property_demolition – Syria Report

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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.

Destroying Daraa’s Real Estate Market

10-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Since regime forces recaptured the area in 2018, properties in Daraa city’s commercial souk have undergone continuous demolition, despite the fighting there being over. Rubble recycling crews are behind some of the demolitions, while the real estate owners themselves are demolishing other properties with the aim of removing the occupants and old tenants.

The souk occupies a large part of central Daraa, from the old western garage bus stop to the newer eastern one, and passes through Busra Square. It contains a number of different souks and shopping complexes within it, such as the consumers’ complex, Khan Al-Harir, Souk Al-Hamed, Souk Al-Rahmeh, Souk Al-Khodar and Souk Al-Hal. In addition to these shops, the souk is also home to lawyers’ offices, doctors’ clinics, X-ray and other medical laboratories, schools, government departments and trade syndicate offices.

The souk faced extensive damage during the fighting in 2012-2018 and emptied out. After the reconciliation agreement between opposition and regime forces in 2018, the regime set up military and security checkpoints at the entrances to the souk, according to The Syria Report’s correspondent in the area. The souk has only seen small, individual-level renovation work since then, in the area near the western garage bus stop. In exchange for SYP 100,000-200,000 daily fees, the checkpoints allowed local groups of rubble recyclers, known as tafteesh crews, or looting crews, to enter and demolish parts of the damaged buildings such as columns and ceilings in order to extract iron they could recycle and sell. According to our correspondent, each looting crew could extract enough iron per day from the rubble to sell at a minimum value of SYP 1 million, equivalent to around USD 2,100 dollars in 2018 when this looting first occurred.

Since mid-2020, the regime checkpoints have been removed and replaced by police patrols. However, those patrols still take bribes to turn a blind eye to the tafteesh crews. Throughout 2022, the tafteesh crews changed their methods and began to demolish entire buildings in the Daraa souk using heavy machinery.

Meanwhile, the owners of some damaged properties in the souk have obtained security approvals and demolition permits from the city council in order to demolish their properties and remove the rubble, our correspondent reported. Other owners, whose properties were partially damaged but who could not obtain demolition permits, allowed the tafteesh crews to extract the iron, thereby making their properties completely damaged and allowing them to obtain demolition permits.

Some owners seeking to demolish their properties in the souk are doing so in order to evade the furoogh tenancy system. A furoogh contract is a lease contract made for a commercial property for an indefinite period of time and signed before the issuance of Tenancy Law No. 10 of 2006. It is also subject to the compulsory extension system, which is an extension of the lease regardless of whether the lessor desires it. Under this system, tenants pay the property owner rent, usually a small amount that cannot be increased–for a shop in the Daraa commercial souk, this amount ranges between SYP 10,000 to SYP 15,000 per year. Meanwhile, the tenant has the right to sublease the shop, with all its tangible and intangible features, to another tenant in exchange for what is known as a furoogh payment, sometimes equivalent to the property’s current market value. Should the property owner wish to evict the tenant, they must pay them a furoogh payment.

According to an article published in the state-run Tishreen newspaper in October 2022, complete destruction of a leased building means, legally, complete loss of the rental. This permits the owner to cancel the lease contract because the property has become non-existent, allowing the land to return to its original owner.

Still, a property owner hoping to conceal their lease contract with an occupant or tenant must file a total property loss claim before the court. This means that cancellation of the tenancy relationship lies only within the judiciary, thereby ensuring that the lessor compensate the tenant. The city council also must issue a demolition permit for the property in question. In order to issue the permit, the property owner should pledge before the notary public on preservation of the occupants’ rights. Tishreen explained in its article that demolishing buildings with the aim of causing harm to the tenants is an abuse of rights, and that tenants may seek judicial recourse.

Aleppo City Council Plans to Demolish up to 1,500 Buildings

03-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

In December 2022, the Aleppo City Council began demolishing several severely damaged and uninhabited buildings in the city’s eastern neighbourhoods, marking the beginning stage of its plan to raze some 1,500 structures at risk of collapse.

On December 28, the council demolished a large building near the eastern garage bus stop in the Al-Shaar neighbourhood and transported the rubble outside the city. Five days earlier, it coordinated with a local branch of the Military Housing Establishment in Aleppo to demolish a five-storey building in the Al-Mowasalat Al-Qadimeh area and remove the rubble. On December 6, council workers destroyed a building in the Al-Safaa neighbourhood with help from the Aleppo governorate’s Central Services Directorate.

On November 9, the head of Aleppo City Council said that “the evictions have been signed for 1,500 buildings at risk of collapse,” adding that the decisions needed approval. He did not specify who signed the eviction decisions or who needed to approve them.

Local administrative units frequently form public safety committees to address structural safety concerns for buildings at risk of collapse. These committees assess the risks and provide recommendations, such as demolishing the buildings, reinforcing them, or leaving them as they are.

