Despite having gained citizenship in 2011, many Syrian Kurds formerly stripped of their nationality still struggle to reclaim their properties. In addition, the restoration of their citizenship statuses was not accompanied by any measures to compensate them for their lost housing, land and property rights. 

In 1962, the Syrian government of then President Nazim Al-Kudsi issued Decree No. 93 to conduct an exceptional census in the Hassakeh governorate. However, the census was conducted for just one day, giving residents no time to submit documents proving they had resided in Syria since at least 1945. Based on a proposal from the Minister of Interior, a decree was issued to form a committee to study the census results. The committee wrote up instructions for implementation for local administrative authorities and civil registration offices. In total, thousands of Kurds were stripped of their Syrian citizenship because of the census, an adaptation of the Syrian authorities’ discriminatory Arab nationalist policies against the Kurds during that time. 

According to a 2018 study published in Suwar Magazine, Kurdish residents who were rendered stateless as a result of that census belonged to two main categories. The first category included those who became known as the so-called ‘foreigners of Hassakeh,’ to whom the Syrian authorities gave special civil registration certificates called “red cards.” The second category comprised maktoumin al-qid, or “non-registered” residents, who had Syrian citizen mothers and fathers considered foreigners of Hassakeh. Members of this second category were only granted an identification certificate issued by local mokhtars, or low-level government representatives. 

In addition to their citizenship, their housing, land, and property rights were affected. Stateless Kurds were compelled to register their properties in the names of their relatives or acquaintances who did have citizenship to protect their properties, as Law No. 189 of 1952 banned granting many real estate rights in Syria to any non-Syrian individual. This measure caused numerous legal problems, especially property disputes between the heirs of original property rights holders and those who now held the properties in their own names. 

Moreover, the delimitation and census work in Hassakeh after the 1962 census disregarded the rights of the stateless land owners, with those lands now registered as state property. The system of delimitation and census, outlined in Decree No. 186 of 1926, is meant to survey areas that have not yet been entered into the Land Registry. This process aims to start a Land Record for these lands, number the lands, and register them under the names of their owners in the Cadastral Affairs. In other words, stateless land owners whose lands were not registered yet in the Land Registry lost them to the state without compensation.

The stateless Kurdish residents were also retroactively deprived of their rights of usufruct for agricultural lands that had been distributed to farmers under Agrarian Reform Law No. 161 (issued during the period of Syrian-Egyptian unification from 1958 to 1961). As a result, they lost the right to own this land in the future, while other beneficiaries of the farmlands were able to. 

Discriminatory policies against Kurds continued for the next five decades under Baath Party rule. Only a few months after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising in 2011, the Syrian President issued Decree No. 49, which granted citizenship to those registered as “foreigners of Hassakeh.” However, the decree had a clear political dimension as an attempt to appease the Kurds and draw them away from the revolutionary movement. 

Syrians for Truth and Justice, a research organisation, reported that until the beginning of 2011, there were 346,242 “foreigners of Hassakeh” officially registered by the Syrian government. Most of them received Syrian citizenship after Decree No. 49 in 2011. However, Decree No. 49 did not explicitly include the maktoumin, who numbered 171,300 in 2011. Of them, 50,400 obtained Syrian citizenship after changing their legal statuses from maktoumin to foreigners of Hassakeh. 

After gaining citizenship, many Kurdish citizens and their heirs could recover their properties from those who possessed them through mutual consent. However, the largest proportion of those Kurds was unable to regain their rights. However, one of the main issues with Decree No. 49 was that it did not stipulate compensating Kurdish citizens for the moral and material injustices they had faced over the five decades since 1962. The decree did not refer in any form to the housing, land and property violations that had taken place. 

Many women in Syria suffer from restrictions on their housing, land, and property rights, often through unwritten conditions. Women are frequently granted real estate properties in return for meeting certain social conditions, which, if breached, cause them to lose their rights. 

Yasmeen is from the town of Kafr Batna in the Rural Damascus governorate and got married when she was 13 years old. Her father imposed a condition on her husband-to-be, Bassam, that she obtain an apartment guaranteeing her right to housing. Bassam documented ownership of a 100-square-metre apartment in a family building through a pro forma sales contract that he registered with the notary. However, that sale was never officially recorded in the Land Registry. 

