zoning_plans – Syria Report

Under Decision No. 991, issued on October 3, 2022, the Damascus governorate has agreed to grant “permits” for restoring, reinforcing, and rebuilding parts of licensed real estate properties in the Qaboun residential area. Recipients must implement these projects within six months of receiving their permits.

The governorate’s executive office stipulates that people wishing to obtain permits must meet certain conditions. They must obtain prior security approval and documents proving the structural soundness of their properties. In addition, they must provide ownership contracts and notarised pledges that they will not request any subsequent compensation should they be ordered to evacuate the area for zoning implementation purposes.

In June 2020, the Damascus governorate announced it had issued Detailed Zoning Plan No. 105 for the Qaboun residential area, in line with Planning and Urban Development Law No. 23 of 2015. The zoning plan was meant to be approved and issued by special decree, though this has yet to happen. In May 2021, some displaced residents were allowed to return to the Qaboun residential area after having met two conditions, i.e. submitting to a security investigation at the Air Force Intelligence branch in charge of the area and obtaining structural reports confirming their properties are safely habitable.

Interestingly, Decision No. 991 restricts restoration, reinforcement and reconstruction work to legally licensed properties, excluding any informally built structures. According to sources who spoke with The Syria Report, that leaves residents able to return to and restore buildings mainly in one area, a residential housing complex of apartment blocks and one-storey homes east of the Al-Ghufran Mosque. This area was not included in Detailed Zoning Plan No. 105, meaning it will not be re-zoned.

The buildings east of Al-Ghufran Mosque survived a wide-scale demolitions campaign carried out by regime forces after they had forcibly expelled residents and opposition fighters from the area in May 2017. These buildings are licensed, were built on previously zoned plots of land and were only partially damaged or not damaged by wartime fighting. Homeowners there also have official ownership documents. Sources told The Syria Report that the Damascus governorate would not grant restoration permits for damaged buildings in the area at risk of collapse, even if they were licensed or sit on previously zoned land.

Meanwhile, the conditions for obtaining security approval mean that the property owners who are eventually green-lighted to return home are those currently living in regime-held areas and are not wanted by the security services. If returnees have any family members who are wanted, they must commit to a “security settlement.” The settlements may include an extensive security investigation, arrest if there are unresolved search warrants, and military conscription for men who have yet to complete their military duty.

Appointed in July 2022, the new governor of Damascus set aside one day per week to listen to citizens’ complaints and petitions. Multiple delegations of Qaboun residents ended up visiting him. According to the preamble of Decision No. 991, which the governor signed, the decision came at the request of a member of the governorate’s executive office during a meeting held in late September. The decision had the unanimous support of the office at a meeting on October 3. Notably, October 3 was the last day the office met before the end of its term. Local administrative elections took place in September, with the new governorate council taking its constitutional oath and electing members of the new executive office on October 17. As a result, according to The Syria Report’s sources, the new office will be charged with following up on the implementation of Decision No. 991 without being responsible for issuing it.

One of the reasons for passing Decision No. 991 may be that the Damascus governorate needs more funds to start zoning the Qaboun residential area per Detailed Zoning Plan No. 105. This comes in light of the governorate’s failure in other zoning projects in Marota City and Basilia City, raising the new governor’s fears that unlicensed construction could restart in Qaboun if displaced residents are allowed to return. Meanwhile, the governor is trying to demolish unlicensed buildings across the capital city, following extensive, similar demolition campaigns he led during his time as governor of Hama. He is considered among the Syrian governors most keen on enforcing Decree No. 40 of 2012, which concerns unlicensed construction.

Issued last June, Zoning Plan No. 106 for the Jobar neighbourhood of Damascus does not allocate any plot to rebuild the Al-Mualameen Tower, which regime forces destroyed in 2015. Record No. 53 in the Land Registry, on which the tower is listed, does not receive any mention in Zoning Plan No. 106.

The 12-storey Al-Mualameen Tower was located on the outskirts of Jobar and overlooked the nearby Al-Abasiyeen Garages, the commercial district, and Al-Abasiyeen Square. The Housing Cooperative Society owns the tower for Teachers and Educators in Damascus, hence the building’s name (“mualameen” means “teachers” in Arabic). The government granted the cooperative a permit on June 17, 1974, and it began constructing the tower in the 1980s, on a plot of land corresponding to the real estate record No. 53. In 2004, the cooperative finally handed the apartments over to applicants per the housing cooperative system. The tower was located in a zoned real estate area and was divided into individual apartments listed within the Land Registry under the names of the apartment owners.

Cooperative housing is linked to social housing programs implemented by Syria’s public authorities. Housing cooperative societies were all previously affiliated with the General Union of Cooperative Housing, which dissolved under Decree No. 37 of 2019, 58 years after it was established. The Ministry of Public Works and Housing took on the union’s roles.

The apartment owners in Al-Mualameen Tower are state employees working in education. For them, subscribing to apartments in the building was the most significant investment in their professional lives, serving as a reward for the end of their service and an asset to pass down to their children, one owner told The Syria Report.

The biggest problem with Al-Mualameen Tower and other housing cooperative projects in general was the more than two-decade delay in receiving the apartments. Applicants for Al-Mualameen didn’t receive their apartments until 2004 after most had already retired and finished paying off their payments for the housing. Worse, the newfound apartment owners immediately had to repair and restore the homes due to poor construction.

The tower’s height and location made it a strategic military point, contested between regime and opposition forces. Rebels seized the building and occupied it between 2013 and 2015. During this time, the regime tried and failed to recapture it despite bombing the tower with airstrikes, artillery shells and rockets. Then, in February 2015, regime forces dug a tunnel under the tower at 16 metres deep and 250 metres long, set up explosives inside, then detonated them, turning the building into a pile of rubble.

In late June 2022, the Damascus governorate issued Detailed Zoning Plan No. 106 for Jobar and fielded objections from relevant rightsholders. The detailed zoning plan did not observe any new plot of land for rights holders in the teachers’ cooperative, which implies classifying the destroyed tower as an unlicensed building within an informal settlement. The Syria Report could not confirm whether any of the rights holders in Al-Mualameen Tower filed any objections to Detailed Zoning Plan No. 106 within the one-month deadline to do so.

The zoning area in Jobar is subject to Planning and Urban Development Law No. 23 of 2015, which gave administrative authorities the choice to employ Law No. 23, the Expropriation Law, or the Real Estate Development and Investment Law when re-zoning areas containing informal housing or rehabilitating areas damaged by natural catastrophes and war.

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 zoning receive plots of land designated for construction within that same area as compensation for losing their original properties. However, the land distributed to the rights holders is often not in the original locations of their properties. Furthermore, up to 40 percent of the surface area of their original properties may be deducted, without compensation, when handing over the new lands.

If rights holders file objections, prove their ownership and obtain new land through compulsory land readjustment, they must then assemble themselves and their allocated plots of land. Rights holders must then build on these properties at their own expense. If a rights holder dies, the inheritance process is carried out in the presence of all their heirs, or at least their legal representatives. Both cases require prior security approval, adding potential complications to proving the existing rights of former Al-Mualameen Tower residents.

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