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No Homes for Returnees to Ayn Al-Fijeh

18-07-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Regime forces allowed some displaced residents to return to the Rural Damascus town of Ayn Al-Fijeh in late 2022. Since then, dozens of residents have inspected their homes, but only a few have chosen to settle there permanently due to the extensive damage to their properties and essential infrastructure, especially the drinking water network, difficulties in restoration and lack of efforts to remove rubble.

Ayn Al-Fijeh belongs administratively to the Zabadani district. It is also the centre of a subdistrict that includes nine towns and villages known as the villages of Wadi Barada. The town is about 15 kilometres west of the centre of Damascus, and it’s spring is the primary source of drinking water for the capital city and part of its countryside. The population of Ayn Al-Fijeh was approximately 6,000 before 2011, according to local estimates. The local armed opposition took control of Ayn Al-Fijeh in February 2012, so it was subjected to a punishing siege, continuous bombardment and repeated invasions by the regime forces.

Opposition forces threatened to cut off water to Damascus to improve the conditions for civilians in the town. In December 2016, regime forces backed by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia launched a military operation against the opposition in the town, resulting in significant damage to the Fijeh spring due to artillery and air bombardment. The regime managed to enter Ayn Al-Fijeh on January 28, 2017. It took control of the spring after reaching an agreement that resulted in the forced displacement of 2,100 residents to northern Syria.

In 2018, Law No. 1 was issued, establishing two buffer zones around the Fijeh Spring. A direct zone includes the land immediately surrounding the water source, and an indirect zone surrounds the direct one. The law stipulates the expropriation of properties and parts of properties located within the direct zone. It also established two other buffer zones, direct and indirect, along the water delivery tunnels from the Fijeh spring to Damascus. The law stipulated amending the zoning plan for Ayn Al-Fijeh so that residential areas located within the direct zones would be removed.

Only property owners in the indirect zone around the spring and waterway could repair damaged homes. The law also stipulates that residential facilities built before the enactment of this law in the indirect zone can remain, albeit under a set of conditions. Many houses and residences of the old town of Ayn Al-Fijeh fall within the areas of the direct zone.

While implementing the law, regime forces demolished and bulldozed entire residential neighbourhoods in Ayn Al-Fijeh, whose share of the direct zone was 45 hectares. This area was subject to expropriation and removal of all property contents. Republican Guard forces salvaged what could be recycled and reused from the houses before demolishing them, including ceramics, doors, windows and electrical wiring. After detonating the homes, they also extracted iron rebar. Sources from The Syria Report stated that the Republican Guard sold the iron to a company with large presses to reshape the extracted metals into large cubes.

Afterwards, the salvaged metal cubes were weighed in a collection area at the entrance to Ayn Al-Fijeh, before loading them into trucks and transporting them to smelting furnaces. The Rural Damascus governorate then brought dozens of heavy construction vehicles to Ayn Al-Fijeh to bulldoze the two buffer zones. Local sources suggest that more than half of the buildings in the town have been destroyed. Only an area of open fields on the side adjacent to the town of Bseima remains habitable and survived the bulldozing operations.

The Rural Damascus governorate later contracted with the General Company for Engineering Studies, affiliated with the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, in August 2020 to prepare detailed zoning plans for a new Wadi Barada suburb east of Ayn Al-Fijeh. The governorate stated this suburb would serve as paid alternative housing for the owners of properties expropriated under Law No. 1 of 2018.

Then in late 2020, for the first time, regime forces allowed some of the town’s displaced residents to briefly visit their properties, though they weren’t allowed to stay permanently. After that, residents were allowed to submit return requests to the temporary building of Ayn Al-Fijeh’s local council in the town of Jdeidat Al-Wadi, as Ayn Al-Fijeh’s original council building had been destroyed. After obtaining security approval for a return request, residents can submit a home repair request only if their repairable home is located in the indirect zone.

