An opinion piece 

The Arab Spring protests reached Syria in March 2011, the pro-democracy uprising, initially demanding reforms, soon turned into a civil war and violence escalated as a result of the government forces utilizing brutality to suppress the civil movement. More than seven years of conflict lead to the deaths of over 400,000 Syrians; millions were forcibly displaced, and the country is devastated economically. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than four million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and an estimated  6.1 million people have been  displaced within Syria, bringing the total  number of expelled Syrians to a staggering 11.5 million (UNHCR 2017).

Now that the Syrian conflict is “coming to an end” according to many countries, the following question arises: can all Syrians return home? Some Western countries have started sending Syrian refugees back to Syria or forcing their hand to return by rejecting their families’ asylum applications. Return might sound like a possible scenario now that the country is no longer the site of a proxy war, reality is much more complex. Unfortunately, the concept of return is often discussed and decided upon without consulting Syrian refugees themselves. Policies encouraging Syrians to return home could have catastrophic impacts on the lives of many innocent people. 

Before deciding whether Syrian refugees should return home, the international community must answer the following questions: Who would guarantee the safety of the millions of displaced Syrians as international human rights laws aren’t respected in their home country? The fear of detention, torture and death prevents many Syrians from even considering the idea of homecoming. Will the regime tolerate their “‘betrayal”’? Will they be able to live with fear and oppression after experiencing the freedom and security offered in other countries? Will they be able to join the compulsory loyalist marches cheering al-Assad and showing support for him and his regime after all the crimes he has committed against them? Will they want to go live in Syria where their basic life needs aren’t met? Such questions and many more can’t be ignored when discussing the concept of return. 

What these countries aren’t taking into consideration is the fact that the al-Assad regime has secured his ruling of the country and simply will not tolerate having these refugees back. Nonetheless, the regime was indulging an illusion by inviting Syrians to come back and participate in rebuilding the country. It is what world leaders want to hear but this couldn’t be true and history has shown that this regime can’t be trusted. 

The sad reality is that Syria is no longer a home for all Syrians; it has become a country for ‘certain’ Syrians, Russians, Iranians and Hezbollah fighters and supporters. What most people neglect to recognize is that the Russian/Iranian interference in Syria is a kind of an invasion. These countries are not just “helping” the Syrian regime to restore order and peace, they are there to stay and subdue any attempt to overthrow al-Assad and his regime. In fact, the regime’s dominance over Syria could be considered a case of internal occupation, since the al-Assad administration invited his allies in arms into the country to suppress and control the Syrian population and its prominent opposition figures.

RECONSTRUCTION – BUT FOR WHOM?  

Regrettably, Syria is well known for its corrupt system; the country is based on favoritism and an inequality of wealth distribution. The regime’s family and their relatives and friends share the country’s fortune and resources, with no laws to restrain their power and influence; their control over Syria’s capital and investments has no limits. 

Seven years of war have had its tragic toll on Syria’s economy, but the loss of military investment could be turned into profit, by using the destruction of the country to promote reconstruction projects. Militarized reconstruction is a new term that is used nowadays when discussing the Syrian case, and, more specifically, the reconstruction of the city of Aleppo. The regime is desperately trying to show the world the gains it has achieved in the city and how great the economic opportunity is. The reconstruction is merely for propaganda to promote a false story of a fake victory. 

Since Aleppo and many other cities fell to the Syrian regime, many governmental campaigns to promote reconstruction projects have begun. Daily updates from Aleppo are emerging, and the government is serious when it comes to the topic of rebuilding, but we should ask the critical question: reconstructing for whom and how? Who is going to invest and at what cost? The rebuilding process is biased and selective. One could argue that the UN involvement should limit the Russian and Iranian domination over the reconstruction projects, but this isn’t entirely true. Their influence is present regardless of UN involvement, and this involvement just serves to give false legitimacy and credibility to the regime. The displaced population isn’t allowed back in the city and east Aleppo is completely abandoned, but rebuilding the ‘significant’ half of Aleppo is what the UN and its partners want. It’s not a matter of perspectives here, it’s more about how repulsively prejudiced this whole thing is. 

With many projects undertaken by Asma al-Assad’s charity foundation and its UN partners (Beals 2017), funds are being generated in order to burnish the regime’s murderous face and promote its secular, civilized, necktie brutality. 