In 2012, as opposition forces took control of East Ghouta and as regime forces unleashed heavy airstrikes and artillery fire on the area, Yasmeen and her husband agreed that he would stay home while she moved with the children to Jaramana, which was under regime control. At the time, the couple had a daughter and a son who suffered from medical problems and required intensive care. 

Yasmeen moved with the children to Jaramana, where she lived in a rental home paid for by Bassam. Meanwhile, she learned basket weaving and recycling household goods, eventually finding work in these fields and in housecleaning. With time, the couple’s physical separation led to the decline of their relationship. Four years after Yasmeen had moved, Bassam stopped sending money. She alone would be in charge of paying the rent, daily living expenses, and the medical costs for her son. During this time she also acquired middle and secondary school certificates, which she was not able to obtain as a child bride. 

When regime forces recaptured East Ghouta in 2018, Yasmeen and Bassam were unable to restore their relationship. She brought up the idea of divorce, as well as her right to sell the apartment she ostensibly owned, which would help her establish her own work project. Bassam refused, telling her that her right to the apartment was conditional on her remaining his wife. Yasmeen nevertheless went through with the divorce and tried contacting an influential resident in the area to help her sell the apartment. However, the pro forma sales contract that had been made with the notary remained in Bassam’s possession, while he affirmed his ownership of the apartment. 

Family mediators failed to solve the dispute, and Yasmeen refused any solution that would involve her returning to her husband or being deprived of her right to the apartment. In the end, she preferred to get divorced and lose her right to the property. 

On the other hand, Najwa is an unmarried teacher in her 40s from the Lattakia governorate countryside with many brothers. Najwa’s father owns a three-storey building and distributed the apartments in it to his sons while giving her nothing. In the meantime, Najwa has been living in a semi-detached studio in an apartment registered under the name of one of her brothers who lives with his family in a separate home. The situation remained acceptable until Najwa’s mother died and she inherited a 300-square-metre plot of land. However, Najwa’s brother took hold of the land, reasoning that allowing Najwa to live in his apartment meant he had the right to take her share without paying her for it. This became the condition for Najwa’s housing. She would have to give up her share of the land she had inherited in exchange for remaining in the studio, albeit without being able to formally register her right of usufruct for the lodging. 

When Najwa refused the arrangement, she was physically beaten more than once. The last time, her brother evicted her from the studio and removed her belongings. Najwa fled the coastal region and moved to another city, still refusing to give up her share of the inheritance despite having lost the right to live in her brother’s studio. 

Despite various difficult-to-meet conditions they force on IDPs who wish to return to the city of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in Rural Damascus, Syrian authorities have pinned the low numbers of returnees so far solely on the wartime destruction of local infrastructure, including water, sewage and electricity networks. Schools and residential areas also faced damage on a wide scale. Authorities there are now seeking funding from international organisations for projects within the category of early recovery (ER) in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad to rehabilitate schools and infrastructure and remove rubble.

Al-Hajar Al-Aswad is the administrative centre of a district of the Rural Damascus governorate and is located next to southern Damascus’ Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. About half a million people lived in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad before 2011, with the city known to have the largest concentration of displaced Syrians from the occupied Golan Heights ever since the 1967 war. For this reason, there is an administrative overlap between Quneitra governorate and Rural Damascus governorate in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. Still, much of the city contains informal, un-zoned housing neighbourhoods without proper public services. These neighbourhoods have served as a destination for low-income Syrians from other governorates who want to move to the capital.

Regime forces wrought massive destruction on the city during the period of opposition control over the area from 2012 to 2015 and during Islamic State control from 2015 to 2018. The regime regained control of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in 2018 after waging a large-scale aerial and artillery bombardment campaign that destroyed entire neighbourhoods and forcibly displaced all remaining residents.

Last May, former governor of Rural Damascus said in a radio interview that the governorate must rehabilitate Al-Hajar Al-Aswad’s infrastructure before allowing displaced residents to return. He added that the governorate had so far coordinated with non-governmental organisations and rehabilitated 80 percent of the infrastructure in the Tishreen and Al-Thawra neighbourhoods. He added that the needs required for returnees to stay would be secured despite the governorate’s inability to completely rehabilitate the two neighbourhoods at this time. Tishreen and Al-Thawra are the only two neighbourhoods to which displaced residents have been allowed to return in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, while the other neighbourhoods remain destroyed. These two neighbourhoods were the least destroyed by city military operations, making rehabilitating them simpler.

