National Earthquake Centre classified it as an earthquake, and determined that it occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres beneath the surface. These tremors were reportedly caused by movements in the Palmyrene tectonic plate due to accumulated subterranean stress, with geological experts stating that they were indirectly linked to the February 6, 2023 earthquake.

Dozens of people were taken to Salamieh hospitals with fractures and bruises, mostly from jumping out of windows or falling while descending stairs. A local correspondent for The Syria Report noted that emergency teams from the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) set up tents and organised public shelters in parks immediately after the earthquake. Many affected in Salamieh are currently waiting for the AKDN to announce a programme to repair and reinforce their properties. They do not expect much support from the municipality, given its limited budget and its inability to handle tasks such as garbage collection and water supply to residents. The AKDN operates in several regions of Syria, particularly in areas inhabited by the Ismaili community. Salamieh’s population is estimated at around 200,000, most of whom are Ismailis.

Hama Governor Maen Sobhi told the semi-official newspaper Al-Watan on August 28 that the governorate had taken measures to address the impact of the tremors in Salamieh and its surrounding countryside, aiming to mitigate their damage. These measures included forming a public safety committee to inspect damaged buildings and increasing the readiness of disaster response institutions.

In a statement to the official news agency SANA, Salamieh City Council Chairwoman Souhad Zaidan explained that the public safety committee began its work the day after the earthquake. Additionally, the council formed a team of 39 engineers to assess the structural safety of the affected buildings. Mrs Zaidan noted that the council was coordinating with economic and civil organisations to provide alternative rental housing for the affected residents, with rent covered for a full year.

The governor told Al-Watan that 475 homes were damaged by the tremors across Hama Governorate, with 37 needing full evacuation and 152 requiring reinforcement and repairs. However, these figures are not compatible with what the chairwoman of the city council stated in the same article, published on August 28. She noted that the Salamieh city council had received over 900 requests for inspections in the city and had inspected around 750 homes. Of these, 38 percent (285 homes) were found to be safe but in need of minor repairs, 53 percent (398 homes) required reinforcement and repairs, and over 8.5 percent (64 homes) needed to be evacuated and demolished.

A correspondent for The Syria Report highlighted that the discrepancies in the figures given by officials could be seen as an attempt to exaggerate the damage in order to attract support from donor organisations. This appears to be one of the lessons learned by Syrian state institutions following the February 6, 2023 earthquake.

In the same statement to Al-Watan, the governor of Hama called on international donors to help repair the water and sewage systems in Salamieh and its surrounding countryside, and to improve wells and pumping networks to address the severe water crisis, despite the issue being unrelated to the August 12 earthquake. Salamieh and its surrounding areas are suffering from severe drought, with water sources such as wells and springs drying up. As a result, farming in the region has shifted to rain-fed agriculture due to the scarcity of irrigation water. Drinking water is pumped according to a strict rationing schedule, with supplies available for only a few hours every three days. Most residents are forced to buy drinking water from unregulated sources, sold via mobile tankers. The main water network is deteriorating due to lack of maintenance and failure to implement new projects in this sector.

Additionally, one municipal official told The Syria Report that most of the buildings in Salamieh classified as dangerous and in need of demolition were at risk of collapse even before the August 12 earthquake. This is often because the municipality did not issue renovation permits (officially known as reinforcement and partial rebuilding permits) for them. The refusal to grant renovation permits is due to two main reasons: either these buildings are not licensed and have unresolved building violations under Law No. 40 of 2012, with the municipality refusing to reconcile and instead calling for their demolition, or inheritance disputes prevent the subdivision of some properties, making it impossible to issue renovation permits. Most of these homes are old, some are made of mud, and a portion of them are abandoned.

Some of the homes classified as at risk of collapse after the August 12 earthquake were already marked for demolition. The municipality has been demanding their removal for years, as they were built without permits in areas designated for urban expansion west of the city under the expansion of the city’s zoning plan. The owners of these properties refuse to vacate them without compensation, particularly because the municipality has previously evicted and demolished some buildings there without compensating the residents. One such building is located near the branch office of the ruling Baath Party in the city, and the municipality wants to remove it because its location obstructs the expansion of a major road.

Scant Aid and No Alternative Housing in Jableh a Year After the Earthquake

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Despite numerous official announcements claiming that permanent or temporary prefabricated homes are nearing completion, and rumours about some of these homes being handed over, many of those affected by the February 6, 2023 earthquake in Jableh, in the Lattakia governorate, remain pessimistic about receiving their homes or even any monetary compensation.

The quake led to the collapse of more than 100 buildings in the coastal governorate of Lattakia, including several in the city of Jableh, particularly in the neighbourhoods of Al-Faydh, Al-Rumailah, and Al-Ghazalat, and in the rural areas of Jableh, including the village of Istamo.

According to the head of the Jableh City Council, quoted in an  Athr Press article on March 9, 2023, 19 building blocks collapsed due to the earthquake, and safety committees found 10 severely damaged buildings that needed to be demolished. These buildings were later demolished by the city’s council teams.

In April 2023, the head of the UAE Red Crescent delegation confirmed that the UAE would build 1,000 prefabricated housing units for those affected by the earthquake in the Lattakia Governorate, across seven sites, three of which are in the city of Jableh, in the neighbourhoods of Al-Naqah, Al-Fuwar, and Al-Faydh.

In mid-May 2023, the Governor of Lattakia confirmed that preparations were underway to build two buildings in Jableh as part of government housing projects for those affected by the earthquake, each building comprising 10 floors. According to official media, two buildings are under construction in Jableh in the neighbourhoods of Al-Naqah and Al-Ghazalat, containing 80 apartments, each 100 square metres in size.

An engineer from the Jableh Municipality and a member of the public safety committees told The Syria Report that the alternative housing project is underway, but is suffering from severe delays due to “corruption.” The engineer declined to elaborate but indicated that these buildings, whether temporary or permanent, should have been handed over to the earthquake victims long ago. He added that progress is no more than 25 percent complete at some sites.

Aside from the alternative housing, a correspondent for The Syria Report in the area pointed out that many of those affected in Jableh have neither heard about nor received any form of financial compensation. This includes neither the tax exemptions granted to earthquake victims under Legislative Decree No. 3 of 2023, nor any support from the National Fund for Earthquake Victims, established under Legislative Decree No. 7 of 2023 to provide financial assistance to help them overcome the physical, material, or emotional damage they suffered.

Ali, a man in his fifties, refused to leave his building, which was severely damaged. In 2023, the public safety committee deemed the building at risk of collapse and was on the verge of evacuating the residents, sealing it with red wax, and issuing a demolition order. However, Ali, who had nowhere else to go, quickly bribed a committee member with SYP 3 million to avoid the demolition. The committee member advised Ali to carry out the repairs at his own expense and then submit the documents proving the repairs to the Jableh Municipality, along with signatures from engineers in the Lattakia Engineers Syndicate, to receive compensation. Ali repaired the house and repeatedly visited Jableh Municipality and Lattakia Governorate to obtain financial compensation for the repair costs, but to no avail.

Ali’s neighbour recently received a message from the Greek Orthodox Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development at the Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, informing him that he would receive a one-time assistance of SYP 3 million. This assistance is provided to those affected who left their damaged homes or to cover minor repair costs. When Ali inquired with the Department of Ecumenical Relations, they told him that all those registered as affected at the municipality would receive this assistance, according to alphabetical lists of names drawn up by the Lattakia governorate. Ali, and many others interviewed by The Syria Report, are unaware of the connection between the Lattakia governorate and the Department of Ecumenical Relations in providing this financial aid to earthquake victims.

On the other hand, the official media continues to refer to a government financial support for the affected, through the “Cash” programme, which is intended to provide rent allowances to owners of collapsed properties, amounting to SYP 3.15 million, as a one-time payment. According to official statements, the budget allocated for this aid is SYP 68 billion. The source of these funds is unclear, but according to official media, they come from unnamed international and local organisations and are intended as rent allowances for those who chose not to move into temporary shelters.

But even this aid is not accessible to everyone. For example, despite repeatedly visiting the Jableh Municipality, Maha, a widow living in rural Jableh, has been unable to obtain any information from the staff that would help her secure financial compensation to repair her home, which sustained moderate damage during the earthquake. The public safety committee that inspected her house determined it needed repairs. Maha is in severe financial distress, responsible for a large family, and relies solely on a pension. She points out that some of her neighbours received rental allowances last winter from the Department of Ecumenical Relations, despite none of their homes having collapsed. When Maha approached the Department of Ecumenical Relations, they told her she needed to contact the Lattakia governorate to have her name added to the list of earthquake victims.

Umm Salam, an elderly woman, lost several family members when their home collapsed in the city of Jableh, and she has yet to receive any compensation. She turned to NGOs and she received some basic material and financial aid. An expatriate donated enough to cover her rent for six months. Umm Salam told The Syria Report’s correspondent that she had submitted all the necessary documents to both official bodies and NGOs after the earthquake. She keeps reminding the staff at Jableh municipality of her situation to ensure her name is on the list of affected individuals. To this day, Umm Salam does not know if she will receive alternative housing, whether temporary or permanent, or where it might be located.

Aleppo City Demolishes Quake-Damaged Building Without Offering Alternative Housing

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A work crew of the Aleppo City Council demolished in February a dilapidated building in an informal settlement within the Ferdous neighbourhood in the eastern part of the city. It was demolished due to the building’s dangerous condition and the potential for it to collapse at any moment, following significant damage it sustained during the earthquake on February 6, 2023.

The Public Safety Committee of the City Council, in a report issued towards the end of 2023 classified the building as cracked and in need of foundation repairs, but did not recommend evacuating the residents. The committee informed the residents of the building’s danger, but did not advise them to evacuate, according to a correspondent for The Syria Report in the area. In early February 2024, several residents approached the City Council after they visually observed a significant increase in cracks and fissures, particularly in the columns. Subsequently, the Public Safety Committee inspected the building again and decided to evacuate it immediately after detecting cracks in the building’s structure and a subsidence in one of its main columns.

The building, unlicensed, was constructed on a private plot of land within an unzoned area classified for agricultural use where construction is prohibited. Consequently, the entire property is not registered in the Land Record. The land ownership document is a court judgement, and the apartment ownership documents are notarised sales contracts.

The building, consisting of six floors and constructed before the year 2000, designated the ground floor for commercial shops, and five residential floors housing a total of 15 apartments, of which only five were inhabited. Prior to evacuation, these five apartments were occupied by three displaced families renting, and two families owning their apartments. The remaining apartments, most in need of rehabilitation and lacking doors and windows, were unoccupied, with their owners forcibly displaced to opposition areas in northwest Syria.

A correspondent for The Syria Report stated that the city council forced the residents to evacuate the building within a few hours following the issuance of the second public safety committee report in February 2024. The report had warned the residents of the necessity to leave due to the danger of remaining in the building and the need for its demolition. However, the residents resisted leaving the building and refused to evacuate before receiving a promise from the city council to secure alternative housing for them or to include their names on the lists issued by the Aleppo governorate for those eligible for support from the National Fund for Earthquake Victims, established by Legislative Decree No. 7 of 2023.