UNDP and UNESCO are working closely with the Syrian regime and its administrative. Their role in the reconstruction procedures is still unclear, but the argument they are using provoked some controversy, especially that they claim not to be working with the regime, but with the ‘people’. Which people are they talking about, and why does it sound like they don’t already know that the government controls all of the country’s institutions? 

The Syrians who fled the country escaping the regime’s brutality aren’t considered “people”, and the claims that the reconstruction is for reconciliation doesn’t make much sense: the ones who need to be reconciled aren’t even there to begin with and won’t even be considered. 

It is true that rebuilding the country requires local expertise and would generate plenty of job opportunities, but not all Syrians are offered the chance to participate: unless you support the regime and its corruption, you’re not welcome.

WHAT HAS TO BE SAID AND DONE  

History has told many stories, but are we to learn something? It could be said with certainty that the past keeps repeating itself in the most horrific of manners: dictators come and go, cities fall and rise again. Why is the Syrian story so special? Well, it isn’t, the only significant thing is all these unused international legal documents: if we are to read those dealing with human rights, cities’ rights, and so on, one would be astonished. However, the question remains: when will these legal documents be implemented in the Syrian case? When will the international community stop waving these away in order to protect a killer’s government? 

Aleppo has entered a new era, and history is definitely written by winners. The objective story doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Yet this is not the case with everyone. We still care, and by ‘we’, I mean the Syrians who believed in a better future. The Russians are there to stay, so are the Iranians, the Turks and the Americans. How could our story be written by them? Will the following generations read the epic story of the many Syrians who died believing in a dream, a dream that cost us more than souls, it cost us our cities, our memories and everything we held dear? The answer is no, they will hear a story of victory, a story of a modern dictator who saved Syria from terrorists. This is the most popular story nowadays anyway. 

If we were to discuss options and propose solutions for the obstacles facing the Syrians when deciding to return to their country, I could think of one solution: the regime has to be overthrown and justice should be served. Those who committed crimes and have stains of blood on their hands should be punished so that Syrians can restore faith in the global justice system. 

Anything else would be fictitious and unfair for many Syrians, and unless there’s a way to guarantee the safety of those who want to return, many won’t even consider doing so. 

It’s safe to say that al-Assad doesn’t want any of his opponents back, but he’d go as far as suggesting that many of the Syrian refugees are terrorists and pose a threat to the Western world (Nelson 2017), supposing he thinks it’s better when the hosting countries send them back and let them languish in his prisons to die instead. 

The logic is simple: if you want to get Syrians back to their country, stop supporting al-Assad and take your troops out of their country. You can’t keep empowering al-Assad and his regime and expect people to return voluntarily, knowing that nothing awaits them except suppression, imprisonment and death. 

The Syrian revolution was the country’s chance for a reformation. Now that the revolution has failed to achieve its goals and objectives, the future of Syria doesn’t look so bright, especially given that regime change would require not only the downfall of al-Assad as a person but that the whole regime’s intelligence agencies, security and military system be altered. The chain of corruption has been forming in the country for almost half a century, and it isn’t easy (if not impossible) to break. The security grip is only tightening, and the brutality of the regime has no limits.

References 

Beals, E. 2017: UN allowing Assad government to take lead in rebuilding Aleppo. Fox News [Online] 16 November. Available at: <http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/11/16/un-allowing-assad-government-to-take-lead-in-rebuilding-aleppo.html> [Accessed 05 February 2018] 

Nelson, N. 2017: Syria’s Assad: Some refugees are terrorists. POLITICO [Online] 02 October. Available at: <https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/bashar-assad-syria-refugees-terrorists-yahoo-interview-234890> [Accessed 01 February 2018] 

UNHCR, 2017: Syria Emergency. [Online] 07. December. Available at: <http://www.unhcr.org/syria-emergency.html> [Accessed 09 February 2018] 

The post Should Syria’s Displaced Return? appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

In My Beloved Aleppo, Sawsan Ibrahim collects 648 photos of the Old City, downtown and residential districts in central and western Aleppo. 

IDPs live in a former university housing building. March 2016. Lorenzo Meloni/Magnum Photos

Time’s photo essay Inside War Ravaged Syria features recent photos by Lorenzo Meloni/Magnum Photos.

Xinhua/Barcroft Media

Palmyra after Isis: a visual guide

The Conflict

Institute for the Study of War

“Aleppo Province stands to become the focal point of a new round of violence in the Syrian Civil War even as the Geneva III Talks to end the conflict are scheduled to resume on April 13. Continued violations of an ongoing ‘cessation of hostilities’ by both pro-regime and opposition factions have fueled the largest outbreak of violence in northern Syria since the agreement went into effect on February 27, threatening to drive a wider breakdown of the tenuous ceasefire.”  Institute for the Study of War.