The head of the Al-Hajar Al-Aswad city council said in another radio interview in July that the council is doing what it can to repair the city but does not have the proper machinery to remove the remaining rubble or tanks to secure water. He added that the Rural Damascus governorate sent some machinery for only 15 days last May after the governor’s visit and that workers were only able to remove some of the rubble during that time. According to the city council head, 2,100 families have applied to return home, of which 730 have been approved. The council has also granted 190 home restoration permits, though in reality, only 90 families have returned to live permanently in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad.

The Rural Damascus governorate requires displaced residents to meet certain conditions before being permitted to return to Al-Hajar Al-Aswad’s Tishreen and Al-Thawra neighbourhoods. They must fill out a form and then attach documents proving their ownership of the property to which they wish to return, in addition to a family ledger and copies of their and their family members’ ID cards. The security services then review their file and either grant or reject approval to return. If they are approved, a technical committee from the municipality then inspects the building and assesses any damages. If it is found to be safely habitable, the property owner must apply for a restoration permit from the municipality. After all that, final approval is given for them to return.

The city council head told the semi-official newspaper Al-Watan in July that the council had signed an agreement with Première Urgence Internationale (PUI) to fund the rehabilitation of a primary school in the Al-Thawra neighbourhood. And in late July the Rural Damascus governorate began rehabilitating the school, with work expected to be complete within two months, according to the contract with PUI. The council head said that UNICEF is also set to equip another school, but did not specify which one. Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), a relief organisation, has pledged to equip and rehabilitate the rest of the governorate’s schools in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad.

However, the city council head did not mention the condition of schools run by the Quneitra governorate in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad.

So far, returnees to the city have relied on solar energy, generators and batteries to obtain electricity, as the Rural Damascus Electricity Company has yet to install transformers due to logistical issues, according to official statements. The former governor of Rural Damascus gave a five-day deadline in late April for the company to install the transformers, which it failed to meet.

ADRA is also planning to install solar energy systems to run two water wells that the Rural Damascus Water Establishment previously dug. After the pumps are running again, they will likely be used to fill tanks to supply residents with water. The water and sewage networks remain damaged in all neighbourhoods of the city, including those once again inhabited.

The city council head added that the council had coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to maintain and replace the sewage line that passes through Al-Hajar Al-Aswad from the adjacent Al-Qadam neighbourhood to the Yarmouk camp sewage treatment plant. This line faced damage during fighting in the area and the regime’s siege of southern Damascus during opposition control. The ICRC also recently helped repair and restore sections of the same sewage line within the Yarmouk camp.

Finally, ADRA has also pledged to remove the remaining rubble, according to the city council head. The Syria Report could not confirm the locations of the rubble to be removed, the method of removal or which law would serve as the legal basis for the removal.

An unchecked proliferation of weapons in Syria, as well as the few means of prevention or social protection for women, has resulted in some husbands using physical threats to force their wives into relinquishing their properties.

Khuloud is in her mid-50s and lives in the countryside of the Tartous governorate. Her husband Riyad is a volunteer in the pro-regime National Defence Forces. Early on in the couple’s marriage, 20 years ago, Riyad discovered that he was infertile. In response, and as a gesture of kindness to his wife, he officially registered their home in Khuloud’s name in the Land Registry. However, with time, tensions developed between the two, resulting in domestic violence. Khuloud says Riyad beat her regularly, which eventually pushed her to file for divorce. Doing so put her life and the lives of her family members in danger.

Riyad said that he would only formally agree to the divorce if Khuloud returned the house to his ownership, she says. However, when she refused, he allegedly threatened her with a handgun. Days later, unknown gunmen opened fire on Khuloud’s family’s home. That night, she says, armed men knocked on Khuloud’s door while her husband was away, telling her to heed her husband’s demand for ownership of the house.

“It’s like I’m in the desert – no neighbours, no police, no evidence that there is a state,” Khuloud tells The Syria Report. She comes from a family with modest means and without any high-ranking relatives in the military or security services who she could turn to. On the other hand, she says her husband’s relationships with security personnel allow him to act essentially free of consequences.

People throughout regime-controlled areas of Syria say that they feel unsafe due to the unchecked proliferation of weapons, particularly among members of the security services or pro-regime militias. Simple disputes run the risk of becoming violent shootouts. Faced with this danger, Khuloud’s family persuaded her to relinquish the house she owned to her husband to protect herself and them. She acquiesced, giving him the ownership of the house in exchange for divorce.