To resolve the standoff, the council enlisted a patrol from the law enforcement forces to evacuate the residents. After being evicted, the residents were forced to displace and search for affordable housing for rent in the informal Karm Homad neighbourhood nearby. Within hours after the evacuation, a city council workshop demolished the building using heavy machinery, including bulldozers and trucks, after the neighbouring buildings were evacuated as a precaution. The head of the council, Maad Madlaji, oversaw the evacuation and demolition operations. As with the majority of buildings that were demolished after the earthquake, the rubble from the Ferdous building was transported to the rubble recycling station in Sheikh Said.

It remains unclear why the city council did not inform those residents about the soon-to-be-added “Category C” of those eligible for support from the National Fund for Earthquake Victims. This category includes owners of properties that were demolished after the earthquake, or will be demolished, through decisions from the public safety committees due to the structural unsafety of these properties and the impossibility of reinforcing them. “Category C” is supposed to include owners of licensed properties located in zoned areas, those unlicensed in zoned areas, or those unlicensed in unzoned areas. Categories A and B include owners of buildings that collapsed during the quake of February 2023. This means that the residents of the Ferdous building qualify for support within this category. According to our correspondent, no one from the city council or the governorate has informed the residents about the possibility of being included in this support.

A large part of the Ferdous neighbourhood is an informal area that saw significant expansion during the 1990s. It is characterised by high population and building density, narrow streets, and is inhabited by families from Aleppo and migrants from the rural areas around the city. The area is geographically connected to other informal neighbourhoods like Karm Homad, Al-Saliheen, Al-Marjeh, Al-Maadi, Jisr Al-Haj, and Al-Mashhad.

Between 2012 and 2016, the armed opposition controlled the neighbourhood and the wider eastern Aleppo. As a result, the area was subjected to intense shelling, aerial bombings with barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, and missiles from warplanes. This caused direct visible damage to homes and also indirect damage to buildings in the informal areas, which already suffered from weak reinforcement and support, amidst the absence of engineering studies for building, soil, and foundations.

In 2016, regime forces regained control of the Ferdous neighbourhood and all of eastern Aleppo, leading to the forced displacement of most of its inhabitants. Afterwards, the Baqir Brigade and other Shiite factions affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard took control of Ferdous. Since 2016, many residents of the Ferdous neighbourhood have returned to their homes, but extensive security detention campaigns carried out by the Baqir Brigade targeted anyone suspected of opposing the regime among the returnees, prompting them to leave again between 2017 and 2018 to opposition-controlled areas in the northwest or the northeast where the Syrian Democratic Forces hold power. A significant number of these people sold their homes in Ferdous at low prices.

The Ferdous district has experienced successive building collapses since 2016, the most recent of which occurred on September 7, 2022, when a five-storey building collapsed, killing 13 people, including women and children from two families.

The Ansari Al-Gharbi Informal Settlement in Aleppo

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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.

 

Seven Decades on, Unresolved Property Disputes Linger on in a Damascus Informal Settlement

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In the 1950s, a large informal settlement, known as the Southern Midan Zoned area, emerged in the southwestern part of the Midan neighbourhood in Damascus. The area is bordered to the west by the Daraa-Damascus motorway and to the south by the Dahadil area.

For over seven decades, unresolved disputes over property claims and the faulty work of dispute resolution committees have left this area in legal limbo.

Most of the buildings in this informal area are unlicensed and constructed on expropriated land. However, it is difficult to classify this area as an informal settlement because its streets are planned, and its buildings largely adhere to construction codes, including multi-storey buildings of six to seven floors. A mixed population from the Midan neighbourhood in Damascus and the southern governorates of Daraa and Quneitra inhabits this area. According to estimates by a correspondent for The Syria Report, about 10,000 people live there.

In a regular meeting held in mid-January 2024, members of the Damascus Governorate Council called for the adoption of a recommendation to digitise and archive property records in the Southern Midan Zoned area to protect the rights of the owners due to what they described as stumbling in the work of the dispute resolution committees. The Director of Planning and Urbanisation in the governorate, Hassan Traboulsi, said that five dispute resolution committees were formed in the area without specifying the date of formation. He added that these committees have not completed their work due to the lack of information about old properties and the emergence of new residential and commercial properties in the area. Mr Traboulsi also mentioned that there is currently a study to issue a new zoning plan for the area.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the state expropriated private agricultural lands, some of which belonged to residents of the Midan neighbourhood and others to people from Daraa and Quneitra. Some of these lands were also dissolved properties, meaning properties that emerged from estates without heirs, or with heirs who did not meet the ownership laws, or from neglecting to use Amiri lands for five years, thereby making them into private state property.

Subsequently, five committees were formed that included judges, currently referred to by Damascus Governorate officials as dispute resolution committees. The Expropriation and Distribution Department was responsible for forming these committees. It is not known to which governmental body this agency belonged in the 1950s. However, a department with a similar name currently falls under the Directorate of Planning and Urbanisation in the Damascus Governorate.

The formation of these committees predates any of the urban zoning laws currently known in Syria, which seems to be the reason behind the confusion of the members and officials of the Damascus Governorate in naming and describing these committees. From the scattered information available, these committees appear to be tasked with multiple duties, from inventorying properties and assets and estimating their value to resolving disputes among rights holders. The responsibility of the Expropriation and Distribution Department for forming these committees indicates that one of their tasks was also to estimate the compensation value for the rights holders.

Therefore, the work of these committees parallels the work of three types of committees currently known under the prevailing urban zoning and planning laws:

  1. The Inventory and Description Committee for properties in the area, including trees and crops, also conducts a social survey of the area’s residents.
  2. The Real Estate Appraisal Committee deals with buildings, structures, and trees.
  3. The Dispute Resolution Committee has judicial authority and is charged with considering objections and claims of ownership or real estate rights on properties within the zoning area.

In all cases, the work of the five committees formed in the 1950s was not completed, and no lists were issued with the names of the rights holders and their property shares. Compensation values were not determined, and the Dispute Resolution Committee resolved none of the disputes among rights holders.

Over time, with the unfinished work of the committees, the area has become a large, inhabited informal settlement with many unlicensed residential buildings erected on expropriated land. According to the Syria Report correspondent, the Damascus Governorate has no study on rezoning the area nor any social study on its current occupants and their rights. The former governor of Damascus, Bishr Al-Sabban, had said in 2008 that 2,000 occupancies in the area needed to be resolved before issuing the final zoning plan.

The Syria Report’s correspondent pointed out that the Damascus Governorate does not currently prioritise this area due to its lack of funding. However, it may later impose the area’s rezoning under one of the controversial urban planning laws issued during the war years, such as Law No. 23 of 2015 or Law No. 10 of 2018.

Explained: Construction Contractors

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The Contractors’ Syndicate was established in the 1950s under the name of the General Syndicate of Syrian Contractors. Its operations were regulated per the provisions of the Construction Contractors’ Profession Regulation Law No. 237 of 1956, which was amended by Law No. 2 of 2006. The latest, and currently in force, Contractors’ Syndicate Law No. 9 of 2014 stipulated that all contractors should be members of the syndicate and changed its name to the Construction Contractors’ Syndicate.

According to Law No. 9 of 2014, a contractor is a natural or legal person registered at one of the syndicate’s branches, and a member thereof who executes contracting works such as building maintenance, roads, bridges, railways, land reclamation, dams, water networks, well drilling, electrical or mechanical works, marine constructions, and others. An individual contractor is referred to as a natural contractor, a contracting company as a legal contractor, while an engineering contractor is termed a de-facto contractor.

A contractor obtains a classification from the syndicate based on their financial situation and technical competence. According to the Ministry of Public Works and Housing Decision No. 2828 of 2021, based on Ministerial Decision No. 1296 of 2003, there are seven categories of contractors: an “excellent” category and six other categories ranked from one to six.

According to the annexes of Decision 2828, the engineering experience and positions previously held by the contractor and the projects executed are used to calculate the financial situation. For example, the general manager position is equivalent to SYP 300 million annually, while the experience of an overseeing execution engineer is equivalent to SYP 45 million. The equipment owned by the contractor is also included in the calculation of the financial situation.

According to Law No. 9 of 2014, a contractor must be Syrian, at least 20 years of age, not convicted of a disgraceful felony, not prohibited from practising the profession, have a suitable office that meets the standards set in the internal regulations of the syndicate, not employed in the public sector or joint sector, i.e., mixed private-public sector, and possess the required financial solvency and technical competence.

Contractors’ Syndicate and Construction Permits

Directive No. 11203/1 issued by the Prime Minister’s Office in August 2023 mandates that all construction permit holders must exclusively execute the construction by contracting contractors registered in the syndicate. The direct reason for this exclusivity is not clear. However, official entities justify it by the need to define roles and responsibilities distributed among administrative units, the Engineers’ Syndicate, and the Contractors’ Syndicate, especially after the disastrous outcomes of the earthquake on February 6, 2023.

Directive 11203/1 followed a series of meetings held by the Services and Infrastructure Committee of the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment, with representatives from both the Construction Contractors’ Syndicate and the Engineers’ Syndicate, to review the mechanisms followed for constructing buildings in Syria and define the roles and responsibilities of all parties in disaster situations. This led to a government task force composed of deputies from the Ministries of Local Administration and Environment, Public Works and Housing, and Water Resources, along with the heads of the Engineers’ and Construction Contractors’ Syndicates. The outcomes of the government task force were issued within Directive No. 11203/1, which included three main points: firstly, the necessity of adhering to the legal regulations and controls. Secondly, no construction permit should be executed except through a contractor accredited by the syndicate. And thirdly, the appointment of a resident engineer to oversee the project on the construction site.

In October 2023, the Ministry of Local Administration issued a circular, without a number, mandating administrative units not to grant building permits without a certified contract between the building owner and a classified contractor. This means that a construction contract has become an additional requirement for licensing. A construction contract is an agreement signed between the building owner and the classified contractor, acting as the builder. The contract includes the obligations of both parties, the duration of execution, specifications of the work, costs and fees, and payment schedules, as well as terms and penalties in case of breach of the agreement and its clauses.

According to the official press, ministerial directive 11203/1 and the Ministry of Local Administration circular impacted construction activity, resulting in a decrease in building permit applications and imposing high fees and costs on them. In addition to the contractor’s fees for the construction, the construction contract incurs fixed fees and other costs calculated as a percentage of the construction costs, which are collected by the Ministry of Finance and the Contractors’ Syndicate.

Therefore, anyone wishing to construct a permitted building in a zoned area is now required to pay engineering costs to the planning engineer and fees to the Engineers’ Syndicate, costs to the classified contractor performing the work and fees to the Contractors’ Syndicate, licensing costs and fees to the administrative units, and building materials costs and prices.

Housing for Earthquake-Affected Idlib Residents, a Year Later

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Over a year after the February 6 earthquake, the Idlib governorate still suffers from its catastrophic effects, especially in meeting the housing needs of those affected. The quake left 2,114 dead in Idlib and damaged 18,000 homes partially or entirely, according to official figures released by the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) after the damage assessment committees concluded their work.

The SSG, along with local and international NGOs, launched multiple projects to assist in housing the earthquake victims in Idlib. However, these entities faced real difficulties in meeting the significant housing needs of the affected homeowners, as well as approximately 25,000 Syrian refugees who returned from Turkey. Due to the vast devastation in southern Turkey and the rise of anti-refugee rhetoric in the aftermath of the earthquake, many Syrians returned to northern Syria. Idlib was already experiencing a housing crisis before the earthquake, with around 2.8 million people displaced by the conflict.