Children play Bustan al-Qasr. 6 April 6 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail.

“I hope the truce will continue, and I believe all the Syrian people share my wish. We have had enough with all the killing and displacement. However, I am not optimistic about the truce holding.” Mohammed Hakk, 24. Aleppo sees cautious calm amid cease-fire.

An Nusra fighters. Aleppo. May 2015. AFP.

In Aleppo City, there were clashes, airstrikes and ground battles around Castello Road, Sheikh Maqsood and industrial areas north of the city. Middle East Eye reported that Nusra is tightening its grip in Aleppo with a “growing presence, weekly parades, and grudging tolerance from other rebels.”

Over the past several days, conflict escalated in Aleppo Province. In the northern countryside, rebels liberated towns along the Turkish border from ISIS as far east as ar-Ra’i. Isis later retook ar-Ra’i. Fighting continues between opposition, including an-Nusra Front, and the government south of Aleppo.

Children in IDP camp near Azaz. Halab News Network.

Halab News Network reported that a new survey shows 165,000 IDPs in twelve camps along the Turkish border near Azaz. One hundred thirty thousand people live in formal camps that receive regular aid. Another 35,000 live in informal camps set up by fleeing residents. Infectious skin diseases are rampant because the camps have poor sewage systems and waste water drains into local streams. Efforts are being made to install sewage systems.

Life in the City

Photo: Atareb Genetic Blood Disease Center.

Syria Direct reported that the pediatric blood bank cut services because it can no longer afford its $2,500 per month expenses.

Anti-government protests in Aleppo on Friday, April 8.

Aleppo Pepper Flakes. Photo: Becky Harlan.

National Geographic’s ‘The Plate’ explored How Syria’s Famous Aleppo Pepper Might Be Saved.

Syrian Voices

Dr. Marwa al-Sabouni. April 2016. Photo: Ghassan Janisz.

The Guardian interviewed Dr. Marwa al-Sabouni about her upcoming memoir The Battle for Home. Dr. al-Sabouni, who holds a PhD in Islamic architecture and a Master’s degree in architectural design has lived in Homs throughout the conflict with her husband and two children. Her memoir examines the conflict through the lens of architecture, showing how the built environment mirrors the community that inhabits it. When asked about the government retaking Palmyra from ISIS, she said,

“I was concerned for the people there, caught in the crossfire, no doctors to help them. We’ve been hearing terrible things…Do you want me to be honest? I don’t know how I feel about it. I visited Palmyra when I was at school, and even then I saw the electrical wiring around the columns, the new carving of names on ancient stones, the disorganised urbanism, tourism and restoration. It was so neglected. It had no protection, out there in the desert. You could jump on it, climb on it. Take a look at a picture of the so-called museum: the fake ceiling, the metal cage of a door. Part of me thinks it was better that it was destroyed…I understand why the west is emotional about it. But when you are living here, you have a different angle.”

Thousands of former students and academics now live as refugees. Reuters

The BBC reported about Syria’s loss of students needed to rebuild its future.

“There was no electricity, and it was often difficult to find water. But we did our best.” Syrian academic on conditions at Aleppo University.”

Maha Ghrer

“My estrangement began when I traveled to Gaziantep in Turkey, when I left everything I knew for the unknown. Fugitive from all my memories and my sufferings, carrying my luggage as if I already knew that I will not come back anytime soon…But soon enough I got used to this new place, especially as the city became a harbor for many Syrians. It was also very close to Syria and made me feel that I can go back or visit at any time…I decided to move to Europe, like many other Syrians had done, and it was then that my second and toughest estrangement began. I did not know what was waiting for me there and no one amongst those who preceded me told me what it means to be a refugee: that my pride would be scratched every step of the way.” Maha Ghrer

Syria Mobile Film Festival

The second Syrian Mobile Film Festival took place at the Bosra Amphitheatre in Dar’a Province

Syrians in Turkey

Turkish authorities re-opened the Bab as-Salameh border crossing for Syrians with Turkish residence permits, tickets or visas to travel outside Turkey, or embassy appointments.

A Syrian woman shops at a market in a low-income neighborhood of Ankara. September2015. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas.

Syria Pulse reported that Syrian refugees have contributed greatly to Turkey’s economy, but economists are not sure how long the boost will last.