In contrast, Hasna, a 35-year-old woman from coastal Syria, decided to keep her home. Her husband, Radwan, who also hails from the Syrian coast, is affiliated with Air Force Intelligence and works in one of the country’s civilian airports, Hasna says. Because of the Air Force Intelligence’s control over airport security, Radwan was able to accumulate a sizable fortune, eventually investing a portion of his money in real estate.

Through her own work as a hair stylist, Hasna was also able to save some money and make a down payment on a modest home in the Al-Tadhamon district of Damascus. She later finished paying for the house with the help of a bank loan.

Disagreements escalated between Hasna and her husband, with Radwan reportedly threatening her on multiple occasions with various types of guns and knives to persuade her to give up the house. On one occasion, she says he threatened her with a military-grade weapon and followed her when she ran outside to seek safety among her neighbours. Another time, he woke her up with a gun pointed at her head, she added.

Hasna filed a lawsuit against Radwan before the court. Thanks to a high-ranking state-employed relative of hers, Hasna’s case was expedited and she was granted the divorce and a restraining order against Radwan. Still, Hasna says she remained afraid of him, and eventually sold the house to move to a different area altogether.

Throughout June and July, the government-run General Secretariat of the Idlib governorate offered rural farmlands owned by absentees and forcibly displaced residents for auction.

The recent auctions, an imitation of similar auctions regularly organised by the Hama governorate since four years ago, are the first to be held by the Idlib governorate, and included lands cultivated with pistachios. The lands offered this summer included farms in all regime-held parts of Idlib governorate, except for the towns of Al-Ghadfeh, Maarshourein and Maasran, which the regime still administers as closed military zones. Notably, the recent auctions also included pistachio farms in the Al-Tamanaeh district, which belongs administratively to the Idlib governorate, though the Hama governorate had been in charge of auctioning lands there in previous auctions.

Opposition forces took control of the entire Idlib governorate in 2015 but were forced out of the governorate’s southern and eastern countryside by regime military advances in 2019 and 2020. At the time, regime forces managed to regain control of Khan Sheikhoun, Maaret Al-Numan and Saraqeb. Most owners of the lands recently offered for investment in the auctions were forcibly displaced by the fighting to areas that remain under opposition control.

On May 31, 2022, the General Secretariat of the Idlib governorate issued Announcement No. 580, identifying the dozens of towns and cities in rural Idlib where farmlands would become available for investment through the auctions. The secretariat announced 12 dates for the public auctions, all of which would be held in the first half of June 2022 inside a tent erected in the “temporary” Idlib governorate capital of Khan Sheikhoun. Damascus has governed Khan Sheikhoun as the Idlib governorate’s provisional administrative centre since late 2021.

The May 31 announcement specified that the investment period for the auctioned lands would last for one agricultural season. The initial deposit values would be SYP 700,000 per hectare of land, with the final deposits at ten percent of the “referral” value – that is, the initial offering price of the auctioned land. According to the announcement, each potential investor interested in participating in the auctions was required to pay SYP 35,000 to obtain the technical book of conditions from the General Secretariat’s Department of Contracts and to submit one application per real estate area for which they hoped to place a bid.

Following the first round of auctions in June, the General Secretariat organised a new auction for July 16. However, either nobody applied for the new auction or the winners of the previous auctions failed to pay their financial dues. In any case, the General Secretariat demanded that all the new auction winners pay their dues by July 20. Failure to pay would result in the cancellation of the auction results and additional fees to help cover the costs of any future auctions.

The General Secretariat set July 19 as the date to start harvesting the year’s pistachio crop in all parts of the rural parts of the Idlib governorate that are under regime control – whether those lands are under investment from their actual owners or from public auction winners. In either case, the secretariat required farmers to obtain “crop harvest papers” from the governorate’s Directorate of Public and Legal Affairs. Such papers are granted only after applicants obtain clearances from the General Secretariat proving that they have met all their financial obligations for the farmlands.

Ostensibly, preference in the auctions was given to relatives of the farmland owners up to the fourth degree. The General Secretariat required relatives to submit applications in order to participate in the auctions, as well as pay the initial securities for any lands they won and invest in the lands at the final prices at which they were awarded. Amid these requirements, it is unclear what form of preference the landowners’ relatives actually received.