Official efforts by the SSG

The SSG created the Earthquake Victims Directorate on February 12, 2023, under its Ministry of Development and Humanitarian Affairs, defining its tasks as enumerating those affected, especially orphans and those in need of social care, monitoring their affairs, assessing their needs, and seeking to secure them, the directorate’s leader, Ammar Najjar, told The Syria Report. Mr Najjar estimated that the support provided by international donors did not exceed 12 percent of the needs of those affected.

Last year, the Earthquake Victims Directorate managed to supervise the housing of 5,400 families affected by the earthquake in temporary residential complexes in Al-Kamouna camps and Jabal Killi areas south of Sarmada City and Mashhad Ruhin north of Dana City. These families were previously living in 114 shelter centres in Idlib after their homes were either completely or partially damaged.

These temporary residential complexes were not originally intended for earthquake victims but were established by non-governmental organisations, most of which are Syrian or Turkish, to house IDPs camp residents in northern Syria. Most of these complexes were built on public lands, each comprising dozens of small residential units less than 50 square metres, some of which have two storeys. The Directorate for Earthquake Victims, in coordination with the NGOs, prioritised housing earthquake victims in these complexes, allowing residents to benefit from their units without owning them.

Non-Governmental Organisations

The Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, was among the most responsive non-governmental actors to the earthquake disaster. According to the Civil Defence’s media and communication office, the organisation reopened roads spanning 800 kilometres across 335 population gatherings and 119 camps after clearing the debris. The institution also removed 30,000 cubic metres of damaged roofs and walls likely to collapse across 125 population centres and cleared more than 442,000 cubic metres of rubble across 162 residential complexes.

The White Helmets also rehabilitated 30 kilometres of roads in operational alliance with other NGOs, such as the Syrian American Medical Society and the Syrian Forum. They rehabilitated 130 kilometres of water networks and seven kilometres of sewage systems.

In September 2023, the Directorate for Earthquake Victims supervised the housing of 135 earthquake orphans in the Khair Al-Tijar residential solidarity project established near Sarmada. The project was a collaboration between the Directorate, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Idlib, and the Bab Al-Hawa Crossing. It is a community initiative to collect donations to build or purchase homes for those affected by the earthquake. According to The Syria Report’s local correspondent, residents will be granted the right to dispose of their homes after all legal procedures are completed.

The Directorate for Earthquake Victims also oversaw the housing of 30 families in the Ajyal Residential Complex north of Sarmada city. An NGO initiated the project’s construction, dedicating it to those affected by the earthquake.

On the earthquake’s first anniversary, a partial opening of the Hilal Melhem project, implemented by the Melhem Volunteer Team in the city of Harem, took place after completing 80 percent of the construction work. The work began last July on the project, which consists of 25 two-storey buildings housing 352 apartments and 16 commercial shops, in addition to service facilities such as a mosque, a health centre, and a school, covering a total area of half a hectare, as stated by the project official, Mohammed Al-Sheikh, to The Syria Report. The land is privately owned. The Melhem Team purchased it from its owner for the project, and residents will only be given the right to use it.

The Hilal Melhem project in Harem is one of the long-term response efforts by the Melhem Volunteer Team as part of the Capable Campaign, which has managed to raise donations of around USD 13 million to house approximately 2,000 families affected by the earthquake. The estimated cost of the Hilal Melhem project is about USD 2 million, with work proceeding in parallel on two other projects in Armanaz and Azaz.

Earthquake Victims Fund to Add New Category for Support Eligibility

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In recent days, the Board of Directors of the National Fund for Supporting Earthquake Victims reiterated its intention to add a third category, known as category C, eligible for support to compensate for their real estate losses.

The National Fund for Supporting Earthquake Victims was established by Legislative Decree No. 7 of 2023, aiming to provide financial support to help survivors overcome physical, material, or moral damage incurred by the February 6 earthquake. The Fund is part of Syria’s People First national action plan for the quake aftermath and will operate for three years. During this period, the Fund’s management is required to disburse the proceeds to the eligible victims.

According to its executive instructions, the support programme provided by the Fund includes compensation for owners of buildings destroyed at the moment of the earthquake on February 6 or in the aftershock that occurred on February 20, divided into two categories: Category A for destroyed properties located within licensed buildings in a zoned area, with owners being compensated by the Fund with SYP 160 million for rebuilding.

Category B pertains to unlicensed properties and buildings, whether in a zoned area or not. The owners are entitled to apply for housing within the government housing projects for earthquake victims constructed by the General Housing Establishment (GHE). These beneficiaries receive financial support of SYP 40 million paid directly by the Fund to the GHE, with the possibility of obtaining a loan from the Real Estate Bank under Decree No. 3 of 2023, equivalent to the remaining amount of the housing unit’s value. Decree No. 3 of 2023 provides earthquake victims with tax exemptions, some of which relate to their completely or partially demolished properties.

The new C category, expected to be added soon to the list of those eligible for support from the Fund, encompasses owners of properties that were destroyed after the earthquake or are to be demolished based on decisions made by the governorates due to the structural unsafety of these properties and the impossibility of reinforcing them. The C category includes owners of licensed properties located in zoned areas and unlicensed ones in both zoned and unzoned areas.

The first mention of the third category C was during a meeting of the Fund’s board of directors on December 17, 2023. This was reiterated during the board’s first meeting in 2024 on February 4, coinciding with the anniversary of the earthquake disaster. The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Hussein Arnous, with members including the Ministers of Public Works and Housing, Local Administration and Environment, the Governors of Lattakia and Aleppo, and Firas Kallas, the General Director of the Fund’s board of directors.

At the latest meeting, members confirmed that work is ongoing to develop mechanisms and criteria to set up the third category within the Fund’s database without specifying a final date for beginning to receive applications according to these criteria. No final figures were released during the meeting regarding the number of damaged properties that have been or are expected to be demolished, which could qualify their owners to apply for support under category C. Furthermore, no reliable data leaked regarding the value of the support allocated for this category of victims nor the conditions for support.

The meeting on February 4 also presented the Fund’s accomplishments over the past year, including its contribution to damage assessment, building evaluations, and the creation of a database collected from support applicants and other official entities’ operation rooms.

In all cases, the number of victims the Fund has agreed to support is relatively modest, primarily due to the difficulty many victims face in proving property ownership. According to its officials, the registered individuals whom the Fund has agreed to support number 1,378 victims across three governorates: Lattakia, Aleppo, and Hama. Of these, 841 individuals are from Category A and 537 from Category B. A total of SYP 156 billion were allocated to support both categories through the Fund, and financial support has so far been provided to 381 victims, amounting to SYP 20 billion. Only 52 victims have received construction permits to rebuild their collapsed homes.

Although the number of buildings that collapsed due to the earthquake in both Aleppo and Lattakia governorate is almost equal, with an average of 50 fully collapsed buildings each, Lattakia’s share of the funds earmarked by the Fund is SYP 116 billion, of which SYP 16 billion have been distributed to 312 victims from both categories. Meanwhile, Aleppo’s share did not exceed SYP 34 billion, with about SYP 4 billion of it distributed to 57 victims from both categories. While the share of Hama governorate did not exceed SYR 6 billion, but it was not disclosed what amount had been distributed so far.

No Alternative Housing for Aleppo Residents Affected by the February Earthquake

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People whose homes were damaged nine months ago in the devastating February 6 earthquake are still struggling to secure other housing amidst delays in implementing government housing projects. The earthquake caused the complete collapse of 53 buildings in the city of Aleppo, along with cracks and partial collapses in hundreds of other buildings. Over the past months, the governorate of Aleppo has worked on demolishing hundreds of buildings at risk of collapse.

The government designated two sites for permanent housing projects for those affected by the February 6 earthquake in Aleppo: one in the Haydariyah district and the other in the Masaraniya suburb east of the city. Work is still ongoing on these projects, and it does not seem that they will be completed soon.

 The Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, aligned with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, have undertaken to install about 450 prefabricated temporary homes for the earthquake victims in Jabrin, Aleppo. However, it appears that the local pro-Iranian militias are only distributing these homes to the families of their members.

Umm Ibrahim, an elderly woman, lives in an apartment in a five-storey building in the Sulaimaniyah neighbourhood in central Aleppo. During the February 6 earthquake, the building did not collapse but suffered cracks. Umm Ibrahim and her neighbours immediately left the building and did not return, fearing it could collapse due to aftershocks.

Fifteen days later, the Construction Safety Committee affiliated with Aleppo’s Municipality inspected the building where Um Ibrahim lived and found it at high risk of collapse. They decided to demolish it. The committee allowed the building’s residents to remove their belongings within 24 hours before closing and demolishing it. Umm Ibrahim was unable to remove most of her apartment’s furniture due to her advanced age and inability to afford a work crew to remove the furniture. The Aleppo Municipality did not help Umm Ibrahim or any of the affected residents in the city to remove their belongings from the buildings classified as high risk.

Indeed, work teams from Aleppo Municipality demolished Umm Ibrahim’s building after 24 hours. The municipality did not provide Umm Ibrahim or any former building residents with any alternative housing, nor did it offer them a place in the shelters opened for people impacted by the quake. Umm Ibrahim, unable to afford to rent a house, chose to move to her relatives’ home.

At the beginning of October, news spread in Aleppo that the city council had begun moving people to temporary and alternative housing. Following this news, Umm Ibrahim visited the Aleppo City Council office to inquire if she was included. She did not receive an answer to her question, with staff reportedly telling her: “We don’t know anything.”

Saeed, who lived with his family in Aleppo’s Bustan Al-Basha neighbourhood, had to leave their home in 2015 after a shell fell on it, causing significant damage. They moved to an incomplete and unfinished house owned by Saeed in the same neighbourhood. The family stayed in the new house until the February 6 quake, when the building cracked and was deemed dangerous and at risk of collapse by the Construction Safety Committee. Without any alternatives, Saeed, his family, and the other residents agreed to bribe the committee to issue a report stating the building was repairable. Each apartment owner in the building paid SYP 1.5 million to the committee, and the final report noted that the building was not dangerous and could be repaired.

In contrast, Mohammad, a trader with two shops in Aleppo’s old market, tells a different story about the official response to the earthquake disaster. He says that the market restoration project had started before the earthquake. However, the plan put forth by the Syria Trust for Development, an NGO headed by Syrian First Lady Asma Al-Assad, remained unchanged. The Trust did not consider the people who lost their homes in the old market and continued to work on restoring the commercial shops. Mohammad explains that restoring the market is a priority because it serves the interests of traders close to the regime while ordinary residents’ properties are neglected. The authorities are encouraging traders and industrialists to return.

Mohammad adds that Aleppo’s industrialists and traders are concentrated in the city’s western neighbourhoods, isolating themselves from the rest of the population in the eastern neighbourhoods. Their areas were not subjected to significant destruction during war or the earthquake. He says the Syrian authorities expect these traders and industrialists to provide alternative housing for those affected by the earthquake. However, many of them have not agreed to these plans, fearing their donations will end up in the pockets of officials, and no serious housing project for the affected will materialise.

Salma, a woman in her forties working in the public sector, lived with her husband and four children in the Bustan Al-Basha neighbourhood. Their home collapsed in the February 6 earthquake shortly after they had fled from it. Salma says she was fortunate, as some of their neighbours perished. She mentions that after spending days on the street, they went to one of the shelters in Aleppo but couldn’t bear to stay there more than one night due to overcrowding, poor services and lack of cleanliness. Like other affected people from Aleppo, the family then moved to the city of Homs and lived in an unfinished home on the city’s outskirts. This new house was in a makeshift area with no paved streets and an incomplete sewage system.