On April 10, there was an assassination attempt in downtown Gaziantep on Zaher Sharqat, a religious preacher and TV anchor at Halab News TV. On April 12, Mr. Sharqat died from his wounds. Many believe ISIS is behind the attempt, a chilling reminder of the assassination by two ISIS member last December of journalist and filmmaker Naji Jerf. Haber Turk TV broadcast the attempt.

The Turkish General Directorate of Migration Management published updated numbers of Syrians under temporary protection in Turkey by province. Urfa ranked first with 401,068, followed by Istanbul with 394,556. In total, there are 2,749,140 Syrians registered under temporary protection in Turkey. These figures do not include unregistered Syrians or those with residency permits.

The post The Aleppo Weekly, April 5-11 appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

part of a program by humanitarian aid group CARE that connects World War II refugees with Syrian children. Though CARE has been providing disaster relief to those displaced by Syria’s civil war, it actually began as a charity for European WWII refugees in the 1940s.
“To hear other stories and see letters from refugees who experienced the same situation before gives them the sense of solidarity,” said Eman Ismail, CARE’s assistant country director for programs in Jordan.

The post “I know firsthand what it’s like to lose a home…” appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

We know that many Syrians who have been forced from their homes are passionate about their country and are already playing a role in its future. When refugees and people who were forced to leave eventually return home, they often suffer a second displacement when they are pushed aside by reconstruction processes that ignore their needs and plans. By gathering information from as wide a range of people as possible, we hope to challenge many of the assumptions about how reconstruction should be managed.

Over the next several months, we will post data snapshots highlighting different visions for Aleppo’s future. Our first snapshot is about restoring public services to rebel-held areas of the city.

Gathering data from refugees or from cities in the midst of conflict is difficult. These difficulties are amplified in Syria because people have lived in a very controlled and closed society for decades. In late 2014 and early 2015 we surveyed 1001 people, including 408 online surveys, 499 paper questionnaires from Aleppians in five Turkish cities, and 94 interviews in rebel-held Aleppo. Our overall sample skews towards more affluent, university-educated, younger male respondents with internet access. Each survey method has its problems and there is no doubt we have some sampling problems.

From December 14, 2014 to January 7, 2015 the Aleppo Project interviewed 94 men and women mostly in rebel-held Aleppo (a few were normally resident in rebel-held Aleppo but interviewed in Turkey) about their vision for the city. One of our questions was, “which public services should resume first?”

As you can see from the graph above, about 60 per cent want electricity or water restored to rebel-held Aleppo first. Another 20 per cent want public services, including security and a judiciary system or healthcare and schools restored first. The rest want telecommunication or other infrastructure restored first. We were not surprised by these results given that rebel-held Aleppo has had limited or intermittent access to these services since the conflict started.

Since we asked respondents open-ended questions about which services should resume first, many answered with more than one. For example, about 36 per cent of women (14 of 39) and 27 per cent of men (14 of 51) specifically said they wanted electricity AND water restored first.

Note that to capture the range of opinions, we weighted each individual’s response(s) and grouped them by category. For example, we combined schools and hospitals into one category, put sewage, roads and the airport in infrastructure, added the thermal station to electricity, and included security, civil defense, and a judicial system in the broader category of public services.

GENDER DIMENSION

As expected, we found differences in which services men and women want restored first. Although 52 per cent of men want electricity or water restored first, 70 per cent of women do. We speculate this is because women are responsible for daily tasks including cooking and washing that require electricity and water. We were not surprised that men were more interested in restoring infrastructure by a significant margin than women (see above) because humanitarian assessments show that as the conflict has spread, women’s ‘space’ has tended to shrink to their homes and immediate neighborhoods. On the other hand, given reports of women’s increased role in rebel-held Aleppo as teachers and providers of medical supplies, we were surprised that a higher percentage of men than women want schools and hospitals restored first.

AGE DIMENSION

Our interview sample of 94 included 51 men, 39 women, and four people who did not provide their gender. Six individuals did not provide their age. As you can see above, we interviewed a few more women under 24 years of age and 40 years of age or older than men and significantly more men than women in their mid-20s and 30s. Importantly, we only interviewed four males and no women 50 years of age or older and three men and six women between the ages of 40 and 49. This means that one should take particular care interpreting data based on age for those under 20 or over 39 years of age.