The recent auctions in Idlib bear similarities to those held in recent years in the Hama governorate. Both sets of auctions were based on Public Contracts Law No. 51 of 2004, which addresses contracts related to assets owned by public entities, and on Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Circulars No. 169 of June 2021 and No. 438 of April 2022. The circulars referred to the conditions for applying to the auctions as well as the deposits that successful bidders must pay.

Until recently, regime forces had worked to harvest pistachio crops from all the lands they control in the Idlib governorate, without landowners’ consent and without compensating them. Back then, the regime considered the Idlib countryside a closed military zone and forbade civilians from entering unless they had prior security approval.

Pistachios are among the most important crops to Idlib’s economy. Cultivation is mainly concentrated around Khan Sheikhoun and Maaret Al-Numan. According to statistics from the Idlib Directorate of Agriculture, some 10,475 hectares of land in the governorate were cultivated with pistachios in 2013.

Picture: Announcement No. 580

The Damascus governorate announced in late June that it had issued Detailed Zoning Plan No. 106 for the Jobar neighbourhood of Damascus. The formal descriptions for all lands within the new plan were amended to “under regulation,” which means that construction for residential or commercial use or for public services is permitted. Previously, these lands were either protected zones, agricultural areas, or residential expansion zones. 

Under the Urban Planning Law, which was issued in Decree No. 5 of 1982 and amended by Law No. 41 of 2002, a detailed zoning plan is one that includes the main and subsidiary roads, pedestrian walkways, public spaces, and other details for land usage. The plan does not contradict the general master plan or construction codes. 

The Damascus governorate invited residents to review the detailed zoning plan, which is on public display in the lobby of the governorate’s building, and submit any objections within 30 days. The governorate’s regional committee, which is part of the Regional Planning Commission, will then study these objections. Each governorate has a regional committee affiliated to the Regional Planning Commission. After deciding on the objections, the Minister of Public Works and Housing would issue a decree including the detailed zoning plan. Finally, six months later, a presidential decree will be issued adopting the plan. 

While the total area of Jobar was previously less than 250 hectares, the new plan added neighbouring areas that administratively belonged to the Damascus and Rural Damascus governorates, for a new total area of 304 hectares. These newly added areas include parts of Qaboun, which already belonged to the Damascus governorate, as well as parts of Arbeen, Zamalka, and Ayn Tarma, which previously belonged to Rural Damascus. 

Since 2018, when regime forces recaptured opposition strongholds around Damascus, the Damascus governorate has expanded its administrative borders at the expense of the Rural Damascus governorate, especially along the northeast edges of the capital city.

Historically, Jobar was a small village in East Ghouta surrounded by swathes of farmland. Jobar was annexed to the capital city in 1968 under the Damascus master plan drawn by French architect Michel Écochard. The neighbourhood has seen rapid urban expansion since the 1970s, most of it informal and atop agricultural lands. 

Opposition forces controlled Jobar from 2012 to 2018. During this time, the neighbourhood became the first line of defence for opposition-held East Ghouta, with rebels building many fortifications, most notably trenches and tunnels. Jobar was the site of intense battles and faced aerial bombardments that destroyed many of the neighbourhood’s buildings. Finally, after the regime’s last military campaign on the area in early 2018, the remaining residents were forcibly displaced to northern Syria alongside residents of East Ghouta. Since then, regime forces have prevented people from entering Jobar while continuing a low-scale campaign to demolish buildings and remove rubble. 

The new detailed zoning plan was based on Decree No. 5 of 1982 and Écochard’s general plan for Damascus, which was approved by Ministerial Decree No. 2401 of 1968. The job of studying detailed zoning plans usually goes to the General Company for Engineering Studies (GCES), an affiliate of the Minister of Public Works and Housing. However, the Higher Institute for Regional Planning, which is affiliated with Damascus University, took on the task of studying the new Jobar plan. The plan was then approved by the Damascus governorate council in Decree No. 44 on September 7, 2021. It is unclear why the governorate delayed the announcement of the detailed zoning plan until June 2022.