Salma states that living in an unfinished house was better for them than staying in the shelter. Initially, they received help from sympathetic locals in Homs, including blankets, mattresses, money and food. However, this assistance gradually decreased until it entirely stopped. The family had registered themselves on the list of those affected by the quake. However, they only received aid from official entities in the first few months after the earthquake.

The family lives in the unfinished house in Homs, along with many other displaced families from Aleppo. They have no news about the possibility of obtaining any future housing or financial compensation. Salma says she doesn’t know how the family will get through this winter in a house without windows or doors.

Engineers’ Syndicate Recommends Amending Building Code after Earthquake

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The Syrian Arab Code Committee in the Syrian Engineers’ Syndicate recently issued its recommendations regarding developing a code for constructing earthquake-resistant concrete buildings. This was based on a study of the causes and consequences of the earthquake on February 6, 2023.

The Syrian Arab Code for the design and implementation of reinforced concrete structures is an urban construction system for designing and implementing buildings to achieve acceptable safety in construction. Engineers and building contractors must apply this code in their design studies when seeking construction permits. The Engineers’ Syndicate and administrative units oversee compliance with the code during various construction phases.

Syria’s prime minister formed joint committees in the four governorates most affected by the February 6 earthquake, Aleppo, Lattakia, Idlib and Hama, to assess the conditions of collapsed and damaged buildings. These committees, known as the Quintuple Committees, consisted of five members each: the head of the General Company for Engineering Studies (GCES) branch, the head of the Studies Department in the Technical Services Directorate, a representative from the Engineers’ Syndicate, a university representative, and a representative from the Contractors’ Syndicate. These committees visited the sites of damaged buildings, reviewed their structural studies, and conducted tests on the resistance of concrete and reinforcement steel and soil properties at the sites. They prepared extensive reports outlining the causes of collapses and cracks.

The reports indicated that the damaged buildings were not designed or executed according to the building code, with most collapses and cracks due to poor implementation and lack of soil tests. However, this conclusion is inaccurate, as many of the buildings designed and executed according to the Syrian code for construction collapsed, especially in the city of Lattakia.

Based on these reports, the Syrian Arab Code Committee met and issued its latest report, which the Council of the Engineers Syndicate ratified. Although the Code Committee affirmed that the current code requirements were sufficient to resist earthquakes, it decided to continue developing the code and its appendices. This decision came in response to what the committee described as directives from the Council of Ministers on the necessity of code development in coordination with the National Center for Earthquakes to update Syria’s seismic maps, making the code compliant with the latest global expertise.

However, the recommendations of the Code Committee implicitly acknowledge shortcomings in the code regarding soil mechanics, reinforced concrete, foundations, shear walls, and reinforced steel. Among these, the recommendations emphasize the necessity of conducting at least two soil tests at the construction site after excavation: the first at a depth of no less than five meters below the basement level to determine the soil type and the second at a depth ranging from 15 to 30 meters below the foundation level to determine the required foundation depth unless a rock layer is reached at a depth of five meters across the entire site.

The recommendations also include increasing the cross-section of reinforcement steel bars and the required quantity of reinforcement steel in concrete buildings. Every building taller than five storeys should consist of a shear wall in each direction, with symmetry maintained wherever possible. A shear wall is a load-bearing wall made of reinforced concrete built to the full height of the building.

The recommendations stipulate that no additional storeys be allowed on any existing building unless the building was originally designed to accommodate the extra height as per its granted permit. Even in this case, the administrative unit and the Engineers’ Syndicate must issue a structural, technical report proving that the building’s condition can withstand the additional storeys. It is important to note that property owners can modify the construction permit and increase the number of storeys if an engineering structural report confirms that the building’s foundations could bear the required additional weight, with the approval of the relevant municipal departments.

The recommendations emphasise the need to intensify tests conducted on high-strength reinforcement steel used in construction and prohibit cladding any building before issuing a technical report confirming its structural safety. This is partly a consequence of the impact of the lengthy duration of many construction projects and the long time gaps between construction and cladding phases. which weaken the buildings’ earthquake resistance. Construction can span decades, particularly for public sector projects, which lead the concrete structure of the built unit to remain exposed and unprotected from the weather for long periods.

The Code Committee also referred to a set of issues that were discussed in its meetings but have not yet been decided upon. Among these issues are studying seismic maps through a joint committee from the Syndicate, the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, the Higher Institute for Earthquakes, and the National Center for Earthquakes, to review and develop the current seismic maps in coordination with the Syrian Arab Code Committee.

Additionally, there is a focus on securing and using seismic measurement devices and expanding their usage to include the study of most construction sites. This also involves expediting the soil classification for various sites and securing equipment that assists in this process, to use the results in designing earthquake-resistant buildings. The report proposed to form a committee in each branch to review soil reports.

It also emphasises the importance of meticulous study and quality control through highly qualified engineering supervision, achieving the technical specifications of the used materials, increasing the stages of review during the project, and prohibiting the construction of additional storeys before ensuring the quality of the structural elements in the lower storeys, both in terms of steel and concrete.

There is a stress on the necessity of certifying any new building by a qualified technical committee, and this committee should verify the correctness of the implementation and conduct some possible tests. Solutions need to be found for addressing violations, narrow streets, and construction on geological faults and agricultural lands, as they are extremely dangerous and prone to collapse in the event of an earthquake.

Notably, the committee asked the Syndicate’s Council to issue a circular to prevent the use of recycled and locally manufactured reinforcement bars that do not meet the code requirements. These bars are made from iron pulled from debris, re-melted, reshaped and sold in the local market.

These observations implicitly indicate the existence of shortcomings in the code’s implementation procedures. The seismic maps are not accurate, as pointed out by many engineers who spoke with The Syria Report after the earthquake, and there is a lack of precise seismic measurement devices. The committee acknowledges the existence of shortcomings in the review of structural studies and the follow-up of the reviewers’ recommendations, in addition to the inaccurate execution of structural studies and deficiencies in the inspection, evaluation and testing procedures before and during the project implementation.

Earthquake Workshops: Supporting Livelihoods Instead of Housing the Affected

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In recent days, the Ministry of State for the Development of the Southern Region has held workshops in the governorates affected by the February 6, 2023 earthquake, with representatives from various institutions, government agencies, chambers of commerce, industry, and tourism, and operations rooms in those governorates in attendance. The workshops discussed the stages of implementing the “National Action Plan for Dealing with the Earthquake’s Repercussions: People First,” established by the Council of Ministers on February 25.

Also in attendance were governors, executive office members in the concerned governorates, and directors of public institutions and companies focused on supporting livelihood projects for the earthquake-affected communities. In contrast, there appears to have been a decline in discussions about permanent government housing projects and temporary housing projects for the victims, which seem to still be in the process of being implemented more than nine months after the disaster.

Additionally, issues of documenting real estate ownership in informal settlements are still stagnant, with practical difficulties in implementing the executive instructions of Decree No. 3 of 2023. The decree grants tax exemptions to earthquake victims, some related to their entirely or partially demolished properties. One of the main difficulties is that most affected properties are unlicensed and located in unzoned areas, making it difficult for their owners to prove ownership. There are complex conditions for these property owners to obtain loans or tax exemptions to rebuild or repair their properties.

This delay in resolving the real estate problems caused by the earthquake poses an obstacle to the new government approach to addressing the impacts of the disaster, particularly in supporting the livelihoods of the affected communities. Livelihoods are inseparable from property rights. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, livelihoods are sustainable if they can withstand shocks and difficulties and maintain capabilities and assets without depleting natural resources. Property rights, alongside work, are among the most commonly used assets to produce food for family consumption and to generate cash revenues that allow the family or individuals to meet other needs such as health and education.

Therefore, it seems that moving to the stage of supporting livelihood projects and seeking international financiers for them before completing the documentation of affected property ownership and before securing housing for the victims may be a misstep.

According to the definition of sustainable livelihoods, property rights are one of the most substantial resources available to people to increase and expand their assets beyond the available land and labour until they reach the full portfolio of assets necessary for sustainable livelihoods, including natural resources, social, human and financial capital, in addition to natural assets.

The workshops

While the governors shared figures on various accomplishments made on the ground, some local officials discussed the challenges facing the implementation of the National Action Plan. The State Minister for Southern Region Development, Diala Barakat, repeated the same speech in all workshops, describing the current situation, executive programs, and work mechanisms to implement the items of the National Action Plan, and talked about the minor and significant needs to determine the implementation mechanisms according to specified timelines.

The Minister allocated a significant portion of her speech in all the workshops to what she described as expanding the base of livelihood projects, targeting families that have lost their source of income to help gradually restore everyday life to the earthquake-affected areas.

The first workshop was held in the Aleppo governorate on October 23, attended by Minister Barakat and Aleppo Governor Hussein Diab. The Governor stated that 115 engineering committees conducted engineering surveys on more than 126,000 buildings in the governorate, and 453 damaged buildings were demolished. He pointed out that the implementation rate of the project to build 120 residential units in Al-Masraneya suburb and 320 residential units in Al-Haidariya suburb had reached 55 percent.

A similar workshop was held in the Lattakia governorate on October 24, attended by Lattakia Governor Amer Hilal. The Minister explained that the governorate had closed its shelters, and the current phase is related to recovery, activating economic activities, returning life to normal, and providing safe housing solutions for earthquake victims. The Head of Lattakia Governorate Council also mentioned problems concerning determining the ownership of demolished and cracked buildings. Meanwhile, the Head of the Operations Room in the Lattakia governorate confirmed that 60 percent of the buildings had been inspected, with 12,700 out of 20,000 buildings inspected. According to the decisions of the structural safety committees, 6,399 buildings need reinforcement, and 4,991 buildings need restoration.

The Head of Lattakia City Council emphasized that the Decision 555 Committee is responsible for proving real estate ownership. The committee is responsible for issuing lists of earthquake victims, including representatives from relevant public authorities such as real estate, finance, communications, civil registries, water and electricity institutions, and appropriate administrative units, as well as several civil entities.

Meanwhile, the head of the Governorate Council pointed out that many properties in the governorate are commonly owned, with informal housing areas that are unlicensed and unzoned. The head of Jableh City Council emphasized the need to secure state-owned lands to build alternative housing for earthquake victims, noting that 120 such apartments are being built, while the number of damaged apartments stands at 241.

The last workshop was held on October 25 in Hama, attended by Minister Barakat, Hama Governor Mahmoud Zanboua, and Idlib Governor Thaer Salhab. Mr Zanboua stated that 640 houses were restored, and 397 livelihood projects targeting earthquake victims were launched. Meanwhile, Mr Salhab said that the earthquake damaged 66 houses, including 55 partially cracked houses, and the rest were on the verge of collapse, with their residents evacuated.

Participants in the workshop discussed providing support to the victims to restore their livelihoods, creating material income sources for them, rebuilding service centres, rehabilitating damaged infrastructure, focusing on the most affected and vulnerable groups, and finding solutions to some problems related to real estate ownership data in rural and informal areas. Such issues often hinder the completion of transactions associated with providing facilities to the victims and granting them loans to repair their homes and other facilities.