A local correspondent for The Syria Report indicated that anyone wishing to repair their home must submit a request to the local council to obtain a repair permit, accompanied by documents proving their ownership of the property. Afterwards, they must obtain a report from the Construction Safety Committee in the Rural Damascus governorate specifying the percentage of damage in the building they wish to return to.

According to The Syria Report’s sources, repair permits were granted for some homes where the damage exceeded 60 percent. However, receiving a repair permit is also contingent on obtaining security approval. In Ayn Al-Fijeh, this approval is given by the Political Security Branch and the Republican Guard, the two forces controlling the town.

On May 5, 2023, the head of the local council in the town told the semi-official newspaper Al-Watan that only a few dozen people currently reside in the town, due to the lack of drinking water available. He added that the process of repairing the drinking water network has halted, while the process of repairing the sewage networks has not yet begun. This is due to the town being subject to Law No. 1 of 2018, which mandates the creation of the buffer zones around the Fijeh spring, and requires that the construction sewage networks in the town be done in a specific technical manner that prevents contamination. Meanwhile, the electricity network is in no better condition, and out of three transformers, only one has been installed, though has yet to be connected to the network.

According to The Syria Report’s correspondent, there are still more than 4,000 cubic metres of rubble in the town, which neither the Rural Damascus governorate’s Technical Services Directorate nor the public construction companies have begun to remove. Local council work crews, in cooperation with small private crews working under temporary contracts, have opened most of the main roads and moved the rubble to smaller side streets. Sometimes residents resort to manually moving the rubble from in front of their homes on the side roads, and placing it on the main roads instead. In any case, the rubble that still remains lacks metal or other recyclable materials, which could explain the lack of interest of the Republican Guard and the Fourth Division in removing it.

On January 10, 2023, the head of the Al-Fijeh local council, Mohammed Shibli, told the state-run news agency SANA that 500 families had submitted requests to repair their homes. The requests were approved after the governorate’s Construction Safety Committee concluded that the homes were sound and could be repaired. He added that the families had begun removing the rubble from the homes, and he vowed to work on rehabilitating local infrastructure in parallel with the rubble removal operations.

But local sources expressed doubts to The Syria Report about the municipality having granted 500 repair permits, adding that the number of houses in the town that could be repaired is much lower than that. A source from the town explained that the main dilemma is the difficulty in obtaining new permits for completely destroyed buildings, outside the buffer zone and waterway areas of the spring, and within the zoned area of the town. This is partly because most of the town’s homes were multi-storey buildings consisting of a number of apartments, and were commonly owned rather than subdivided. Each construction permit application must be accompanied by a subdivision plan, which lists each owner and their location, and this in turn requires an agreement between the owners and a subdivision of the property in question. If there are multiple owners for one property and a subdivision plan is available in accordance with their shares, each of the owners must obtain security approval to get a building permit. But because some of those owners have been forcibly displaced or are wanted by security forces, they are unable to obtain security approval, which prevents the issuance of a building permit. In other cases, the financial costs of building permits have prevented some owners from agreeing to share the burden.

The Rubble After the Earthquake in Lattakia

11-07-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

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.

Some Displaced Residents Allowed to Return to New Neighbourhoods in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad

06-06-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Since early 2023, the Rural Damascus governorate has permitted displaced residents from the Al-Wahda and Al-Istiqlal neighbourhoods of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad to apply to return home. Previous returns in 2022 were limited to residents who had been displaced from the Tishreen and Al-Thawra neighbourhoods.

Al-Hajar Al-Aswad is a city and the administrative centre of a subdistrict within the Rural Damascus governorate and borders the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. About a half million people lived in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad before 2011, and at the time it was home to the largest population of displaced families who had fled the Golan Heights in the June 1967 war with Israel. Because of this dense concentration of residents from the Golan’s Quneitra governorate, the two governorates of Rural Damascus and Quneitra have overlapping authority in Al-Haja Al-Aswad. In any case, much of the city consists of informal settlements that are unzoned and unserved, and which became a destination for low-income Syrians moving to the greater Damascus area from other governorates.