In October 2020, Aleppo’s public safety committee announced that around 3,000 buildings in the city were found to be at risk of collapse and must be demolished. It is not clear why that figure decreased by half in the Aleppo mayor’s most recent statement.

According to a local correspondent for The Syria Report, the Aleppo City Council does not have the funds to compensate residents of dilapidated buildings or provide temporary alternative housing, even if the evacuations move gradually. The lack of funds and housing alternatives is why the demolitions have targeted uninhabited buildings on the verge of collapse.

However, many of the city’s at-risk buildings slated for evacuation and demolition are still inhabited, which presents an important question of what will happen to those residents. The head of Aleppo City Council said evacuating residents and securing alternative housing requires a plan of action. Yet, there is no such plan in place.

Our local correspondent added that the buildings slated for removal are in 40 different neighbourhoods across east Aleppo, most notably the Al-Fardous, Al-Aameriyeh, SalahEddin, Karam Al-Jabal and Al-Saliheen neighbourhoods. Most of the buildings in these neighbourhoods were built without a licence and endured severe regime airstrikes, artillery fire, and barrel bombs during the period of opposition control in 2012-2016.

Buildings that were not directly hit by the bombs were indirectly impacted. For instance, cracks developed in the walls of some buildings, while water leaks from run-down sewage networks further damaged others. Most often, buildings constructed without the proper licences and without solidly engineered foundations are more likely to collapse.

Although the head of Aleppo City Council’s statements about the demolitions, real estate sales transactions have increased in east Aleppo. The real estate is believed to be largely owned by internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were forcibly displaced from east Aleppo to northern areas of the governorate under opposition control, according to The Syria Report’s correspondent. Some IDPs believed their properties could be demolished without compensation, prompting them to sell their properties in east Aleppo at low prices out of fear of total loss. The correspondent notes that real estate traders affiliated with local pro-regime militias that control eastern Aleppo are the most prominent buyers of these properties.

Meanwhile, rumours have circulated that the militias in control of the Al-Aameriyeh neighbourhood were going to allow affiliated real estate development companies to demolish local properties and construct real estate projects in their place. Currently, Al-Aameriyeh is controlled by local militias loyal to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps that prevent most residents from returning to their homes.

It is worth mentioning that dozens of the buildings marked for demolition in the Al-Neirab, Al-Marjeh, Al-Fardous, Al-Maadi, and Al-Maysar neighbourhoods belong to tribes with close ties to the pro-Iranian Al-Baqir Brigade. The brigade considers demolishing these buildings as an opportunity to save on demolition and rubble removal costs and to ease licensing for reconstruction.

Explained: Mechanisms for Removing Unlicensed Construction in Damascus City

22-11-2022/in Analysis & Features, HLP /by Rand Shamaa

Although there is no official estimation of the number of unlicensed construction works in Damascus, the media has put the number at more than 750,000 built since 2012 alone. Unlicensed construction can include structures that infringe on setbacks (the minimum distance of a building or other structure from a street, river, flood plain, etc.), overtake joint or public facilities, and lack a permit.

The Damascus governorate launched a new online mechanism in early 2022 to confront unlicensed construction. Submissions must include the complainant’s name, phone number, and home and email addresses; the accused violator’s name; and the location and a photo of the unlicensed construction.

Upon receiving submissions, the Damascus Directorate of Complaints and Grievances, which follows Decision No. 59 of 2012, evaluates and investigates the applications before sending its report to the relevant municipal services directorate.

The Damascus governorate comprises 16 districts, each with its own municipality. Each municipality has a mayor who the governor appoints. There are two engineers for each mayor; one serves as head of the services directorate, and the other works as the district engineer. As employees of the governorate, these engineers rotate from one municipality to another every up to three months.

A district’s municipal services directorate is responsible for addressing unlicensed construction within the given district. Such directorates are also tasked with granting residential and cladding permits for licensed buildings, looking into any unlicensed construction, calculating the fees and fines for violations, and preparing any necessary finance-related decisions.

The relevant municipal services directorate then sends a fact-finding committee to visit and confirm the reported site of the unlicensed construction. This committee includes municipal employees and is headed by the district engineer.

The committee relies on aerial photographs of the area taken in 2012, i.e. before the issuance of Law No. 40 of 2012, which addresses unlicensed construction. The Ministry of Local Administration took the photographs in coordination with the Ministry of Defence through an aerial survey of Damascus. Internal unlicensed structures that are not visible in the aerial photographs can still be compared with the construction plans accompanying the Land Registry documents for a building.

The district engineer identifies the unlicensed construction, writes a seizure report, and sends it to the mayor. This report includes the notification number and date, the names of the fact-finding committee members, the date of the fact-finding trip, descriptions of the violation, the results of the investigation with the building occupant, and any notes from the committee. Usually, the committee recommends demolishing the unlicensed construction. If that is the case, the committee requests that occupants do so within two days. If they fail to do so, a work crew comes to demolish it and photograph the process. The work crews are affiliated with the municipal services directorate and composed of workers the governorate employs.