SSG Restructures the Engineers’ Syndicate in Idlib

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The Syrian Salvation Government’s Ministry of Local Administration and Services issued Decision No. 506 on September 15, which ordered the merger of the Aleppo Engineers’ Syndicate branch with its counterpart in Idlib. This unified entity will be named the Syrian Engineers’ Syndicate, headquartered in the Engineers’ Syndicate building on Al-Qusour Street in Idlib city. The Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) is affiliated with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Islamist group, formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front, which controls vast areas in Idlib and some parts of Aleppo’s countryside.

The Free Engineers’ Syndicate was established in 2014 in opposition-controlled areas, with branches in both Idlib and Aleppo. In 2020, the SSG mandated the restructuring of the Idlib branch, renaming it the Syrian Engineers’ Syndicate in Idlib. The Aleppo branch of the Free Engineers’ Syndicate continues to operate in areas controlled by the opposition-run Syrian Interim Government (SIG) in northern Aleppo without any change. Notably, theAleppo Engineers’ Syndicate branch in Aleppo is an assembly of engineers from areas controlled by the SSG in Aleppo’s countryside, who had separated from their original branch about a year ago to form their own grouping, colloquially referred to as “Al-Dana branch” due to its location in Al-Dana city north of Idlib. This branch is unrelated to the Free Engineers’ Syndicate branch in Aleppo.

Following the earthquake on February 6, 2023, the SSG’s Ministry of Local Administration and Services began downsizing the role of the Engineers’ Syndicate. They blamed the syndicate for the catastrophic results of the earthquake in areas under their control. This accusation seems unfounded since it is not within the syndicate’s jurisdiction, as a professional body, to prevent unlicensed construction or the emergence of informal settlements, which were most affected by the quake.

The ministry had earlier issued Decision No. 307 on May 22, establishing the Directorate of Engineering Affairs and assigning it multiple tasks previously undertaken by the syndicate. These include auditing engineering plans related to administrative transactions, overseeing engineering projects and studies, licensing engineers, classifying engineering offices and companies, and endorsing the engineering teams overseeing all engineering studies in Idlib.

The ministry formed a joint committee with the Engineers’ Syndicate to draft the body’s new bylaws, clarifying its responsibilities, structure, and relationship with the Directorate of Engineering Affairs. These bylaws have not been finalised yet. Despite the absence of these bylaws, the newly restructured syndicate’s roles seem limited to registering engineers and overseeing the operations of engineering firms, according to Said Al-Ashqar, advisor to the Minister of Local Administration and Services.

According to the ministry’s recent Decision No. 506, Engineer Malik Haj Ali was appointed as the head of the syndicate, and six engineers were assigned as members of the new syndicate council. Engineer Hassan Othman was charged to chair the syndicate’s internal audit committee, consisting of three members.

Multiple sources from the Idlib branch of the Engineers’ Syndicate told The Syria Report that the branch effectively ceased being an independent professional entity after Decision No. 307. Its remaining capabilities are now limited, with some sources indicating that the SSG has relegated the syndicate’s engineers to mere processors of engineering transactions at the Directorate of Engineering Affairs in the ministry.

The head of the Free Engineers’ Syndicate branch in Aleppo, Engineer Khaled Al-Othman, told The Syria Report that syndicates are civil entities and should remain outside the formal governmental sphere. He said he was surprised by the dissolution of an elected and legitimate professional body and its replacement by an official governmental entity. Rather, syndicates serve as protective umbrellas for professionals and are supposed to be independent technical and supervisory bodies.

SSG Modifies Building Code in Idlib, Raising Permit Fees

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The Ministry of Local Administration and Services in the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in Idlib is attempting to regulate the construction sector after the widespread destruction caused by the earthquake on February 6, 2023. The Ministry is working to subject new construction operations to the Syrian building code and its annex related to earthquakes, imposing strict administrative and technical oversight mechanisms and increasing fees and taxes on construction work.

The Ministry has transferred the powers of the Engineers Syndicate to the Directorate of Engineering Affairs in the Ministry, which has become responsible for reviewing the engineering studies for any new construction, as part of the permit process. The Directorate is responsible for rejecting engineering studies that do not comply with construction conditions, Ministry advisor and engineer Said Al-Ashqar told The Syria Report’s correspondent.

The Ministry has set five different criteria determining the final building permit fees, including location, surrounding streets, regulatory nature, type of establishment and general description of the building. However, the Ministry has not yet officially published the fee values. Meanwhile, our correspondent quoted local sources as saying that the new fees for residential building permits reach up to USD 3 per square metre of construction. 

The Ministry has prohibited permits for common-ownership lands and required land partitioning before permitting construction on such properties.

According to Mr Ashqar, the technical phases of building homes and public facilities begin with an architectural and structural engineering study, submitted by a supervising engineer to the competent municipality to obtain a permit. The Directorate of Engineering Affairs then audits and certifies the study, returning it to the municipality, which in turn grants the building permit. Afterwards, the municipality and the supervising engineer oversee all stages of implementation.

Throughout all these stages, adherence to this building code system is necessary. This system consists of administrative decisions issued by administrative units that determine the necessary conditions for building, repairing and demolishing structures within the limits of the administrative unit. Each administrative unit issues its own specific regulation, in line with the zoning plan and the nature of the area.

The Ministry has divided the building code system into two parts: regulation within the zoning plan and regulation outside it. In both cases, certain conditions must be observed, the most important of which are adherence to the minimum land area to be built on, the number of storeys, the area of the facades and compliance with the minimum storey height.

Building regulations outside the zoning plans are classified into three sections: first, a protection area for the detailed zoning plan from any informal urban expansion, where building is prohibited. 

Second are agricultural areas outside the zoning plan, where building is allowed on land smaller than 200 square metres. If the land area is less than 4,000 square metres, construction is allowed with a two-storey system, with the maximum area for one storey at 100 square metres. If the land area exceeds 4,000 square metres, the area of one floor should be 160 square metres. In all cases, a facade for the building must be left at a distance of 10 metres at the front, and five metres for the other sides.

The third type of area outside of zoning plans are the rocky mountainous areas. Ministry of Local Administration Decision No. 370, issued on August 21, 2023, stipulates that the minimum area of the partition to be built upon in such zones is 200 square metres, and the width of the front of one partition is 12 square metres, with facades of three metres on all sides. The regulation added details about the building conditions in this case, such as the number of allowable storeys if the property overlooks a street according to its width, the total height of the storeys, and the facades. Commercial and industrial construction, various investment projects, and residential suburbs in rocky mountainous regions are exempted from this building regulation system to be considered separately.

The Ministry also issued Circular No. 14 on June 1, treating all properties under construction as existing buildings, meaning their owners must obtain a new construction permit. 

Authorities allowed legal settlement for law-violating buildings inside or outside of zoning plans, as well as the obtainment of official construction permits. The main settlement condition is that a committee consisting of three engineers must submit a structural safety report about the building to the Directorate of Technical Services in the Ministry.

Even earlier than that, on May 17, 2023, the Ministry issued Circular No. 8, specifying the required documents to complete the administrative transactions related to permits and settlements as follows: a real estate registration statement proving ownership, along with a copy of the identity of the land or building owner, a survey plan with a statement of neighbouring properties, a topographical statement, and a general site drawing. 

Circular No. 9, also issued on May 17, outlined the administrative procedures for permits and settlement, whereby the reception office in the municipality receives the request, ensures the accuracy and completeness of the documents, and forwards the request to the technical department in the central municipality for verification. This department also conducts a preliminary technical inspection and transfers it to the Directorate of Technical Services in the Ministry of Local Administration and Services.

What Has the National Fund for Earthquake Victim Support Achieved So Far?

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Seven months after the devastating February 2023 earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northwestern Syria, the response of Syria’s National Fund to support those affected by the earthquake, remains modest at best within Lattakia governorate, and is hardly noticeable in Aleppo.

The fund was established by Legislative Decree No. 7 of 2023 to provide financial support to people affected by the quake. On August 22, the state-run Al-Baath newspaper reported on a panel discussion by the fund’s director, Fares Kallas, in which he stated that the fund is part of the “National Action Plan for Dealing with Earthquake Aftermath – People First,” to respond to the quake aftermath.

The fund’s operational duration is three years, during which time management must distribute incoming revenues to eligible quake victims. Mr Kallas confirmed that the fund possesses complete data on those affected by the disaster. He added that the fund has faced challenges with private property laws and called for greater flexibility in these laws, as well as amendments when public interest demands it in exceptional circumstances such as earthquakes. The Al-Baath article did not clarify what Mr Kallas meant by “challenges with private property laws”. 

Hussein Makhlouf, Syria’s Minister of Local Administration and Environment, confirmed at an August 15 press conference that the earthquake victims fund would also provide support to the tune of SYP 156.5 billion to help repair damaged homes. However, it was unclear whether this is the total amount available in the fund or if it is the estimated total cost required by the fund for the repairs. Mr Kallas confirmed during the same conference that the fund had not yet received any money from other Arab countries or from international organisations. 

People impacted by the earthquake should register at citizen service centres before the end of 2023, the deadline set by the fund, Lattakia governor Amer Hilal told the semi-state-run daily Al-Watan on August 30. Three centres have been set up to serve citizens in the governorates of Aleppo, Lattakia and Hama, each of which includes an employee from the General Housing Establishment and from the Real Estate Bank. 

The first phase of the support programme provided by the fund includes compensation for owners of buildings that were destroyed during the February 6 earthquake or the February 20 aftershock. Those buildings fall into two categories:

First: Demolished properties located within licensed buildings in a zoned area. The earthquake response fund is to compensate owners with SYP 160 million for reconstruction. Mr Makhlouf stated that the licensed homes in this category include “Arab houses” (traditional one-storey homes), apartments in two-storey residential buildings, and licensed commercial premises. These constitute 61 percent of the earthquake-affected properties. Mr Makhlouf added that the fund aims to support owners in this category with more than SYP 134.5 billion in total funds.

Owners of the demolished homes from this category (or any person authorised to act on behalf of a group of owners of a single ruined building) must submit a registration request at their citizen service centre in order to get support from the fund. As of August 28, only 55 people submitted such requests to the citizen service centre in Lattakia, that centre’s director, Ali Hassan, told Al-Watan. Mr Hassan added that no documents, other than a personal ID, are required from people in this category, provided their name appears on the lists of drawn by the committee set up under Decision No. 555, which is the body responsible for determining which victims are covered in the first phase of the fund’s programme. These lists are signed off by the governors of the relevant governorates.

After that, the citizen service centre is responsible for obtaining the remaining documents. According to Mr Makhlouf, the relevant governorate’s operations room extracts the papers needed for the earthquake-damaged licensed properties within 48 hours. The request is then referred to the city council and the Engineers’ Syndicate, which gives its initial approval for the reconstruction permit and authenticates the engineering plans and final reconstruction permit. The syndicate then submits the permit electronically to the earthquake response fund’s board, after which the fund provides its first SYP 80 million instalment of support money. The applicant then enters into a certified contracting agreement with the Contractors’ Syndicate. This contract is electronically referred to the fund’s board, after which the second SYP 80 million instalment is transferred. 