Especially given the age-related issues mentioned above, we needed another tool to analyze data based on age. By breaking the group into over and under 30 years of age, we created two groups of similar size—47 people under 30 years of age and 41 people 30 years of age or older. Of more interest, because our under 30 years of age group contains 23 men and 24 women, their views are equally represented in this age group. The same does not hold true for the 30 years of age and older group, which skews very heavily towards men in their 30s.With two notable exceptions, there was a weak correlation between age and which services should be restored first. We were not surprised that 11 per cent of those under 30 years of age want internet connections first as opposed to 4 per cent of those 30 years of age and older. According to a recent report on social media usage in Aleppo, internet use decreased with age. It was, however, interesting that only 9 per cent of younger respondents as opposed to 16 per cent of older respondents want schools or hospitals restored first. We speculate that younger respondents may be less concerned about schools and hospitals because a) they have finished school and do not yet have school-aged children and b) they may have lower instances than older adults of medical conditions such as diabetes or hypertension that would require routine medical care or medication.

Over the next few months, we’ll continue to provide data snapshots from our surveys. Comments, questions? We’d love to hear from you.

The post Restoring Public Services to Aleppo—Our first data snapshot appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Hakam holding younger brother Shahim - around 2000

Jasmine tree from the terrace - Nour Chaar 2010

Liwan upstairs at sunset - AlHakam Shaar 2010

Parents' bedroom facade with window glass broken from barrel bombing next door - AlHakam Shaar Oct 2014

Upstairs bedroom interior - AlHakam Shaar 2010

Upstairs bedroom recedes to allow more light and air downstairs - AlHakam Shaar 2010

When I bought and renovated a house in the Old City of Aleppo, I was asked by the Syrian Engineers Syndicate to assess the experience. I told the cultural committee represented by Mr. Khaldoun Fansa that I would follow an Arab expression that you don’t make a judgment on something for a year and seven months. After that time I gave this lecture to the Syndicate. It has been translated, edited and updated and now also includes the view of two of my children.

I was born in 1950 in what we call an “Arabic house,” a stone building built around a courtyard, sheltered from its neighbors and housing just one family. It was in the Al Bustan area of Aleppo, by the southern gate of the Saray palace and just inside the eastern wall of the old city. We left in 1954 to live in al-Ansari in a house that was similar to an Arabic house in that we lived there alone without neighbors above or below us.

In 1963, my father’s political views on the split from Egypt led to a violent clash between my brother and another man and we were forced to move into my grandfather’s house in front of the Altunbugha Mosque. In 1979, I moved to the United Kingdom to study, living there for six years in houses rather than apartments. It was while I was living in England that I realized how much I loved the culture of Aleppo. This came partly from my father, who had always cared deeply for the heritage of the city and its Islamic history, and from seeing the way that in Britain the past was respected and preserved. Later Syrian television also shaped my desire to live in an Arabic house as many of the dramas shown during Ramadan in the 1980s were set during the Ottoman era or the early days of French rule and they showed people living in these homes.

Apartment living with all its intrusions from neighbors had worn me down so in 1996 I decided to move from a large ground floor flat with a garden in al-Hamdaniyeh to a house in Qadi Askar, on the edge of the Old City. I was looking for somewhere that was private, not over-looked by tall buildings and not too close to anywhere too busy. I wanted to renovate a house that was of historic and architectural significance but that had not been damaged by a poorly thought out renovation. It had to have reasonable access to the rest of the city and be affordable.

Buying in the Old City is a complex process. Ownership is often divided among many heirs and about half of all houses are involved in some sort of dispute among the owners. I was looking for a house that all the owners wanted to sell. Getting a loan was also a problem. Banks won’t lend for houses that have wooden roofs, seeing them as a fire hazard..

After 12 months of looking, through an agent I found a nearly ruined house in a section of the Old City. It was a stone house, possibly dating back to the Mamluk era (1250-1517), with a land area of 205 square metres. It had six rooms, each with six windows looking out on to a courtyard. It was beautiful but in poor shape having last been renovated in 1898. The eastern side where the front door was had cracked and subsided about 10 centimeters. The liwan, the upstairs room that was open on one side, also had cracks in the stone and water was leaking in from the abandoned house next door. But it had not been divided up and nobody had carried out any misguided renovations, meaning that it could be rebuilt in a way that was sensitive to the architecture. Once I had found the house, then the negotiations began with the 18 owners, the children and grandchildren of a deceased previous owner. Fortunately they all wanted to sell but it still took six months before a contract was signed.