The city faced severe wartime destruction during the period of opposition control in 2012-2015, as well as during Islamic State control in 2015-2018. Regime forces regained control of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in 2018 after a massive aerial and artillery bombardment campaign that destroyed entire neighbourhoods and forcibly displaced remaining residents.

Until late 2022, only residents from the Tishreen and Al-Thawra neighbourhoods were allowed to return to the city, because those areas were the least affected by wartime damages. However, rubble remains scattered along the main road connecting those two neighbourhoods, as well as in many other areas, despite individual efforts by returnees to remove it at their own expense. In late 2022, a delegation of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad residents met with the Rural Damascus governor, Safwan Abu Saada, to complain about the low quality of public services in Tishreen and Al-Thawra. They demanded that the governorate take necessary steps to halt the looting and theft of their newly restored homes, as well as speed up rehabilitation of water, electricity and sewage networks and paving roads. Abu Saada responded that the governorate and relevant authorities were working hard to secure those necessities, and stressed that it was important for the local community to cooperate and participate in reconstruction.

Meanwhile, Al-Wahda and Al-Istiqlal neighbourhoods, which before 2011 had a majority of Turkmen and Circassian residents from the Golan Heights, suffered worse damage from the war, which delayed returns. In late 2022, some residents who had been displaced from Al-Istiqlal took part in a volunteer campaign to clean the neighbourhood, including removing rubble from homes and some streets. They collected the debris in public squares, in coordination with the municipality. Still, at the time they were not allowed to return home, and so they left once again after they had completed the campaign. During a tour of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in January 2023 Quneitra governor Mutaz Abu Al-Nasr Jamran said that he had ordered work crews from his governorate to clean Al-Wahda and Al-Istiqlal neighbourhoods. However, these crews did not start cleaning the main streets and some side streets of the two neighbourhoods until March 13 — and even then only spent four days on the job.

Residents from Al-Jazira and Al-Alaf neighbourhoods are still prohibited from returning, as those areas were mostly destroyed due to a network of tunnels the Islamic State dug beneath them during its period of control. The two neighbourhoods also suffered intense bombing during the final military campaign in 2018 by regime and Russian forces. Khaled Khamis, head of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad City Council, posted to Facebook on March 11 that important steps had already been taken to rehabilitate the city’s infrastructure and services. He added that returns would later be allowed to Al-Jazira neighbourhood, but only after the governorate removed buildings there at risk of collapse.

Notably, the Quneitra governorate is the one that always begins removing the rubble from neighbourhoods where the Rural Damascus has allowed residents to return. After such work begins, the Quneitra governorate then withdraws its work crews and machinery without explanation and Rural Damascus governorate work crews take over the job. This is what happened in Al-Thawra and Tishreen neighbourhoods in early 2022 — at the time, the Quneitra governorate and Golan notables obtained approval for residents to return. It started removing rubble and then left for the Rural Damascus governorate to take over.

Residents have criticised this unusual behaviour by the Quneitra governorate, which has yet to rehabilitate any of its centres or schools in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. A source familiar with the governorate council’s operations told The Syria Report that this is due to funding issues. While the Rural Damascus governorate often receives aid from local and international NGOs for early recovery project contracts it undertook in the city, the Quneitra governorate has been unable to receive any of this assistance. Instead, it relies solely on its own budget and whatever it can collect in accordance with the Financial Law of Administrative Units.

Syrian authorities are seeking out international organisations to obtain funding for early recovery projects. These include rehabilitation of schools, water, electricity and sewage networks and rubble removal. It appears that Syrian authorities have set such rehabilitation as a precondition for return of displaced residents to their hometowns.

In addition to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), currently a team from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East is helping rehabilitate Al-Hajar Al-Aswad with help from Norwegian Church Aid, which in March restored the city’s medical centre before handing it over to the Rural Damascus Directorate of Health. The French NGO Première Urgence Internationale also rehabilitated the city’s third mixed-gender school alongside the Rural Damascus governorate and the Ministry of Education.