Second: Unlicensed properties located in zoned and unzoned areas. Owners may apply for housing within the government housing programmes for earthquake victims built by the General Housing Establishment. They may also benefit from SYP 40 million in financial support paid by the fund directly to the GHE, and also have the option to obtain a loan from the Real Estate Bank under Decree No. 3 of 2023, equivalent to the remaining amount of the housing unit’s value. Decree No. 3 grants earthquake victims certain tax exemptions, some of which are related to their fully or partially demolished properties.

People in this second category should submit a letter to their citizen service centre saying they wish to obtain a residential unit from the GHE, Minister of Public Works and Housing, Suhail AbdulLatif explained at an August 15 press conference. Templates for these letters are available. The centre then arranges all the necessary documents through various automated states, AbdulLatif added. 

The minister’s statements, notably, contradict an Al-Watan article from August 30 stating that people in the second category must obtain an “Administrative Unit Form” approved in their governorate in order to prove their property ownership. They must submit this form to their citizen services centre accompanied by a “barani” (informal) sales contract, a property sheet reference, a court ruling or a deed transfer from the original landowner to the unlicensed property owner certified by a notary. Also, utility bills for electricity, telephone, or water for the demolished property should be attached.

In any case, once the file is ready, it is automatically sent to the fund’s management, which reviews the applicant’s data. Within three days, they transfer the SYP 40 million to the GHE on behalf of the applicant, who is then notified of the transfer and receives a subscription document. They may then choose their desired apartment by reviewing all the details on the GHE’s website. Subsequently, the victim has the right to apply at their citizen services centre for a loan under Decree No. 3. The loan amount is also transferred to the GHE’s account.

AbdulLatif pointed out that the cost of each apartment can be as much as SYP 200 million, meaning the applicant benefits only from the SYP 40 million provided by the fund, with the remaining SYP 160 million as a loan to be paid in instalments over five years to the GHE.

SSG Transfers Civil Administration Powers from Local Councils to New Centralised Municipalities

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The Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) affiliated with the hardline Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham is working to sideline local councils in the area under its control and implement a new administrative system based on so-called centralised municipalities – a move that comes after it also sidelined the Free Engineers’ Syndicate in Idlib in May. 

The SSG’s Ministry of Local Administration and Services is the entity in charge of this measure, justifying it as part of the aftermath of the devastating February 6 earthquake that struck northwestern Syria.

The ministry has held local councils and the Free Engineers’ Syndicate responsible for the spread of dangerous unlicensed construction prior to the quake. Despite opposition from the local councils and the syndicate, the ministry appears determined to fast-track implementation of the new Central Municipalities law, even though the law has yet to be officially issued. Notably, the draft law strips most technical and administrative duties away from the local councils and gives them to the newly formed centralised municipalities.

If passed, the law would see the Idlib governorate divided into eight municipalities, according to Mohammad Saeed Al-Ashqar, an advisor to the SSG’s Minister of Local Administration. These eight municipalities will be specialised technical bodies with a unified regulatory framework. They will issue all types of permits and carry out technical inspections on buildings during their construction, in addition to overseeing licensed facilities. Each municipality will have reception centres spread across its geographical jurisdiction, with a potential total of up to 30 centres. These reception centres will handle various complaints and licensing requests, settle issues with non-compliant properties, and then forward them to their relevant central municipality.

There is also likely to be a new electoral process for the local councils in all administrative units, after which all elected members within each of the eight central municipalities will form an electoral body to appoint the municipal council. Meanwhile, the role of local councils will be limited to social representation, namely, conveying the concerns of the people to the regional administration. This means the local councils will no longer provide technical and administrative services within their jurisdictions.

The law is likely to be issued in early 2024, yet the Ministry of Local Administration appears to be behaving as if it is already in effect. For example, the ministry has already gone ahead with dividing Idlib into the eight planned administrative regions and establishing a centralised municipality in each, directly appointing its members without any electoral process. The municipalities are: Idlib District Municipality, Central District Municipality, Northern District Municipality, Ariha Municipality, Sarmada Municipality, Atma Municipality, Harem Municipality, and Jisr al-Shughour Municipality.

The ministry has also begun issuing directives to these new municipalities, such as Directive No. 14 on June 1, which addresses buildings owned collectively and how they should be treated in their current state, as well as granting licences after preparing a technical subdivision plan that complies with the building code.

According to the ministry, the new centralised municipalities law is necessary due to the lack of technical expertise from local councils, especially during the period before the devastating earthquake. By “technical expertise,” they mean the scientific and engineering experience suitable for Idlib.

The ministry refuses to simply rely on the Damascus government’s pre-existing Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011, which today is still applied in regime-controlled areas. They also reject circulars and decisions related to municipalities issued by Damascus’ Ministry of Local Administration and Environment.

Prior to the SSG’s new draft law, the lack of a unified engineering and legal reference in Idlib meant technical engineering matters were subject to tensions within the local councils’ technical offices, according to Ashqar. With the new centralised municipalities law, he added, the technical and engineering role will be assumed solely by the centralised municipalities and the Ministry of Local Administration.

With this role, centralised municipalities will deal with all the previous issues that were of concern to local councils: encroachments on public facilities and roads, forging of administrative transaction documents, building without a permit, pouring concrete ceilings without municipal engineering supervision, blocking roads with building materials or debris, supplying construction materials to an unlicensed site, and determining locations for commercial stalls and kiosks on roads and sidewalks.

However, one source from the local councils said they view the ministry’s new measures as monopolising public engineering and technical work, making such matters exclusively the purview of the SSG. The source added that this approach would increase centralisation and reduce flexibility in dealing with people’s day-to-day administrative issues. 

While the source highlighted the importance of having a unified reference for municipal policies for engineering and zoning, they stated that the solution should not be to strip local councils, and by extension the Free Engineers’ Syndicate, of their powers. Instead, it would be more appropriate to enhance the authority of these bodies rather than concentrating power within the hands of the SSG alone.

Since the opposition took control of Idlib in 2012, followed by HTS several years later, no municipal elections have been held. The current local councils in Idlib are mostly appointed, with only a small portion selected through local consensus. They do not operate based on the Damascus government’s existing Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011. Rather, in 2019, the SSG restructured local councils in its territory by establishing a Shura Council in each administrative unit to select local council members.

Previously, the SSG’s Ministry of Local Administration and Service issued Decision No. 307 on May 22, 2023, establishing the Directorate of Engineering Affairs, which is meant to take over most of the Free Engineers’ Syndicate’s former duties. This decision sparked many objections within the syndicate.

Some ministry sources said Decision No. 307 came in response to the catastrophic damage wrought by the February 6 quake, as well as the weak role by the syndicate in building and developing infrastructure and the lack of recent engineering studies to avoid such damage. However, the syndicate has denied responsibility for shoddy construction work before the earthquake and stressed that it does not have the executive authority to enforce building regulations.

Pre-Fab Homes in Jabrin: For Earthquake Victims, or Militias Members?

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Local militias in Aleppo, loyal to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, have reportedly seized 150 out of 450 pre-fab homes meant to benefit civilians impacted by the February 6 earthquake, according to a local source. 

Only 300 of these pre-fab homes would have reached its destination in the Jabrin area, which had been designated for the temporary housing, according to the source. Out of the 150 pre-fab homes seized, the Baqir Brigade militia, loyal to the Revolutionary Guard, has seized 30 dwellings, setting them up near their stronghold in the Belloreh neighbourhood in eastern Aleppo. And local militias in Aleppo loyal to the Revolutionary Guard, have seized 120 of the dwellings and moved them to military bases and locations they control in Azzan, Assan and Al-Hader in southern Aleppo governorate, as well as Nubl and Zahraa in northern Aleppo. 

On April 15, the state-run SANA agency quoted a member of the Aleppo governorate’s Executive Office, saying that the body has allocated 13 hectares in Jabrin for a Popular Mobilisation Forces relief initiative. The Iraqi Popular Relief Force is the civilian arm of the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces, comprised of armed, majority Shiite Iraqi factions. 

The relief initiative coordinator previously told SANA that the project aims to set up 500 housing units. Each dwelling is 36 square metres and consists of two bedrooms, a salon and its annexes, and is equipped with a solar panel. Iron is the primary material used in manufacturing these units, along with sound and thermal insulation materials. They are to be furnished and can accommodate six to eight people. These dwellings, constructed by the Popular Relief Forces, appear to be little more than tin sheds, according to published photos.

The Syria Report’s local correspondent noted that there is confusion surrounding the distribution process of these pre-fabricated homes in Jabrin to the earthquake victims in Aleppo. To date, the Aleppo City Council has not issued any lists of eligible recipients for these homes, nor any clarification on how to apply for them or what criteria applicants must meet. Meanwhile, residents in Aleppo say there are rumours that these homes will be distributed to members of local militias loyal to the Revolutionary Guard. 

In March, the Aleppo governorate operations room adopted a plan to construct pre-fabricated temporary housing units to shelter those affected by the earthquake. The units were planned to be set up over 50 hectares in Jabrin, an area near Aleppo International Airport, surrounded by an industrial zone and the Aleppo train station. The area was incorporated into the administrative borders of Aleppo city in 1996 and had been the site of a refugee shelter and camps established in 2017.

Most of the land in the town of Jabrin is publicly owned, and was acquired by the state in various stages since the 1980s. Originally, Jabrin’s lands were private agricultural properties owned by local villagers. 

In 1981, however, the Aleppo City Council acquired 323 hectares of this land to establish an industrial zone. The council also planned to set up a vocational zone in Jabrin specifically for car maintenance workshops. Many industrial and vocational plots have been developed over the past decades through collaboration between the Aleppo governorate and Aleppo City Council, along with the General Federation of Artisans Associations (GFAA), although a formal industrial zone and vocational area have not fully materialised.

Despite these extensive land expropriations in Jabrin, the area has not seen any significant benefits. The town still lacks basic services like electricity, water and sewage facilities, and most of its construction is unlicensed. However, the acquisitions have not stopped. 

In 2004, the Minister of Irrigation issued Decision No. 1739 to implement a water canal from the main channel in Maskana to the Queiq River, and Decision No. 840 in 2005 to build feeder channels to the plains of southern Aleppo. These decisions led to the expropriation of many properties and parts of properties in the town and its remaining lands.

Decree No. 840 was issued to acquire most of Property No. 466 in Jabrin for the irrigation project in the southeastern plains of Aleppo. The project uprooted 15,000 olive and pistachio and grape vines, in addition to arable grain-cultivated lands.

 In 2006, Decree No. 460 was issued, stipulating cash payments as compensation for the properties and parts of properties that were expropriated for the project. However, according to The Syria Report’s local correspondent, the majority of those affected in the Jabrin area have not received any compensation for their expropriated lands.

During the conflict, the site of the Jabrin Industrial Zone remained under the control of regime forces as it was close to Aleppo’s civilian and military airports. The industrial area has become a hub for local militias loyal to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, including the Al-Quds Brigade, which has its main base in the nearby Al-Nayrab camp. A local source in the Jabrin area told The Syria Report that between 2012-2016, displaced people from eastern Aleppo neighbourhoods lived in designated areas of the industrial zone in Jabrin. Meanwhile, pro-regime militias allocated some of these areas as depots for their vehicles, weapons and ammunition.

After regime forces regained control of east Aleppo in late 2016, the City Council promised to rehabilitate the Jabrin Industrial Zone, and complete and hand over the real estate plots within the zone. It also aimed to encourage the relocation of trades and crafts from inside Aleppo city to Jabrin. However, the council’s promises remained unfulfilled, and the Jabrin Industrial Zone remained as it had been previously.