The next step was to get a license for renovations. The changes were aimed at shoring up the house and opening it up inside. The front door was relocated to the western side of the house, allowing a new dining room, kitchen and living room and opening up the circulation.

I didn’t change the façade or the courtyard walls in any way so as to preserve the appearance of the house but the interior needed changes to make it more suitable for family life and to bring more light and air into the rooms, particularly in winter. We kept as much of the old woodwork and tiling as possible, only replacing those that were damaged beyond repair. To cut back on fuel oil, we installed solar hot water on the roof. We had hoped to use wood to heat the house in the winter to cut out oil altogether but we lacked the space to store enough firewood and it was too time consuming to stoke the fire all day.

I’d found an excellent stonemason and carpenter but was less happy with the electrician and painter that I hired. The Antiquities Authority was mostly helpful, allowing the realignment of the front door to allow a reconfiguration of the interior. The local council also paved the alley outside the house and painted some walls. The power company was more of a problem as the network in the neighborhood was poor and residents were relying on a single generator.

 *   *   *

They say that you should wait a year and seven months before you pass judgment on a new home. (The saying rhymes in Arabic). For me, moving to the Old City was a special source of happiness, particularly as renovating the home was such a personal achievement. It gave me such pleasure to sit in the courtyard under the large jasmine tree that grows there and have complete privacy. Nobody overlooks us, nobody sees how I’m dressed or how I sit. I could never go back to living in an apartment.

My wife had only agreed to the move if we could go back to an apartment if she hated living there. She was worried that it would be more difficult to keep clean and more work for her but after three months she agreed to go on living in the house. The boys, AlHakam and Karam, were 11 and 9 so for them it was an adventure. My girls, Rama, Lara and Noor, then aged 16, 14 and 12, were much more anxious about the move. They were the only girls in their school who did not wear hijab and they missed their friends from our old neighborhood. In the Old City, there were few places to go for a walk and they felt confined in the house.

Renovating an old house and living in that part of the city was not without difficulties. The infrastructure of the Old City is poor, with water, sewage and power supplies that have not kept up with modern demand. Restrictions on renovations can present problems. If city authorities are to attract more people to renovate and live there, they need to allow interiors to be remodeled for modern life. Toilets have to be moved from kitchens, some interior courtyards need to be covered to allow people to move about without having to go outside and rooms need to be realigned.

The area is densely populated and that can mean a lot of noise. There are 10 mosques near the house and the Muezzins all issue the call to prayer at the same time so that it all merges into an unpleasant noise. You can’t hear the Muezzin with the nicer voices because of the cacophony of them all together. It would be better if they took turns. Weddings would often go on until five in the morning, keeping us all up. Celebratory shooting did not just happen at weddings either but during other parties. Small trucks in the narrow lanes meant a lot of noise in the house.

There were many problems you had to live with if you chose to keep the Old City alive by living there and renovating a house. The city authorities and the organizations that controlled services always treated residents of the area poorly. Water and power cuts were common and the authorities did little to alleviate the problems. Schools were poor but there was no effort to improve them. When the power company did do work in the area, they would not clean up after construction, leaving it to local people to deal with the problems. Public works would start but never be finished. There is very little concern about helping those who live in the Old City.

There were a few mice, and some scorpions we think came from the neighboring house. Also mosquitoes and flies because of the nearby butcher shops. Some nearby abandoned buildings were a source of problems because water ran from them into our house, causing damage to some of the columns. It was impossible to resolve these problems as some buildings had as many as 100 owners and none of them wanted to pay for repairs.

Work on the house never really ended. Old houses need a lot of maintenance and I also liked to improve and repair the building. We took out a fireplace in the living room that proved burdensome to keep alight and sent smoke into the room and the courtyard was repaved to improve drainage. When I found beautifully carved stones I replaced those that had been damaged over the years.

 *   *   *

My family and I lived in the house for 16 years before I had to leave Aleppo. I always felt safe in the house with its privacy and sense of seclusion. We have now been forced to leave. I feel like a failed man because I tried to care about my heritage but ended up losing my home.

My daughter Lara’s memories of the house are tempered by the experience of moving from a relatively liberal, prosperous neighborhood in Aleppo to the much more conservative Old City.

Lara: When we first saw the house before we moved to it, I liked it and felt it was huge. And what contributed to my love for it is that we thought we would be there only in the summer, but we ended up moving there year around. The house is beautiful and full of light and air at that time of the year. Sitting there in the summer under the jasmine is a joy. But it was hard in the winter, when the courtyard, in the center of the house, was filled with rain, although you didn’t need to cross the courtyard except when going to one of the three bedrooms because all of the entrance, living room, dining room, toilet, bathroom, and kitchen were connected internally. Keeping the whole house clean was still a difficult task because you just could not close off the sources of dust.

