July 16, 2023, was a darkish day for the traditional metropolis of Damascus. A fireplace raged by way of the historic Sarouja neighborhood, decreasing various heritage houses to ashes. Among the many most important losses had been the Abdul Rahman Pasha al-Youssef Palace, the Home of Khalid al-Azem, and the Damascus Historic Museum and Ottoman Documentation Heart. Two months later, in September 2023, a residential constructing within the Syrian capital’s Malki neighborhood partially collapsed because of unauthorized excavation for a basement. Apparently, components of this constructing had not too long ago been bought by Waseem Qattan, a regime-connected and U.S.-sanctioned businessman who already owns dozens of properties in the identical district. In response to locals, the constructing’s deterioration seems to have been a deliberate act by Qattan, geared toward pressuring the house owners of different flats within the constructing to promote their items after that they had beforehand refused. Whereas these occasions won’t appear linked, they underscore an overarching problem: the vulnerability of Damascus properties within the face of pure and man-made crises, exacerbated by corruption, greed, and failed and cruel state insurance policies.
In a metropolis the place scarcely a day passes with out reviews of fires or structural collapses, the discourse about these incidents has taken on a decidedly political tone. Residents blame a wide range of elements for the fires, starting from customers’ negligence and electrical faults to local weather situations. Others accuse regime cronies or Iranian militia teams of burning down properties to allow them to purchase them on a budget. Whereas there could also be reality to all of those explanations, this piece is targeted on explaining why Syria’s properties are so weak to fires and collapse within the first place. By analyzing 367 mapped fires in Damascus over the yr from July 2022 to July 2023, utilizing information on property-related fires collected from the Damascus Hearth Regiment’s official Fb web page, we will establish clear patterns round their location, frequency, and the kind of property concerned.
Map 1: Hearth density in Damascus (July 2022 – July 2023)
![Map 1: Fire density in Damascus (July 2022 - July 2023) Source: Damascus Fire Regiment](https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202023-10-03%20at%2013.58.56_1.png)
As the information reveals, the fires are concentrated within the older neighborhoods of Damascus, dense and casual areas reminiscent of Outdated Damascus, Midan, Zahira, Qasa’, Nahr Eshe, Rukn al-Din, Qanwant, Sarouja, and Hijaz. This sample is unsurprising given the mix of excessive city density and lax enforcement of constructing codes and security rules. The housing sector is clearly essentially the most weak to fires (accounting for 70% of the full), primarily in Midan, Rukn al-Din, and Mezzeh, whereas the areas with the best variety of burnt retailers are Outdated Damascus, Midan, Kafr Souseh, Salhieh, and Mezzeh 86. It is value noting {that a} appreciable portion of the affected homes are historic Damascene houses, generally known as Arabic homes.
Graph 1: Sort of property broken
![Graph 1: Type of damaged properties Source: Damascus Fire Regiment](https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202023-10-03%20at%2014.00.02_0.png)
Inspecting the seasonal distribution of fires offers further insights. Whereas there’s a slight uptick in the course of the winter months, particularly December and January, on account of elevated heating utilization, fires stay constant all year long, with March and June registering a comparatively larger incidence. This disputes the notion that environmental elements are the principle trigger of those fires.
Graph 2: Frequency of fires in Damascus (July 2022 – July 2023)
![Graph 2: Frequency of fires in Damascus (July 2022 - July 2023) Source: Damascus Fire Regiment](https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/inline-images/Screenshot%202023-10-03%20at%2014.00.42_0.png)
Once we think about that the variety of fires has additionally been constant in earlier years, with 235 fires reported in the course of the first quarter of 2022 and 637 fires in 2021, it turns into evident that the vulnerability of properties in Damascus is a persistent problem. To really perceive the deep-rooted structural, authorized, and politico-economic causes of those fires, we should view them as a part of a protracted and sophisticated course of that consists of a number of cycles of decay of the city setting that transcends the fires themselves. Certainly, properties are caught between a failed state that deprioritizes imposing security measures or offering respectable housing or primary providers, and a corrupt state that not solely destroys and depopulates complete neighborhoods but in addition continues to confiscate properties and impedes rehabilitation efforts. All of the whereas, it allows its enterprise cronies and international allies to seize properties for financial and political functions.
The primary section of this course of is expounded to the general deterioration of the constructed setting in Damascus. Way back to 2004, the median age of properties in Damascus stood at 28 years, with at the very least 40% of them being constructed informally. It is affordable to doubt whether or not security codes, notably for electrical installations and heating amenities, have been diligently enforced in these casual and historic neighborhoods. Previous the battle, practices geared toward maximizing area or decreasing building prices, reminiscent of utilizing cheaper (but extra flammable) supplies, encroaching on constructing setbacks, eradicating structural columns, and including further flooring, had been prevalent even in regulated areas, facilitated by corruption and nepotism. These constructing violations have escalated in the course of the battle years on account of inhabitants density progress, the crumbling of state inspection capability, and financial deterioration, forcing many to resort to primitive strategies of building (i.e., wooden and metallic sheets) and heating, reminiscent of burning plastic, material, and paper.