The Damascus governorate’s Director of Urban Planning said that the implementation area for Detailed Zoning Plan No. 106 would be subject to the provisions of Planning and Urban Development Law No. 23 of 2015. What he meant by this is unclear, as Law No. 23 gives administrative units several options for regulating informal housing areas. First, an administrative unit may apply the provisions of Law No. 23 to such areas. Second, it may apply the provisions of Real Estate Development and Investment Law No. 15 of 2008 and its amendments based on an agreement between the real estate developer in a given area and the existing property owners or between the real estate developer and local administrative authorities. Finally, an administrative unit may choose to apply the provisions of the Expropriation Law in force in order to implement a zoning plan for the area in question. 

The degree to which local authorities will choose to implement Law No. 23 in Jobar will not become clear until the final decree approving the neighbourhood’s new detailed zoning plan is issued. 

Under Law No. 23, land is designated for construction according to both a general master plan and a detailed zoning plan through one of two ways: subdivision by the landowner or regulation by the local administrative body. In both cases, the implementation of Law No. 23 leads to the eviction of residents of that land without providing them alternative housing. 

Law No. 23 also entitles the administrative unit to the free deduction of up to 50 percent of private properties in governorate centres in return for the benefit of adding those properties to the zoning area.  

Finally, Law No. 23 stipulates that, as part of the zoning process, an administrative unit forms a compulsory land readjustment committee tasked with giving rights holders their shares of property in the same location as their original properties or nearby. As part of this readjustment process, rights holders within the area undergoing regulation receive land designated for construction within that same area as a form of compensation for losing their original properties. 

A section of the Jobar zoning plan

Source: the Damascus governorate

The distribution process for share certificates in the Al-Qadam zoned real estate area of eastern Damascus’ Basilia City is witnessing significant modifications – namely, changing the legal description of already zoned land and other changes to those properties’ entries in the Land Registry. 

On May 31, the Directorate for Implementation of Decree No. 66, affiliated with the Damascus governorate, invited rights holders in the Al-Qadam zoned real estate area to their share certificates (documents that entitle them to wholly or partly own shares within that area).

Decree No. 66 of 2012 stipulated the establishment of two zoned real estate areas in Damascus. The first, located southeast of Mazzeh, is known as Marota City, while the second, which includes all or some of Mazzeh, Kafr Sousseh, Qanawat Basatin, Darayya, and Qadam, is known as Basilia City. In late 2021, the Directorate for Implementation of Decree No. 66 announced that it had begun handing over share certificates within Basilia City. 

The shares for each rights holder are calculated by more than one committee via a complex process under Decree No. 66. To obtain their share certificates, rights holders must submit an official application to the Decree No. 66 directorate, file copies of their original title deeds for their properties, provide identity cards and pay a fee of SYP4,000 for each certificate. Two weeks after the application submission, the certificates are issued and approved by the Damascus governorate. 

Notably, Decree No. 66 directorate now requires that real estate owners or their legal representatives attend in person to receive the share certificates. So far, the directorate has not permitted the heirs of deceased real estate owners to obtain the deeds. According to one directorate employee who spoke with The Syria Report, the directorate is planning to hand over deeds to heirs in the coming weeks, but only after the heirs present legal inheritance documents. 

According to a local correspondent for The Syria Report, this discrepancy is due to a recent issue, namely that the legal descriptions for the land in parts of Basilia City have been changed, even after they were already zoned. Prior to the zoning of the area, the properties in Qadam were listed as Amiri lands and located outside the zoning plan. This meant that if the landowners died, the lands were subject to the legal inheritance process as issued by the civil magistrate court in accordance with the Law on Transfer of Immovable Amiri Properties of 1928. 

However, when Amiri lands are annexed into a city, as is currently happening with the Qadam Amiri lands in Basilia City, the legal description of those properties automatically changes from Amiri to “mulk,” or owned land. When that occurs, the provisions of legal inheritance, as laid out in Personal Status Law No. 76 of 2010, are applied instead. For inheritors, this change of rules means that when a re-zoning process, like that in Basilia City, occurs, they must submit a legal inheritance document compiled before the Sharia court. Distribution of legal inheritance must comply with several essential rules: (1) Distribution favours the nearest degree of kinship to the deceased; (2) Distribution must favour relatives with closer paternal kinship to the deceased; and (3) Male heirs receive double the share of inheritance as female heirs, though only when they have an equal degree of kinship to the deceased. 

It is unclear whether these same procedures are being applied to other real estate areas in Basilia City. 