Now the neighborhood. I did not like the larger district because many people there had double standards about certain issues. Although the majority were conservative in all aspects, there were a few who drank and gambled but whose wives were still expected to dress in black head-to-toe. It wasn’t enough that some men had their wives to control; they used to harass us when we went out as we didn’t wear the hijab. In the whole district, there was only one other family whose women did not wear the hijab, so the people’s lifestyle and expectations put a lot of pressure on us. One shocking incident decided it for us. As my sister was walking to school wearing her decent uniform, one man spat on her because she wasn’t wearing a hijab. We ended up putting it on but I felt that it was coercive.  My father gave us complete freedom to decide whether or not to wear the headscarf, but he expected, as per the accepted norms in Syria, that we go on wearing it if we are to ever take it up.

Ten years on, with the start of the Revolution and people’s mobility increasing, many started to live a more liberal life. I was moving between Aleppo and Gaziantep in Turkey, and I liberated myself of the hijab that was imposed on me because of these outmoded traditions.

Of course, not all the neighborhood men were of the type I described. There were examples of chivalrous men, like the ones we hear about in the TV series that featured the old neighborhoods. In our very street, for example, people were nice and caring and men generally respected us and treated us like their sisters.

 *   *   *

My oldest son AlHakam moved to the house when he was 11 and enjoyed helping with the renovation:

AlHakam: My siblings and I have brilliant memories of our spacious flat in the al-Hamdaniyeh district where we were born. It was on the ground floor and had two gardens that my father had revamped. But my younger brother Karam and I were very intrigued by the Arabic house, too. As children who had had no friends or family in the east of the city, including the Old City, the west-east gap was very conspicuous. There were very large architectural and cultural differences. From our first visits there, it was not hard to notice that people were much less formally educated, but by no means less cultured. Also, they were quite fun to be with and extremely friendly.

For about two years until we moved in 1996, we would go with my father some evenings and days off school, not only to observe the renovation work, but to also take part in it. We didn’t like the chores that much at first – it started with cleaning out a large room no one had been in for ten years – but we started to like it later on. We worked with cement. We carved stone with the chisel. We did small-scale plumbing like installing a tap or extending a tube. We painted walls and windows. At lunchtime, we sometimes had fool, or fava beans with tahina and olive oil, with the builders as we all sat on the cleanest corner of the dusty floor. This kind of work, although it slowed down after we moved, never ceased for two reasons. First, my father soon bought another old Arabic house in the al-Hazzazeh district, more to the west of the Old City to make it his office, and its own renovation kicked in. Second, both houses needed constant care and my father kept adapting certain parts of the house and improving their design.

When it comes to the house itself, I liked the brightness in the courtyard and other open spaces. This was similar to our flat in al-Hamdaniyeh, but the courtyard here had a central role that the side gardens in the flat didn’t. To go from anywhere in the house to two of the three bedrooms, you now had to cross the courtyard. I miss lunching with the family every summer noon under the jasmine tree in the courtyard. I also fondly remember my mother Sawsan’s breakfasts around the stove in the winter and in a cool part of the courtyard in the summer. Her breakfasts always had no less than five or six of these: cheese (two main types), green and black olives, olive oil and zaatar dip, molasses with tahina, apricot jam, rose jam, quince jam, boiled or fried eggs, makdous, labneh, salad, and tea. There were always long chats about the family and it was a struggle for me to leave the comfort of home for school or work.

I also remember the naps in my voluminous, high-ceilinged room upstairs in the warm spring or summer, and – in the years before I left Syria – sitting in the tiny, breezy liwan upstairs, listening to Arabic jazz music or to BBC Radio 3 or 4 streaming on my laptop through our new DSL connection.

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When the drought in Syria started in 2008, the United Nations issued an appeal for funding for food aid for the many farmers whose crops had failed and animals had either been sold or died. In August the next year, with the drought getting worse and lasting longer than any other on record, another international appeal for help was announced. By the end of 2009, it had raised just 14 percent of what was needed.

Few western governments had good relations with Syria and it was seen as a low priority in humanitarian terms. The drought received little attention. The New York Times ran a single paragraph on it in 2008 and not another word for two years. Food aid is still driven by donor concerns and media attention, not by the needs of people going hungry.