The Al-Hajar Al-Aswad City Council head said in March 2023 that there had been 3,100 applications to return to the city, of which 2,700 were approved. He added that around 350 homes had been restored, 140 of them with assistance from SARC. Finally, he vowed to restore the city’s drinking water network soon. Still, a local correspondent for The Syria Report said that returns to the city were still low, and that only about 1,000 people (200 families) had returned to settle there. Though many displaced residents return to their homes sporadically to check on their homes, most choose not to resettle in the area, as it still lacks basic services such as water and electricity.

According to the correspondent, returnees may now undergo security checks at the municipal office in the district branch of the Military Security detachment on Al-Thalatheen Street in neighbouring Yarmouk before they enter Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. Al-Thalatheen Street is the main entryway into the city. The procedures for obtaining security approval have not changed, and those wishing to return must submit an application to Al-Hajar Al-Aswad municipality, which then sends their files to the district branch. There, the applications undergo study before either approval or rejection. Those who have lost their property ownership documents have still not been able to obtain security approval, despite having followed the municipality’s instructions: getting a record from the police station, obtaining an electricity or water payment receipt, and providing a paper from their neighbourhood mukhtar in which two witnesses from the area testify that the applicant is a local property owner.

One displaced man told The Syria Report that he visits Al-Hajar Al-Aswad every month to check on his house. Each time, he finds that conditions have worsened due to looting, especially in the Al-Alaf and Al-Jazira neighourhoods. Looters take anything that can be sold or recycled, including the city’s newly installed lighting poles. On top of that, the checkpoint at the entrance to the city imposes fees on residents hoping to bring in furniture for their homes.

Yarmouk Camp: Civil Initiatives for Rubble Removal

25-04-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

In March, activists, local leaders and NGOs launched an initiative to facilitate the return of residents to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Their campaign included removing rubble from some streets, albeit without a legal framework to regulate it and without any simultaneous effort to document who owns the debris.

Damascus Governor Muhammad Kreishati visited Yarmouk on March 11 to launch a campaign called Hand in Hand, meant to help revitalise the camp, in partnership with the Initiative of the Civil Society body, which includes a group of local leaders, NGOs, and civil associations and relief groups active in the camp. According to officials in charge, the goal of the Initiative is to coordinate efforts between civil society and the Damascus governorate to rehabilitate infrastructure in Yarmouk.

As part of the Hand in Hand campaign, various civil and relief associations in the camp helped install solar-powered street lighting, set drinking water tanks, planted ornamental trees and distributed free bread to residents, among other tasks. The campaign aims to clean the main street of Yarmouk camp and Loubia and Palestine streets, maintain and construct road medians and sidewalks, and fill in holes. Other initiatives are planned to follow this one, focused on rebuilding the camp and allowing residents to return. Officials in charge did not disclose further details on the duration of the campaigns or funding.

Mr Kreishati said 3,000 civil society volunteers took part in the Hand in Hand campaign, in addition to governorate work crews. The campaign cleared rubble from a large portion of the nearby streets and between buildings. He added that the governorate made significant progress in providing water and sewage services to all the main streets in the camp and was currently coordinating with Damascus’s Directorate of Electricity to activate two electrical substations to meet the needs of the 1,800 families in Yarmouk.

A well-informed source told The Syria Report that the Damascus governorate is the entity that oversees rubble removal. Meanwhile, NGOs and civil and relief organisations provide work crews and secure financial liquidity to cover operating costs. One of the most prominent organisations involved in this work has been the Al-Quds Charitable Association, which brought in 36-member work crews along with three vehicles: a medium-sized truck and two small trucks meant to assist with ten days of rubble removal. The association later said on its Facebook account that it would keep working until it cleared the entire camp of rubble.