In 2017, a shelter centre for displaced people was opened in the Jabrin Industrial Zone. That same year, the Aleppo City Council stated that work had begun on completing the first phase of the vocational area for car maintenance in Jabrin, after the site had been divided into multiple project phases. However, no actual progress has been made on the project.

A year later, in 2018, the Aleppo City Council allocated the centre to receive displaced residents from the Shiite villages of Kafraya and Al-Foua in the Idlib countryside. In recent months, the Aleppo Defenders’ Brigade militia, affiliated with the Syrian branch of Hezbollah, relocated more than 400 families from Kafraya and Al-Foua from the Jabrin shelter to apartments in areas under their control in the neighbourhoods of Bab Al-Nayrab, Al-Marjeh, Al-Firdous, Al-Balloura, Karm Homad and Al-Maadi. These apartments were originally owned by people who had been forcibly displaced to opposition-controlled areas in northwestern Syria.

In 2019, Aleppo City Council formed a follow-up committee to rehabilitate the Jabrin Industrial Zone in preparation for transferring the craftspeople. Many of the applicants and allottees on plots in the Jabrin Industrial Zone, whether built or still in the planning stage, were internally displaced by the war. According to the GFAA, those people’s subscriptions will be cancelled on the grounds of defaulting on their instalment payments.

Idlib Engineers Protest SSG Decision to Sideline Them

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The Free Engineers’ Syndicate in Idlib is negogiating with the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), the political arm of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, to amend parts of Decree No. 307, which the SSG’s Ministry of Local Administration and Services issued on May 22, 2023. The decree established a Directorate of Engineering Affairs within the ministry and assigned various tasks previously under the auspices of the Engineers’ Syndicate. 

Sources from the ministry claimed that the decree stemmed from the devastating impacts of the February 6 earthquake and the lack of any role for the Syndicate in reconstruction or infrastructure development work. The source said there has also been a need for more recent engineering studies to keep up with the pace of construction and address resulting issues.

The earthquake caused the partial and complete collapse of hundreds of buildings in areas under SSG control in Idlib and Aleppo governorates. The scale of destruction was due, notably, to existing damage from previous bombings of the regime forces in the area, a lack of engineering supervision in zoning and implementation, and rapid urban expansion via unlicensed construction.

The SSG’s Ministry of Local Administration and Services issued Decree No. 307 based on a decision from the Presidency of the Shura Council, a quasi-legislative authority, and with the approval of the SSG’s prime minister.

The decree outlined the duties of the Directorate of Engineering Affairs, which include: examining all engineering plans related to administrative transactions within the Ministry of Local Administration and Services; examining engineering projects and studies in all work sectors; granting professional licenses to engineers; classifying engineering offices and companies; classifying and granting engineers’ rankings; and approving the engineering staff for studying and supervising all engineering studies in Idlib. 

Decree No. 307 also cancelled the powers previously granted to entities carrying out the tasks mentioned above, making the newly established engineering directorate the sole entity empowered to do those duties. Those older entities include the Idlib Branch of the Free Engineers’ Syndicate, founded in 2014 in opposition-controlled areas. It has two branches: one in Idlib and another in Aleppo. In 2020, the Idlib branch was restructured and named the Syrian Engineers’ Syndicate-Idlib Branch, with 850 members. Decree No. 307 barred them from the revenue they previously received from engineering studies and supervision work, which had constituted the primary source of the Syndicate funding and served as the “Mutual Takaful Fund” for members. The Syndicate used to distribute the engineering work among its members, and those members received wages through that fund.

The Syria Report also understands that the Ministry of Local Administration and Services will now require contracting companies operating in Idlib to employ an engineer from its directorate, whose task will be supervising and monitoring the project implementation. Contractors must pay a salary to the delegated engineer of about USD 600 per month (in USD). This requirement was made without a formal written decision but communicated verbally to contractors and contracting companies hoping to continue working in SSG-controlled areas. The ministry also now requires its contractors to use concrete produced by the Ishebilia Stone Works Company (Ishbilia stands for Sevilla in Arabic). It is unclear who owns the company, located near the Bab Al-Hawa crossing north of Idlib. However, it produces gravel, sand, and concrete necessary for construction. Engineers from the ministry oversee the production of construction materials in the quarry and test them for their engineering properties.

The construction sector in Idlib has faced numerous crises in recent years, including the spread of unlicensed construction and the inability of municipal authorities and the Engineers’ Syndicate to enforce building codes. These problems were made more evident by the widespread destruction of the February 6 earthquake.

Saeed Al-Ashqar, an advisor to the SSG’s Minsitry of Local Administration and Services, told The Syria Report that it was necessary to impose stricter monitoring of all engineering studies provided by local engineering offices and companies to ensure adherence to the Syrian Arab Code and its appendix on the basic principles for earthquake-resistant building design, and to verify architectural plans and implementation of proper construction.

Meanwhile, the Syndicate has denied responsibility for the poor execution of construction works before the earthquake. One syndicate member told The Syria Report that most buildings damaged by the earthquake were built during a period of unlicensed construction and lack of permits, and the Syndicate does not have executive authority to enforce building regulations. The engineer added that the government and municipalities are the ones who enforce the law, grant building permits and follow up on their implementation. They are responsible for the chaos and informal construction, he added.

He also urged integration between the ministry and the Engineers’ Syndicate rather than removing certain powers from the latter. He added that the ministry has monopolised the engineering work, handpicking a few affiliated engineers, some of whom have less than one year of experience, and tasking them with monitoring the works of contracting companies. He added that Decree No. 307 favours the ministry at the expense of the Free Engineers’ Syndicate. This is in addition to the potential harm that could occur in the future to the proper functioning of construction as the Syndicate’s expertise is sidelined.

The Engineers’ Syndicate put forth great efforts after the earthquake, collaborating with the Ministry of Local Administration and its Technical Services Department to form committees of volunteer engineers and assess the damage, he said. These committees surveyed cracked buildings and evaluated their structural integrity, determining if they were fit for habitation or needed to be evacuated or repaired.

Amid the exchange of accusations between the two sides, a joint committee consisting of seven engineers from the Syndicate and the ministry was formed to study the rules of procedure governing the Syndicate’s work. The committee will determine the tasks of the Syndicate by preparing new rules of procedure and regulating the work of engineering offices and companies in Idlib. The committee is also working on establishing a financial system that will provide regular income for engineers and implement the decisions issued by the Syndicate’s elected general committee, the highest authority in the Syndicate.

Housing for Earthquake Survivors in Aleppo to be Built on Land Formerly Inhabited by IDPs

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Recent weeks have seen government housing projects announced as part of the long-term third phase of the National Action Plan to address the earthquake aftermath (dubbed “People First”), which the Council of Ministers declared on February 15 and approved a month later. 

In addition to providing accommodation for earthquake survivors, these projects aim to rezone and rebuild some informal settlements in east Aleppo, including Al-Maasrania suburb.  

Suhail Abdul Latif, the Minister of Public Works and Housing, inspected progress on government housing for eligible earthquake victims on June 3. A week later, Prime Minister Hussein Arnous was briefed on the project, which consists of four buildings comprising 120 flats, each ranging in size from 65 to 90 square metres, with a total floor area of 10,000 square metres, at a total estimated cost of SYP 18.6 billion. According to official announcements last June, the project is about 28 percent completed. The Military Construction Implementation Establishment, a part of the Ministry of Defence, is carrying it out.

A source in the Aleppo City Council told The Syria Report that the government would build the housing project for the earthquake victims on the ruins of unlicensed buildings partially or entirely damaged in combat. The buildings, located near Sayyida Zeinab Street and the Paint Factory in Al-Maasrania, had been previously demolished by the City Council in March and April 2021. At the time, the City Council carried out a demolition campaign targeting 50 buildings, most of whose owners had been forcibly displaced to opposition-held areas in northwestern Syria.

However, the City council did not announce at the time about these demolitions, which were part of a beautification plan to upgrade roads, sanitation and water networks in the suburb. The project involved demolishing unlicensed buildings partially or entirely damaged in combat when the opposition-controlled east Aleppo between 2012 and 2016. The City Council refused to grant renovation permits for the partially damaged buildings because they were in areas of mass unlicensed construction.

It remains unclear whether the earthquake victims’ housing project will be built on the same parcel of the land previously seized in Al-Maasrania for the benefit of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, where a youth housing project has been ongoing since 2002.

Al-Maasrania is located on the Aleppo-Raqqa highway near Aleppo International Airport. Initially, the suburb consisted of agricultural lands where construction was prohibited, and which were owned by the Sabouni, Benqisli, and Jabli families from Aleppo. However, informal settlements began to appear in the area in 1971, inhabited mainly by people who migrated to Aleppo city from rural areas. Many were employees in government institutions, ministries, police departments and the military. Since the 1970s, these newcomers would buy small plots of land and build unlicensed homes. It became customary for buyers to file lawsuits against the sellers to verify the sales, through which they obtain a court ruling confirming the transaction – the only document proving their ownership of the land. Meanwhile, the Directorate of Cadastral Affairs refused to document such sales, rejecting the recognition of its de facto subdivision and the existence of construction on it.

In 1982, the state confiscated agricultural lands in Al-Maasrania close to Aleppo International Airport, including 36 properties that it seized only partially. Nevertheless, the process of unlicensed construction on the partially seized plots continued. These properties extended from the Scientific Research facility to the east, formerly known as the Paint Factory neighbourhood, to the Sayyida Zeinab Mosque neighbourhood to the south and to the west in the Shulba neighbourhood. The City Council considered the entire Al-Maasrania neighbourhood an area of collective unlicensed construction. In 2002, ownership of the 36 partially seized plots was transferred to the General Housing Establishment, which launched a youth housing project to build 4,000 residential flats on a 68-hectare area. Of these flats, 215 were allocated as paid alternative housing for those who had been notified that their homes would be demolished in the project zone.

Then in 2007, the Aleppo City Council demolished 50 unlicensed houses in the youth housing project area. Law enforcement surrounded the area, assaulting those who tried to halt the demolition of their homes. The City Council promised that evicted residents would be given priority in subscribing to the paid alternative housing in the project area. However, by 2010, only a small portion of the entire project had been completed, much like all social housing projects in Syria.

Al-Maasrania became a dangerous area after 2012 due to its proximity to the airport. It was subject to air strikes by the regime until 2016, resulting in widespread devastation. In December 2016, all residents were displaced outside of Aleppo city. Then, on December 20, 2020, the General Housing Establishment cancelled the subscriptions of those who had not paid their required instalments in more than a year, essentially removing forcibly displaced people.

The Rubble After the Earthquake in Lattakia

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Since the February 6 earthquake, the rubble in Lattakia has been treated as a sensitive security issue and a taboo topic. The issue is a “red line” for some people. Everything mentioned on the topic relates to the contents of the collapsed homes, such as furnishings and other valuables that remained intact, rather than the rubble itself. 

Legally, the rubble belongs to the homeowners. However, owners who spoke with The Syria Report said they had yet to receive compensation for the debris of their homes and properties. They also said they did not have the opportunity to gather their valuables from beneath the rubble before it was removed. Most owners said they don’t know if they can still collect the rubble of their collapsed homes and are too afraid to inquire about the topic.