By 2010 the drought was having a massive impact on Syrian society. Migration to cities accelerated, raising tensions across the country but particularly in Daraa, Homs, Aleppo and Damascus. The government did little to help. In part the dead hand of the moribund Syrian government was unable to move fast enough but also its economic reforms focused not on the rural poor but on the emerging crony capitalism that had taken off in the early part of the decade. Decades of political tensions, economic inequality and state brutality on a massive scale would prompt protests and then civil war.

Syria’s economy has been ruined by the war with some estimates suggesting it is half the size it was before the conflict. Looking forward, any reconstruction is going to have to deal with the issue of drought and the permanent water shortages that the country will face, in part because of the policies of the past six decades and in part because of climate change. The farmer sector will likely shrink and the country will no longer be self-sufficient in many of its foods. Rural populations will decline and when refugees and IDPs do go home, they will likely head to cities rather than villages. Water and climate change were factors in the start of the civil war. Addressing them will have to be part of an eventual solution.

See our briefing “Drought in Syria” here.

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“We liberated the rural parts of Aleppo province. We waited and waited for Aleppo City to rise, and it didn’t. We couldn’t rely on them to do it for themselves so we had to bring the revolution to them.” Those were the words in July 2012 of Abu Hashish, a commander from a village in the country near Aleppo. The conflict had indeed spread from the Idleb countryside to northern Aleppo in the early part of the year but only reached the city in July.

Aleppo had been relatively calm before then but it had not been at peace before the conflict, as many think. Small demonstrations took place in marginalized neighborhoods and the University of Aleppo; tensions were rising and had been for some time. The appearance of calm before the armed conflict was due to the regime’s decades-old alliance with the cities’ tribal and business elite. It may have kept the city from rising up but it was also why rural rebels eventually brought the conflict to the city.

Ibn Khaldun, the 14^th century philosopher and historian, described a circulation of hardened rural warriors who swept into cities to remove the soft, corrupt elites there. In turn the warriors softened like those they removed from power and in turn were removed. Aleppo’s conflict came about in part because of a massive decline in living standards in the countryside, due to drought (see The Aleppo Project paper Drought in Syria), the failure of the government to respond to water shortages and because of policies since 2000 that created an economy of urban cronies while ignoring the countryside. That drove migration to cities – Syrian cities grew by 50 percent from 2000-2010 – and the new arrivals started to see the inequalities of the system.

While the vocabulary of the Syrian war consists of sectarian conflict, ethnic division, religious hostilities, conspiracy theories and extremism, some of the underlying drivers of the conflict, including class divisions and the rural-urban divide don’t often appear in the analysis. And yet going back to the 1960s and 1970s, almost every conflict or uprising across the Middle East was preceded by a massive movement of people to cities.

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It has become a truism of conflict resolution to say that peace cannot be forced on a country and negotiations only work when the time is ripe. Is that moment approaching in Syria? A poll of Syrians by The Day After, an Istanbul-based research organisation, shows that a small majority now favour a negotiated settlement with the government. Of the 2,600 people polled inside and outside Syria, 54.7 per cent want to see talks that lead to a settlement. That is still low compared with some countries in conflict. A recent poll in Afghanistan showed that 71 per cent of respondents want a negotiated settlement with the Taliban even though only 4 per cent said they would prefer the return of the Taliban to power rather than the current government.

The TDA Survey, which can be found on their web site here, illustrates some of the deep divisions in Syria. Poorer respondents and younger respondents mostly reject any accommodation with the Damascus regime. They are the people who have benefited least from its policies and often faced the worst brutality at its hands. Secular Syrians also heavily favor negotiations while those who regard themselves as Islamist deeply oppose any talks. Sunnis were almost evenly split on talks whereas three-quarters of Alawites were in favor.

In Aleppo 55 percent of respondents in both regime and rebel held areas support talks. Most people had heard of the plan of UN Special Envoy Stefan de Mistura but few among the opposition favored a ceasefire specifically in Aleppo because they believed it would only benefit the government. A majority felt it would either only see gains for Damascus or it would not provide a solution to the city’s conflict. Those in opposition-held areas were most opposed.

Most Syrians believe that there is a lack of international interest in finding a solution and that is the main reason why talks have failed. And yet a majority also supports a strong international involvement in any peace process. On a more surprising and optimistic note, a third of respondents believe a peace agreement can be reached within a year and another third within five years. We can only hope.

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