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On June 25, the final official deadline passed for the closure of two stray animal shelters in the Saboura and Shebaa areas near Damascus. The Rural Damascus governorate has sent a letter to the police command to execute the evacuation process.

According to The Syria Report’s local correspondent, there are two animal welfare associations in Damascus and its countryside specialising in stray dogs and cats. These associations provide healthcare and food through a team of volunteers, funded by the associations themselves and some donations. The first is the Syrian Team for Animal Rescue (STAR), founded by Hanadi Al-Muhtasib in 2015. It runs a stray dog shelter established on a privately rented farm in the Saboura area. The second is the Syrian Association for Rescuing Animals (SARA), founded by Anna Orfali, also in 2015. It manages a stray dog shelter in the Shebaa area near the fourth bridge on the Damascus International Airport road. The former Minister of Agriculture, Ahmed Al-Qadri, allocated public land in Shebaa to the SARA association to set up its shelter.

In 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to evacuate the shelters for health and environmental reasons. According to the semi-official newspaper Al-Watan, neighbours had complained about the disturbing noises and unpleasant smells coming from the shelters. Subsequently, committees from the Ministry of Agriculture inspected the shelters and ordered their evacuation. However, the implementation of this decision was delayed in response to appeals from the associations’ administrators.

The good relationship between the directors of the two associations and the Syria Trust for Development, managed by the Syrian President’s wife, Asma Al-Assad, contributed to the postponement of the evacuation decision at the time, The Syria Report’s correspondent explained. Because of this support from the STD, the reason for the strict official stance towards the associations remains unclear. The Directorate of Agriculture has stopped renewing the veterinary licence for both associations for the past three years without any explanation, forcing them to continue their work illegally.

Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Rural Damascus governorate have resumed pressure on the two associations to vacate the shelters and relocate to the Danoun area in Kisweh, south of Damascus. The Directorate of Agriculture in Rural Damascus explained that the ministry has allocated 40 dunams in Danoun for the associations to move to. However, the new land in Danoun is undeveloped, meaning the associations will need to build new shelters without any government compensation or financial assistance.

The associations have not succeeded in securing funding from foreign or local non-governmental organisations operating in Syria. The directors of the associations declared bankruptcy years ago, warning of the dangers posed by the release of thousands of stray animals. It appears that the Syrian government’s only plan for dealing with stray dogs and cats is simply to kill them, either by poisoning or shooting.

On June 25, Anna Orfali, the director and owner of SARA, told the local Athr Press website that the land for the shelter she manages is two dunams of public property in Shebaa. This land was allocated by the Ministry of Agriculture to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour several years ago. Orfali added that building the shelter took seven years, with the costs for construction, land allocation, and drilling two water wells amounting to around SYP 10 billion. Since the land is classified as agricultural and construction is prohibited, the shelter was built according to regulations, using structures that can be dismantled.

The decision to close the shelters may be justified on health and environmental grounds, particularly given the failure of the Shebaa and Saboura towns to collect garbage and animal waste from the shelters, according to official media. However, the situation seems more complex. The areas along the airport road in Shebaa and Saboura are tourist zones that once had many thriving private parks before the 2011 revolution. Recently, these areas appear to be recovering, with new tourism projects emerging. This aligns with Ms Orfali’s comments to Athr Press, stating that a school and a tourism project were recently established near the shelter, involving concrete buildings, which should not be permitted on agricultural land.

This is one of the rare instances of conflict between government institutions and associations supported by the Syria Trust for Development. It suggests that there might be more influential parties than the Trust pushing for the evacuation of the shelters. The Syria Report’s correspondent noted the presence of competing parties, including businessmen and tourism companies, pressuring the Rural Damascus governorate and the Ministry of Agriculture to relocate the shelters to Al-Kiswah. Hence, the governorate and ministry are being strict with the associations, bogging them down with bureaucratic complexities and revoking previously granted licences, disregarding the semi-bankrupt organisations’ inability to cover the costs of building new shelters and moving thousands of animals.

In October 2022, the Ministry of Tourism warned occupants of traditional handicrafts workshops and stores in Al-Suleimaniyeh Hospice area in Damascus that they must vacate their businesses before the end of 2022 to allow for restoration work on the hospice. The ministry also cancelled investment contracts for store occupants in the local souk, a sign that the evictions are final.

The historic hospice

Al-Suleimaniyeh Hospice was founded in the 16th century during the reign of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman Al-Qanuni, with construction supervised by Mimar Sinan, a chief Ottoman architect. In the Ottoman Islamic tradition, a hospice was a resting place to provide food and shelter to pilgrims travelling to Mecca during Hajj, and to the poor during the rest of the year.

Al-Suleimaniyeh Hospice consists of two main architectural complexes: the first contains a mosque and the hospice grounds, and the second Al-Sulaymaniyah School and a surrounding souk. The school building held the Military Museum until 2011. The souk, meanwhile, has been home to the traditional handicrafts market since the 1970s, containing around 40 traditional Damascene craft shops, such as glass and seashell workers and makers of traditional Damascene textiles like the aghabani fabric. The market also hosts the Damascus Sheikhs of Alkar, the most prominent craftspeople of their trades, such as those involved in copper engraving, Damascene swords, oud instruments, damask cloth, ceramics, stained glass and traditional aqal headbands.

Restoration

There was a project in 2010 to restore the hospice with the help of the Turkish government, but it halted due to the onset of the revolution in 2011. The Syria Trust for Development, an NGO run by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s wife Asma al-Assad, presented a study in 2020 proposing a multi-stage process to restore the hospice. However, the trust did not reveal many details about the project, amid rumours about a for-profit investment scheme targeting business people and leaving out the traditional craftspeople of the hospice.

Structurally, the hospice has no cracks that threaten collapse. However, it does need partial restoration work that would not require evacuating the craft workers, the head of the Traditional Professions Division of the Union of Syrian Chambers of Tourism told the state-run Tishreen newspaper in March 2020. He is also among the craftspeople working in Al-Suleimaniyeh Hospice. In another recent statement from October 28, 2022, he suggested that the Ministry of Tourism temporarily move the traditional handicrafts souk to another location until the completion of restoration work. The ministry did not respond to his suggestion.

Investment contracts

The stores inside the traditional handicrafts market are endowment properties. Before 2000, those stores were leased under the supervision of various Ministry of Endowments directorates. Tenants pay gifts to these directorates alongside a merely symbolic annual rent. Though the leases have fixed terms, they are subject to implicit renewal. The provisions for lease contracts in Syria’s Civil Code apply to these properties, on the condition that they be registered by the Ministry of Endowments and its subdirectories.

However, in 2000, supervision of the souk was inexplicably transferred from the Ministry of Endowments to the Ministry of Tourism, which replaced the old lease contracts for the shops with investment contracts that were to be renewed annually.

Then in October 2022, the Ministry of Tourism terminated these investment contracts with the shop occupants and warned them to vacate the properties within two months. In official statements that same month, the tourism minister said that, according to the investment contracts, the ministry has the right to end the contracts in the traditional handicrafts market at any time and may retake the vacated shops within the given deadline.

Meanwhile, the deputy tourism minister stated that the investment contracts may not be automatically renewed if one of the parties does not notify the other of their desire to renew it within one month before the stated end of the contract period. He added that the Ministry of Tourism also may vacate the shops for purposes of the public interest before the end of the contract period without the shopkeepers having the right to claim damages. According to him, the shop investors must vacate the shops immediately, within the deadline given by the ministry. Those who refuse to vacate must bear the costs of vacating their stores through administrative means so long as all obligations they incur through these contracts are collected according to the principles of collection of public assets.

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