A source from Lattakia Governorate told The Syria Report that the government transported the earthquake rubble to a dump on the new Aleppo highway. He added that the rubble would be recycled and some of it used as gravel in public road paving projects. However, much of the rubble contains metals such as iron, copper, and aluminium, which “influential merchants” ‘will likely use unofficially, according to the source. He said that this aspect of the rubble is well-known, though the source refused to elaborate further. 

Law No. 3 of 2018, which addresses the removal of rubble from buildings after natural or unnatural disasters (or those subject to laws requiring their demolition), gave the owners of demolished real estate the right to the value of their rubble. However, the law left local administrative units responsible for deciding the value of such rubble after selling it in public auctions or recycling it and deducting the demolition and removal costs. Law No. 3 was not mentioned at any stage of the building damage and rubble removal underway in Lattakia post-earthquake. 

A source from the Lattakia City Council told The Syria Report that widespread fears around discussing the rubble are unrealistic. Instead, the source said, the problem lies with certain parties in local municipalities trying to cover up corruption and theft during rubble removal by spreading rumours that the topic was a sensitive security issue or a red line. According to this source, the municipal work crews removing the rubble committed major violations against private property. 

According to the source, the matter is not merely about “low-income workers having a right to benefit [from the rubble].” Still, it is more systematic and overseen by officials in the municipal councils. Often, the crews responsible for debris removal prevent locals from accompanying them during their work under the pretence of protecting them, while in reality, they are monopolising the debris sites, digging them for valuable items, and stealing them. What remains of the furniture is often unfit for use or recycling. Interestingly, according to the source, the residents have registered no official complaints against the municipal authorities for theft.

In contrast, an informed source from the Lattakia governorate council told The Syria Report that the executive office has been holding regular meetings to follow up on demolishing buildings at risk of collapse and removing their debris. The council has followed the necessary legal procedures during the demolition and deportation operations, including the need for the following documents:

  • Police unit control document;
  • Property owner’s consent to the demolition and removal; authenticated by the notary;
  • Decisions issued by the councils of administrative units to demolish the property based on reports from structural safety committees.

According to the source, each meeting reaffirmed the right of building owners to access the rubble of their homes and to be informed about the details of the demolition and deportation process all the way to the final dump site.

However, the debris removal process did not start until a month after the earthquake. This process included debris from completely collapsed buildings, as well as from severely damaged buildings at risk of collapse due to the quake, which was demolished by crews belonging to the Lattakia City Council and Lattakia governorate, with the help of crews from the Military Construction Establishment (MCE) branch in Lattakia governorate. The MCE is a contractor affiliated with the Ministry of Defence.

The process began with the collapsed building in Lattakia city’s Al-Sijn “prison” neighbourhood. One of the building’s residents said on Facebook that the municipality asked for SYP 70 million to remove the debris. One worker claimed that this payment was to cover the debris removal and sorting costs and allow the residents to take whatever they wanted from their properties. This caused widespread confusion about the responsibilities of the municipalities and the governorate in removing debris and maintaining private property. After that, the municipality suddenly removed the debris from the site without collecting any payment from the former residents or informing them of the removal timeline. This suspicious behaviour has led to rumours spreading amongst city residents that the debris does not belong to the homeowners.

In another instance, an old, dilapidated four-storey building in the Al-Ramal Al-Janoubi area of Lattakia collapsed due to the earthquake. Eyewitnesses recounted that the demolition and debris removal crews from the city council were quick to remove the building’s debris, and the workers did not hesitate to steal valuable items from amongst the rubble, including gold and jewellery. When one of the former residents asked about what happened, officials in the city council denied any thefts occurred.

In the city of Jableh, the bottom three storeys of a four-storey building collapsed. Although the fourth storey partially survived, it was tilted to a dangerous degree. The building owners managed to evacuate furnishings from the fourth storey with the help of a crew from the Jableh municipality. Due to their close relationship with a senior officer, the building owners could steer the crew’s work towards their benefit. They kept the debris for use in reconstructing the building.

Debris removal crews from Lattakia municipalities are still at work today, clearing rubble and reopening closed roads. Teams from the Civil Defence and the Lattakia Fire Brigade accompany these crews. However, violations continue to occur. A volunteer in an NGO was offered temporary work by a relative who works in a demolition and debris removal crew for one of the municipalities. The invitation indicated that the real compensation for the work is the potential to find valuable belongings among the debris. Within this atmosphere of chaos, personal relationships and nepotism, the young volunteer considered this routine and said he was grateful to his relative for providing him with beneficial work.

Meanwhile, a family in one rural Lattakia village could extract all the contents of their partially collapsed house through a crew affiliated with the village municipality and accompanied by members of one of the security agencies where a family member works. The family protected all the contents of their house, and they did not suffer from any theft or looting. They also knew the location of the debris disposal and visited it to retrieve some recyclable items.

Government Housing Projects for Eligible Earthquake Victims

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Four months after the February 6 earthquake, governmental housing projects for those whose homes were damaged or lost in the disaster are still in the initial stages of debris removal, for the homes destroyed, and foundation digging. 

Chaos, confusion and lack of clarity pervade the official statements and data regarding these projects, although one can already conclude that government housing projects for victims of the earthquake are part of the third longer-term stage of the government’s national action plan, which was announced by the Council of Ministers on February 15 and approved two months later. This third stage stipulates that homes should be rebuilt and the urban landscape improved relative to the situation before the earthquake and war, through the rezoning and rebuilding of informal settlements.

There is also a variance in the nomenclature that Syrian officials use for these planned projects in the governorates of Aleppo and Lattakia; some of them call it alternative housing, for example. In this article, we will adopt the name government housing projects for eligible earthquake victims, to distinguish them from prefabricated temporary housing projects, which are funded by regional and international donors.

In all cases, there are doubts over the possibility of completing the government housing projects within the officially set one-year deadline. The modest number of expected completed homes may not meet the housing needs of the large numbers of affected people. Additionally, the criteria adopted to determine who are the beneficiaries of these homes after their completion remain unclear.

 

Aleppo city

The earthquake caused the total collapse of 53 buildings in the city of Aleppo, with cracks appearing and partial collapses occurring in hundreds of other buildings. On February 19, the governor of Aleppo stated that 220 buildings at risk of collapse had been demolished.

On June 10, Prime Minister Hussein Arnous inspected two housing project sites for the quake victims in Aleppo; one in Al-Haidariya neighbourhood and the other in Al-Maasaraniya suburb for youth housing, east of the city. Arnous said during his visit that the two housing projects “contribute to solving the problem of unlicensed construction.” It is unclear what exactly he meant, but the two areas where these housing projects are being implemented include large informal settlements built on public property, some of which were damaged by the earthquake.

According to state media, four buildings will be constructed in Al-Haidariya, each consisting of 10 storeys with eight apartments each, making 320 apartments in total. The total area of these apartments will be 25,600 square metres, at a total cost estimated at SYP 66.6 billion. Jamal Karim, the head of the studies department at Aleppo city council, said on June 4 that the body studying the project is the Professional Practice Unit at Aleppo University, and that the General Housing Establishment under the Ministry of Public Works and Housing will implement it. Four months after the earthquake, work on this project is still in its early stages, which includes land levelling and digging foundations.

The land on which the project in Al-Haidariya is being built is owned by the Aleppo city council. On March 15, the head of Aleppo city council, Muadd Al-Madlaji, said that the area of land allocated in Al-Haidariya for housing the earthquake victims is 78 hectares large and can accommodate 10,000 residential apartments. It should be noted that Al-Haidariya is a large informal area where the Aleppo city council had previously created a 118-hectare real estate development zone in October 2010, which is also public property. So far, it is unclear what the boundaries of the new housing project for earthquake victims in Al-Haidariya are, and whether it extends to some of the land allocated for the real estate development area.

Meanwhile, the housing project in Al-Maasaraniya suburb east of Aleppo consists of four buildings containing 120 apartments, with each apartment ranging in size between 65 and 90 square metres, and a total floor area of 10,000 square metres, at a total estimated cost of SYP 18.6 billion. According to official announcements, the project is about 28 percent complete and is being carried out by the Military Construction Implementation Corporation (MCIC) of the Ministry of Defense—or Mataa in Arabic. The land on which the housing project in Al-Maasaraniya is being built is owned by the General Housing Establishment.

Al-Maasaraniya neighbourhood is located on the Aleppo-Raqqa highway, near Aleppo International Airport, and includes informal settlements built on public property. In 2002, the General Housing Establishment launched a youth housing project in Al-Maasaraniya. By 2010, only the first phase of the project had been completed, and part of it was handed over to applicants. From 2012 onwards, Al-Maasaraniya, including its youth housing, became a dangerous area due to its proximity to the airport, and until 2016 it was subjected to aerial bombardment by the regime, pushing most of its residents to flee and causing widespread destruction.

Both the projects in Al-Haidariya and Al-Maasaraniya have a one-year implementation deadline, Deputy Governor of Aleppo, Komeit Assi Al-Sheikh, told the state-run Tishreen newspaper on June 6.

The Minister of Public Works and Housing, Suhail AbdulLatif, inspected work at the housing project sites in Al-Haidariya and Al-Maasaraniya on June 3, pointing to the government’s interest in the buildings for eligible people as part of the measures included in the national earthquake response plan. AbdulLatif said that work is being done in a systematic engineering and administrative manner, urging adherence to execution quality and compliance with the set schedule. AbdulLatif chaired a meeting at the governorate building, in which he was briefed on a detailed presentation about the structural work, cladding and implementation phases in the two projects. 

 

Lattakia governorate

In the Lattakia governorate, 50 buildings completely collapsed and dozens partially collapsed due to the earthquake. In mid-May, the governor of Lattakia said there were 1,200 damaged buildings on the verge of collapse needing to be demolished, according to reports from public safety committees.

Similar to Aleppo, housing projects will be established in Lattakia for earthquake victims on lands owned by the General Housing Establishment, as well as lands owned by the Lattakia City Council. The governor of Lattakia, Amer Hilal, confirmed in mid-May that construction had begun on four residential towers in the city’s Al-Thawra Street neighbourhood, and two towers in Al-Gharraf neighbourhood. He added that preparations had also begun to construct two towers in the city of Jableh. The Minister of Public Works and Housing and the governor of Lattakia, inspected on May 13, the status of the works in some of these projects.

Each tower consists of 10 storeys of apartments, each ranging from 80 to 100 square metres. The actual number of apartments in these projects is unclear amid conflicting figures released by official sources; some numbers indicated the construction of 160 apartments on General Housing Establishment-owned land, and 160 apartments on lands owned by the Lattakia City Council. Other sources pointed to 320 apartments on GHE lands, and 80 apartments on city council lands under the management of the GHE and implemented by public construction companies.

In any case, work is currently still in its preliminary stages in all these projects. The Minister of Housing indicated that work is still focused on testing soil resistance at the site intended for the construction of two towers in Jableh, while the General Company for Engineering Studies is preparing engineering studies for the project. After their completion, the excavation work will commence.

On March 15, the head of the Lattakia Governorate Council told the semi-official Al-Watan newspaper that work was underway to provide housing to those who lost their homes in the quake. He added that preparations were underway to build a clear and precise database to identify and count all the victims whose homes were destroyed or cracked beyond repair. The official pointed out that administrative units will work on preparing the site for construction, and the governorate is preparing the infrastructure for sewerage networks, water and all other public services.

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