A police patrol from the district always accompanies any demolition crew, often alongside a security patrol. The police officers on the scene are tasked with suppressing and arresting anyone who attempts to resist the demolition. If the perpetrator or occupant of the unlicensed construction is a military personnel member affiliated with the Ministry of Defence, the patrols from the Military Security branch and the military police accompany the demolition crew.

After demolition is complete, the municipality “closes the seizure,” meaning that the committee states that the unlicensed construction was successfully demolished on a specific date in its report. The seizure report is then sent back to the Directorate of Complaints and Grievances to inform it that the complaint about the unlicensed construction has been resolved.

Finally, the report is sent to the judiciary to follow up on the execution of Law No. 40, such as possible jail time, fines for the perpetrator, and punishment for any municipal employee who helped cover up the unlicensed construction.

Homes Used by ISIS in Rural Daraa’s Jassem Face Retaliatory Demolition

15-11-2022/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Several houses and other facilities in Jassem, a town in the northwestern part of Daraa governorate, were damaged in recent clashes against pro-Islamic State (ISIS) cells in the area. Afterwards, local armed groups destroyed some of the houses and other facilities that the ISIS fighters have rented.

ISIS has recently increased its presence in Jassem, with members renting local homes, farms, and poultry facilities. During this time, ISIS members assassinated several former opposition commanders, kidnapped people for ransom and stole private property. They also set up a Sharia court in the city to execute hardline rulings, even summoning some residents.

Meanwhile, since September, regime forces have increased their presence in the areas around Jassem, threatening to enter the city and launch a military operation there. In the hopes of avoiding regime forces entering the city and the resulting violations against residents and their properties, local notables called on armed groups in the area for support. In October, these groups waged an armed security campaign against the ISIS cells in Jassem, destroying some ISIS-occupied houses. Regime forces did not participate in the campaign, instead surrounding the city and firing heavy artillery shells.

Among the campaign participants was the Eighth Brigade, a local faction whose influence is concentrated in Busra Al-Sham. The group was formed under the auspices of Russia after the 2018 reconciliation agreements, which granted the regime control of the Daraa governorate. The Eighth Brigade is affiliated with Military Security, though it retains some degree of independence in making decisions. Local armed groups from Daraa’s western countryside also participated in the clashes in Jassem. These groups are affiliated with the so-called Central Committees, an umbrella group bringing together various formerly pro-opposition factions.

More than ten ISIS members were killed in the clashes. Some blew themselves up with explosive belts, while others were captured. Most of those killed and captured were from te Daraa governorate, though two ISIS members who were killed were Iraqi and Lebanese. Several fighters from local anti-ISIS factions were also killed.

City notables issued a decision on October 16 banning residents from leasing homes and land to strangers without a personal guarantee from the former. Those who violate the decision are considered ISIS members and will have their properties destroyed.

Following the clash and as the city stabilised, armed groups destroyed more than ten homes that had been rented or constructed by ISIS members. According to a local correspondent for The Syria Report, the demolitions were a form of reprisal against ISIS and a deterrence against people falling for any financial temptations by the extremist group.

For example, one ISIS member reportedly rented a house in Jassem for USD 400 per month, a very high price compared with other homes in the area. Members of the group also pay rent in yearly payments, which is unusual for the region and considered to be a small fortune by residents.

Another house in Jassem had been owned by a man living in Jordan for years. Unbeknownst to him, the man’s brother leased the home to an ISIS commander from rural southern Damascus, receiving the full yearly rental payment in advance, The Syria Report’s correspondent found.

One of the destroyed houses in Jassem belonged to the wife of an Iraqi ISIS commander known as Abu AbdelRahman Al-Iraqi. The group had built the home after stationing itself in the city. A poultry farm on the outskirts of the city, which ISIS members used as a shelter, was one of the properties destroyed.

The most notable example of the retaliatory nature of the home demolitions is the home of Rami Al-Salkhadi, who was a Jassem resident and the brother-in-law of Abu AbdelRahman Al-Iraqi. According to The Syria Report’s correspondent, Al-Salkhadi helped ISIS enter the city and was found dead after the recent clashes.

A farm north of Jassem that was used by ISIS as a Sharia court was also destroyed. The court was located not far from regime positions surrounding the city. Often, ISIS establishes Sharia courts before it announces an “emirate” in an area it controls.

Some residents have compared the recent demolitions to the regime’s demolitions of formerly opposition-held properties in recent years. One resident told The Syria Report he felt that the destroyed homes were a revenge tactic meant to terrorise people rather than help them or provide services to address the difficult living conditions.

One local armed group leader told The Syria Report that the demolition operations were “necessary,” as the owners of these properties had, knowingly or not, been partnering with ISIS by leasing to them. He added that the owners had abetted ISIS as it entered the city.