Al-Quds Charitable Association was established in 2011. Most of its members were part of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. The association’s work receives official media coverage. The Ministry of Local Administration has also honoured its members several times. It has been responsible for the most significant activities related to rubble removal, street lighting and the provision of water tanks in the camp.

According to the well-informed source, most NGOs working in Yarmouk are affiliated with pro-regime Palestinian factions. Despite their aid efforts in the camp, their primary focus is collecting donations to fund these factions. This explains the different names of these NGOs and the existence of multiple similar NGOs affiliated with a single faction.

In any case, camp residents have complained about the slow and irregular pace of debris removal. In several instances, debris was moved from one site to another within the camp without being taken away, such as in the Waseem Project neighbourhood. Moreover, roads remain blocked between the camp and adjacent areas due to debris and earthen berms, including Al-Tadhamon, Yalda, and Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. Homes under restoration and repair work have also been targeted by theft, including the removal of iron rebar from ceilings and walls. Such thefts are especially rampant in the March 8th neighbourhood and some areas between Yarmouk and Al-Hajar Al-Aswad.

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria reported on April 10 that the Damascus governorate changed various signage and symbols in Yarmouk after finishing restoration and rehabilitation work at the camp’s entrance. This included removing Palestinian flags and symbols from the main entrance, replacing the word “camp” with “street” and using the term Yarmouk area instead of Yarmouk camp. Meanwhile, the pro-opposition news site Saut Al-Asima reported on March 16 that residents wishing to return to Yarmouk and Al-Hajar Al-Aswad would no longer be required to visit the Palestine Branch of Military Security or the National Security Office to obtain approval. Instead, they must submit a written request to a recently established military security detachment located on Yarmouk’s Thalatheen Street.

Looters Invade Yarmouk Camp

14-02-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Scavenging for and recycling rubble appears to have become a booming trade for looting crews in damaged areas, where security forces have restricted access from most residents hoping to return home. This is especially the case in Damascus’ Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp.

According to The Syria Report’s local correspondent, Deir Yassine, Al-Aroubeh and 15th Street are the areas of the camp most impacted by the looting. Crews of fewer than ten workers each carry out the looting with light machinery, picking apart roofs and columns to extract iron. These teams enter the camp regularly via checkpoints operated by Military Security, one of the country’s four main security services, on Al-Thalatheen Street. They are allowed access through security permissions issued by the Fourth Division that grant them the freedom to enter and exit the camp.

Most of these workers are day labourers employed by scrap traders. They collect scrap taken from the rubble in different parts of the camp, especially Deir Yassine and 15th Street, similar to the looting process in neighbouring Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, a city just outside Damascus. Afterwards, traders take the scrap out of the camp and pass through the security checkpoints to iron smelting factories in Rural Damascus.

In general, the looting crews divide the camp amongst themselves, so each crew gets a sector of buildings. Aside from these professional work crews, groups of less organised, self-employed workers also hunt for scrap, gather iron, and loot homes. These workers pay bribes to personnel at the security checkpoints that allow them to enter the camp. They often attack residents wishing to check on their properties, hitting them with rocks and sticks to scare them from returning.

Eyewitnesses told The Syria Report that the looting, demolitions and iron extractions also target undamaged and habitable buildings. Sometimes the looting teams demolish columns on ground storeys, causing the buildings to collapse and making it easier to extract iron from the rubble. These demolitions have killed some looters in recent years in the Jobar neighbourhood of Damascus and Al-Hajar Al-Aswad.

The demotions have also, at times, affected buildings in the camp that had already been restored from wartime damage. Abu Ahmad, a Yarmouk resident, told The Syria Report that he had been working to regain his apartment on the second storey of a building near Al-Madares Street to move back home. However, he recently found that the stairwell of his building had been completely demolished and the iron extracted from it, making it difficult to reach the second storey.

Salma, another resident, said she had obtained approval to return to her house in Yarmouk, which was still habitable. She spent her family’s savings rehabilitating the home and installing windows and doors, only to find that looters had dismantled and stolen everything.