Meanwhile, rights holders currently living outside of Syria as refugees and who are wanted by the security services cannot return home to receive their share certificates. They also cannot appoint legal representatives to obtain the bonds on their behalf because legal representation requires prior security approval. In such cases, the security services require refugees to undergo “security settlement” at Syrian embassies in their host countries, on top of paying monetary compensation for their compulsory military service if they have failed to serve. Afterwards, they may apply for security approval required for legal representation.  

According to the correspondent, some concessions were also granted for issuing the share certificates, such as giving additional authority to the Decree No. 66 directorate to remove “upgrades” to some notations within the real estate pages for properties in the zoned area. It is still unclear where the limits of this authority lie and what types of notations the directorate is permitted to remove. However, real estate owners have the right to submit a request to the General Directorate of Cadastral Affairs to upgrade certain notes placed within the Land Registry for their properties. They may follow up on the request at the Decree No. 66 directorate headquarters, rather than before the court, which was previously the case. The directorate refers the property owner to the competent authority in cases where the Decree No. 66 directorate does not have the authority to upgrade certain notations.

This year has not seen any public auction to lease agricultural lands belonging to IDPs who fled regime-held territory in the Sabkheh and Maadan districts in the Raqqa governorate. Instead, a handful of existing lease contracts were renewed for the same tenants who rented the lands in the last agricultural season. In some cases where previous tenants declined to renew their contracts, the lands were leased to pro-regime militia leaders in the area.  

The rental price per hectare of land reached SYP 500,000 in 2022, while last year prices ranged from SYP 300,000 to 400,000. 

The Raqqa Farmers’ Syndicate announced on March 14, 2021 that it would hold the area’s first public auction for agricultural lands. However, the syndicate did not specify which administrative area the auctioned lands would belong to or the type of crops that winning tenants would be required to cultivate.

According to a correspondent for The Syria Report, the lands offered in the auctions are located in the Sabkheh and Maadan districts of the Raqqa governorate and are owned by people who fled the area after regime forces took control in mid-2017. The local farmers’ syndicate includes 22 farmers’ societies in villages across Sabkheh and Maadan, an area known for cultivating cotton, wheat and corn.

In Syria, a farmers’ society is a group formed at the village level or among a group of neighbouring villages. A farmers’ syndicate, on the other hand, is a group of farmers’ societies and runs at the administrative district level. A group of syndicates form a governorate farmers’ union and, finally, those governorate unions together comprise the nationwide General Farmers’ Union. Because the area under regime control in the Raqqa governorate is small, the governorate appears to have only one syndicate grouping the different farmers societies.

There were very few applicants for investment in the previous auction in March 2021, prompting the farmers’s syndicate to postpone it more than once before finally holding the auction on May 1, 2021. This lack of interest in the auction was due mainly to the strong tribal relationships between current residents of Sabkheh and Maadan and former residents who fled to areas of the governorate that are now under the control of the majority-Kurdish Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES). People from the area typically frown on any social rifts between current residents and displaced persons, as they are all members of the area’s tribes. In some cases, auction bidders faced serious threats and were forced to withdraw.  

Though the local farmers’ syndicate announced in March 2021 that it intended to lease 66.7 hectares of agricultural land, a former mukhtar — a neighbourhood mayor — of one of the area villages told The Syria Report that the actual leased area was many times greater than that number. According to the mukhtar, in his village alone some 130 hectares of land were offered for rent.

The total area of farmland offered for rent in 2022 is less than in 2021, the correspondent said. This is due to some displaced land owners returning home to undergo “reconciliation” with the regime, a process that involves opposition-affiliated locals settling their status with regime security services, undergoing investigations and writing personal pledges not to engage again with anti-regime activities. 

In 2021, each village in the Sabkheh and Maaden districts formed its own committee to determine which displaced land owners’ properties would be offered in the auction. Each of the committees included that village’s farmers society president, the village mukhtar and a Baath Party secretary. However, displaced land owners were not the only ones whose properties were included in the auction. Also listed in the auction were agricultural lands owned by current residents whose opposition-affiliated sons had fled to AANES territory in the Raqqa governorate, as well as those whose sons had refused to be enlisted in the regime’s military forces. 

Previously, in the 2019 and 2020 agricultural seasons, regime military officers and some members of the Tribal Army and the Friends Movement, two pro-regime militias, took possession of some displaced landowners’ farms, which they cultivated and harvested from without providing any justification or legal basis for doing so.