The second issue is expounded to the problems imposed by the Syrian regime for property rehabilitation in casual areas and historic neighborhoods, regardless of the super degree of each destruction and degradation in lots of components of town. The regime’s restrictions add to the already unaffordable price of rehabilitation for the overwhelming majority of Damascenes. Rehabilitation just isn’t potential in casual areas, that are thought-about constructing violation areas to be demolished, whereas in previous neighborhoods, properties which can be categorised as heritage websites (round 6,000 in Outdated Damascus) are nearly not possible to rehabilitate, as within the case of Souq Serije. The lack to revive these properties has resulted in a lot of them being deserted for years. Numerous them ultimately collapsed or had been bought by businessmen, a few of whom are linked to the regime, for funding functions. For example, between January and February 2023, at the very least 5 homes collapsed partially or utterly on account of lack of upkeep.
The rise of politically linked traders has ushered in a 3rd cycle within the metropolis’s degradation. For many years, older neighborhoods of Damascus have been a goal for businessmen, and extra not too long ago Iranian, Shi’a Syrian, and Russian companies, which have acquired 1000’s of properties and historic homes for funding functions. This gentrification course of was facilitated and sponsored by the regime as part of its neoliberal transformation agenda geared toward benefiting its favored businessmen, in step with confiscations in different components of the previous metropolis, reminiscent of Hamrawi, Khan el-Riz, and Souq al-Ateeq, underneath the pretext of security or funding functions, typically invoking Regulation 20 of 1983, which empowers the state to expropriate any personal properties for the “public profit.” In distinction to the earlier house owners, these businessmen had been capable of safe rehabilitation permits on account of their ties with the Syrian safety forces.
Allegations have circulated in Damascus concerning intimidation and stress imposed on property house owners by safety forces to compel them to promote, and a few properties have burned for “unknown causes” after the house owners refused to take action. Al-Asrounieh Market is essentially the most well-known case on this regard. The UNESCO-listed historic market caught hearth in 2016. Locals mentioned that Iranian businessmen tried to buy properties contained in the market shortly earlier than the hearth, however their provides had been rejected by store house owners.
State-sponsored rehabilitation of historic websites completes this cycle. Most organizations that when offered funds and small loans to renovate previous homes in Damascus have ceased their actions following the rise of the Syria Belief for Growth, based by Asma al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s spouse, which has successfully monopolized the “enterprise” of heritage websites renovation. Nevertheless, previous experiences with the Belief don’t encourage confidence. In January 2023, the Belief rehabilitated the Tikkyeh Sulymaneyeh, certainly one of Damascus’s oldest craft markets, after evicting the entire retailers and relocating them to Damascus’s periphery. The market was later included in an funding venture led by the Belief’s Syrian Handicrafts. The unique craftsmen had been not granted new rental contracts to return to as soon as the rehabilitation was accomplished, and actually had been to get replaced by new merchants and craftsmen that had partnered with the Belief — a course of that had additionally performed out in Aleppo and Homs. That is prone to be what occurs with the Sarouja web site too, the place the Belief has already taken on the function of overseeing rubble elimination and getting ready plans for rehabilitation. Moreover, reviews indicating that the Damascus Governorate Council has determined to switch all crafts which can be categorised as “harmful” to areas outdoors of Outdated Damascus additional confirms such fears. On this context, it isn’t a shock that the 2 historic buildings that had been burnt within the Sarouja neighborhood, which contained thousands and thousands of paperwork offering proof of possession in addition to data of buy and sale transactions within the previous metropolis, are managed by the Watheqet Watan Group and the Damascus Historical past Basis, each of that are managed by Bouthaina Shaaban, Bashar al-Assad’s infamous media advisor, and her daughter Nahid Jawad.
A discernible sample emerges from this evaluation. It’s a cycle of city decay that begins with failed state housing and financial insurance policies and is exacerbated by a concurrent neoliberal push for gentrification and luxurious improvement, typically on the expense of offering inexpensive housing and sensibly rehabilitating heritage websites. Years of battle, financial collapse, and state negligence have left a whole bunch of buildings weak to fires, collapse, abandonment, and dilapidation, in the end rendering them enticing targets for the regime’s enterprise cronies, state-sponsored rehabilitation tasks, or international allies.
Homes are profoundly necessary as life belongings for Syrians. Whether or not ravaged by battle, consumed by hearth, or crumbling on account of neglect, Syrian properties, like Syrians themselves, proceed to undergo from state failure, brutalism, and corruption. It’s crucial to acknowledge that bettering the housing sector for Syrians is pivotal not solely to make sure the secure return of refugees but in addition to allow those that stay in Syria to dwell securely and with dignity. Defending Syrian properties and heritage should stay a precedence for the worldwide group, and doing so would require a mixture of measures. This consists of offering help to Syrians for the rehabilitation of their properties by way of lively NGOs and U.N. companies. Moreover, easing the method of acquiring rehabilitation permits have to be on the agenda in discussions with the regime, together with these involving donor nations and U.N. companies working inside regime-controlled areas. Lastly, UNESCO should take critical steps to safeguard the heritage of Damascus. This could transcend monitoring and condemning to immediately participating with the Syrian regime to facilitate the rehabilitation of heritage homes and the safety of their possession, involving, if vital, the U.N. Safety Council in addition to influential international powers.
Munqeth Othman Agha is a non-resident scholar with MEI’s Syria Program, a doctoral pupil on the College of Worldwide Research, College of Trento, and a researcher on the Syrian Reminiscence Institute (Arab Heart for Analysis and Coverage Research). He has beforehand been printed by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research (CSIS), and Institute of Worldwide Affairs (IAI).
Photograph by LOUAI BESHARA/AFP through Getty Photos
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