The looting comes amid an unclear announcement by the Damascus governor in January calling on residents and homeowners to visit the Yarmouk Services Department to remove their collapsed homes and to demolish their homes if they are at risk of total or partial collapse. The announcement did not clarify what exactly was demanded of these residents, i.e. whether they would be responsible for removing the homes themselves or whether the Yarmouk Services Department would undertake the task.

Building Collapses, Killing Seven, During Looting in Damascus Suburb

17-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Seven people were killed on November 2, 2022, when a four-storey building collapsed in the Rural Damascus governorate city of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. The victims had been there to extract iron from the damaged building’s columns and roof in order to loot and recycle it. This illicit business–the rubble trade–appears to be attracting new companies as it enjoys military and security protection.

Al-Hajar Al-Aswad is a city and administrative centre of a district within the Rural Damascus governorate, and sits adjacent to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. Before 2011, Al-Hajar Al-Aswad had about half a million residents and was known as host to the largest number of Golan Heights residents who had been displaced by the June 1967 war. Much of the city consists of informal housing that was never properly zoned or serviced, and which became destinations for low-income Syrians coming to the capital region from other parts of the country.

The city faced massive wartime damage when the opposition controlled it from 2012 to 2015, and again during the period of Islamic State control in 2015-2018. Regime forces regained control of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in 2018 after an airstrikes and artillery campaign that destroyed entire neighbourhoods and forcibly displaced any remaining residents.

November’s collapsed building was located in Al-Jazeereh neighbourhood in the northwestern part of the city. Severe damage to that neighbourhood has prevented residents from returning to it. The Rural Damascus governorate has previously allowed conditional returns for residents of the city’s Tishreen and Al-Thawra neighbourhoods, which are considered safely inhabitable. However, according to The Syria Report’s correspondent in the area, only 150 out of thousands who applied were permitted to return.

Pro-regime media reported that the head of the local council of Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad had denied there were any casualties in the building collapse. Rather, he stated that the building was uninhabited and there were only material damages. The reason behind his denial could be that Al-Jazeereh neighbourhood is still uninhabited and returns are not allowed, making it difficult to explain any deaths without acknowledging the looting operations.

However, eyewitnesses confirmed to The Syria Report that the building collapsed while looters were breaking apart the roof to extract iron rebar. A woman and a 16-year-old boy were among the dead, while the rest were members of a family from Al-Jumlan tribe, which hails from East Ghouta.

A work crew from the Rural Damascus governorate came to the scene of the collapsed building equipped with heavy machinery, spending two days searching the rubble for bodies. Personnel from Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad police station and Military Security branch, which controls the area, prevented people from getting near the site.

One Al-Hajar Al-Aswad resident told The Syria Report that they saw large trucks removing debris extracted from the city’s damaged buildings on more than one occasion. Those trucks passed through security checkpoints without objections, The Syria Report’s correspondent added.

Regime forces closed off the entrances to Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad with dirt mounds in 2018, though one entrance from Al-Thalatheen Street was kept open. This entrance is overseen by two checkpoints that closely inspect anyone who has been permitted to pass through.

According to The Syria Report’s correspondent, the looting crews are given security permissions by the army’s Fourth Division. These permissions allow the crews to enter Al-Hajar Al-Aswad for work. The looting crews collect the rubble in certain locations of the city, where rubble dealers then go purchase it. The most important material for sale is iron, which is transported via trucks to furnaces to be recycled.

Syrian Company for Metals and Investments

The Syria Report’s correspondent cited sources in Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad who said some of those trucks belong to the Syrian Company for Metals and Investments, whose articles of association had been approved by the Decision No. 3061/2018 of the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection. Under Decision No. 3061, it has the right to import and export all types of metals, iron, plastics and aluminium, as well as sort and transport rubble, trade construction and cladding materials and cement, in addition to other activities.

The Syria Report could not independently confirm whether the rubble trucks indeed belonged to this company.