Aleppian Ahmad al-Sawas, Syria’s national gymnastics champion when fighting broke out, did not compete at the Rio Olympics. Read his story here.

Aleppians at the Olympics

Olympic Swimmer Baean Jouma. Damsascus. July 2016. Photo: Reuters/Omar Sanadiki.

Swimmer Baean Jouma is scheduled to compete as a member of the Syrian national team in the women’s 50m freestyle on Friday. Read her story here.

Ghofrane al-Mohammad is scheduled to compete as a member of the Syrian national team in the 400m hurdles on Tuesday. She competed in the same event in 2012, but was disqualified after testing positive for a banned substance.

Olympic Swimmer Rami Anis set a personal best in the 100m freestyle. Photo: EPA/Esteban Biba.

Swimmer Ramis Anis swam a personal best of 54.25sec in the 100m freestyle as a member of the Refugee Olympic team. “In 2020,” he said, “I hope I will be able to swim under my own flag.” Read his story here.

Aleppo Under Siege

Boys displaced from ongoing conflict shelter under makeshift tents on the Muhalak highway. Photo: UNICEF/UN027713/Al-Issa

Unicef urged all parties to allow technicians to repair the electricity and water systems. The city has been without water for several days.

We published July’s update of Armenak Tokmajyan’s Conflict Timeline.

Photo: AP

The Economist’s weekly obituary profiled Qusai Abtini, sit-com star of Aleppo. The fourteen year old was killed in mid-July while attempting to leave the city.

The post The Aleppo Weekly – July 29-August 10 appeared first on The Aleppo Project.

Ordinary Syrian people are going to extraordinary lengths, risking everything to protect their heritage, despite the horror that has engulfed their country. For them, it is not a question of people or stones. The story of the people is embedded in those stones, a crafted story stretching back millennia. Saving that story is saving Syria. Dr. Emma Cunliffe. Research Associate, Oxford University.

Syrian Voices

While in prison, Shahabi went from 273 pounds to just 97. Photo: Ibrahim Shahabi.

“For the first six months, the torture was every hour. It came in so many ways, without mercy or compassion. However, after tuberculosis, diarrhea, and other infectious diseases came into the barracks, the guards refrained from entering out of fear that they too would be infected. They would throw us our measly rations from the bottom of the cell door, and if someone died, they would throw us the key from the cell window so  that we could leave to bury the person in the yard.” Ibrahim Shahabi, a well-known bodybuilding champion from Aleppo.

The BBC profiles Aleppo’s underground doctors.

Aleppo Demonstration. 13 April 2016. Photo: AEJ.

Medical staff demonstrate after an airstrike killed Dr.Hassan, a respected cardiologist in Hama. His car appeared to have been deliberately targeted.

Water Purifying Tablet. Photo: Louay Otba.

Before the war, Aleppian entrepreneur Louay Otba invented and started producing a chlorine-free water disinfecting tablet. He will use his $5,000 prize from the Jusoor Entrepreneurship Competition to start the patent examination process.

“The Zoom Group.” Photo: Ahmad Saflo

Syrian Trainees Tell Stories in Their Own Words

“My writing of their stories did not matter. What mattered was that they tell their own stories, how and when they want to. What I had to do was try to give them back their voice. I could only provide them with the tools and skills needed, and then listen.” Hala Droubi, Karam Project Leadership Program.

In what the opposition labeled a “farce,” the “National Unity” list won 200 of 250 seats in parliamentary elections.  A prominent Aleppo lawyer toured election centers in western Aleppo. He reported that in many locations he was provided completed lists to vote with instead of a blank ballot. The UN does not recognize the elections.

Reconstruction

Idlib countryside. May 2015. Photo: Reuters/Khalil Ashawi.

Al Monitor explores Syria’s withering agricultural sector.

Reasons for Departure. Disaster and Emergency
Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD) Survey Results.

“Peace and reconstruction are two sides of the same coin and a reconstruction strategy for Syria—the most war-ravaged country in the region—could help foster a sustainable peace.”  World Bank. Syria : reconstruction for peace.

“Peacebuilding is not an end point; it is a process that needs to be started very early on and supported at every stage.” Rebuilding Societies: Strategies for Resilience and Recovery in Times of Conflict

The State of the Conflict

Search for survivors after airstrike in rebel-held Aleppo. Photo: Reuters/A.Ismail.

Despite ceasefire fighting erupts in Aleppo.

The post The Aleppo Weekly, April 12-17 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.

In late 2014 and early 2015 we surveyed 1001 people. One of the questions we asked everyone was, “Do you think you will return to Aleppo?”

• 72 per cent said “Yes.” 28 per cent said “No.”
• This was generally true whether someone was male or female, had children, owned real estate, or his/her house had been damaged or destroyed.
• It did not hold true for education levels. If someone had at least some post-secondary education, he or she appeared 14 per cent less likely to return to Aleppo than someone without any post-secondary education.

Reconstruction plans should carefully consider who will return to Aleppo when the fighting stops.  If, as is likely, the most vulnerable return first, and those with higher levels of education and more financial resources return much later, or not at all, the Aleppo of tomorrow will look very different than the Aleppo of yesterday.

To download the report, click here.

The post Data Snapshot 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.

Mohamed Qutaish, a 13-year-old from Aleppo exhibits the model of the city he constructed. “This is how we are going to build Syria.” We love Mohamed’s vision for the city, particularly his focus on trees, lakes and public transport.

Source: Channel 4 News, United Kingdom.

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When Sarajevo emerged from four years of siege and shelling, the city was almost derelict. Much of its housing had been destroyed and its historic buildings damaged. Only about a fifth of its water system and power supply still worked. Tens of thousands of people had fled and its centuries old history as a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic, multi-faith city was over.

Twenty years after the Dayton Accords that ended the war in 1995, the city is rebuilt and there is little visible evidence of the war. But it is a very different city from before the war and the process of reconstruction has not fully mended the varied tapestry of urban life. Cities are much more than buildings. They are complex cultural systems that are most successful when they are tolerant, open and inclusive. They need economies that sustain them but they also need culture, popular engagement and government that genuinely reflects the will of the people.

Sarajevo has lagged behind in all of that. Government in Bosnia-Hercegovina is corrupt and regarded with dismay by most citizens. The economy was criminalised by war and has never recovered. The triple transition – from war to peace, communism to democracy, a centralised economy to a market system – remains incomplete or distorted. Money was pumped into repairing buildings but little was spent on developing a system to manage the city effectively.

Aleppo will likely eventually face a similar triple transition and although every war is different and every city unique, there is much than can be learned from Sarajevo’s experiences. The Aleppo Project’s detailed report can be found here. It is the first a series that will examine the ways in which cities recover from conflict. We’ll also be looking at Beirut and Kabul shortly and others will follow. We are also posting on the blog what we think are the lessons from this city. We’d welcome your responses and thoughts on how relevant these experiences are likely to be to the recovery of Syrian cities.

See the full report “Rebulding Sarajevo” here

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