Mohamed HomsNour Abdel NourHabaa Shehadeh
The reconstruction file was associated with the non -harmful warfare file, which is the ruins of the buildings left by the bombing, especially the areas controlled by the Syrian opposition starting from the south in Daraa and passing through Eastern Ghouta, Homs and Aleppo.
The rubble is a great obstacle to the families who remained in their homes, cities and towns, in light of a general deficit that starts from the government and ends with the ordinary citizen, while official authorities in Syria did not take real steps to solve the file of rubble, thousands of citizens bear the burdens of rehabilitation of their properties to become housing,While a large part of the infrastructure in Syria is still a rubble.
The United Nations describes the destruction in Syria as "unprecedented", and the cost of reconstruction is estimated at about $ 400 billion, consistent with the head of the Syrian regime, Bashar al -Assad, who estimated the time period of the reconstruction process from 10 to 15 years..
At a time when the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Al -Muallem, admitted, during his talk to the Russian magazine "In" Interaffairs "in September of last year, that 75% of the infrastructure in Syria was destroyed.
The "Atlas Destruction of Syrian Cities", issued by the "United Nations Research and Training Institute", in cooperation with the "Rich" initiative, last March, shows the extent of the damage that Syrian cities suffered during eight years of conflict, based on the analysis of satellite images.
Civil Defense volunteers sit in the rubble watching a convoy of the Syrian Red Crescent in Douma Al-Mahasara- March 2018 (Reuters)
"Individual" efforts to remove the rubble
Despite the governmental orientation of the issuance of legislation related to the removal of the rubble, through the issuance of Law No. 3, for the year 2018, for “the removal of the ruins of the affected buildings as a result of natural or abnormal reasons or because they are subject to the laws that require their demolition”, but the application of what was stated on the ground has not started yetActually.
At the same time, official media and other loyal to the regime are promoting that the removal movement began to be active in several governorates such as Aleppo, Damascus countryside and Homs, but cross -crossed local sources in Syria confirmed to Enab Baladi that the process of removing the rubble is still within the framework of individual initiatives of ownersReal estate.
In Eastern Ghouta, Enab Baladi, through local sources, monitored several individual cases to remove the rubble by the residents of the devastating neighborhoods, at a time when the government of the regime went to clean the entrances to the capital, Damascus.
A local source is familiar with the Eastern Ghouta (he asked not to be named for security reasons)..
The source pointed out that the cleaning operations do not include the deportation to the landfills or their designated places, as the people remove the rubble and collect them in a corner far from the neighborhood.
On the other hand, the source talked about movements on a broader scale to remove the rubble, stressing that the merchant Muhyiddin al -Manfoush, who is one of the people of the town.
While many families depend on the money of expatriates to work on the restoration of homes and remove the destruction spread in all cities and towns of Ghouta and this general situation, according to the source.
In Aleppo Governorate, the government of the regime is working to partially deport the rubble, at the expense of individuals, according to an engineering source familiar with the city of Aleppo (he asked not to be named for security reasons).
The source said that the state opens some of the main roads at its expense, while technical committees from the Engineers Syndicate are formed to assess the damage and deport the rubble, in the neighborhoods of diabetes, Al -Sakhour, Sheikh Najjar, the old city and other neighborhoods east of Aleppo.
The source, who participates in some engineering committees, estimated that the percentage of debris did not exceed 5% of the total destroyed buildings, denying the existence of any process to re -invest and rotate the rubble as promoted.
The engineering source also denied what was recently rumored to launch a project to sort and rotate the rubble in the "Ramosa" area of Aleppo, which enables the benefit of recycling and sorting the rubble to obtain building materials prepared for use in rehabilitation of the sidewalks from Block and Throat.
In Daraa Governorate, the reform efforts varied, according to the financial ability of the population, who worked to remove the ruins of old buildings and restore what they can guarantee a shelter that they replaced with the displacement camps, according to what the correspondent of Enab Baladi confirmed in the province.
A child riding his bike in Eastern Ghouta near the construction of the demolition of the bombing- September 2017 (Samas)
Government works to open the main entrances
On the opposite side, government operations are focused on cleaning public areas and main streets, amid repeated promises and monitoring money to remove the rubble, and work was done in areas, but other areas were neglected.
In the case of Eastern Ghouta, the Damascus Governorate has allocated five billion Syrian pounds to remove the rubble and restore the towns and government centers, according to the newspaper "Al -Watan", which is close to the Syrian regime, reported that the governor of Damascus countryside, Alaa Munir Ibrahim, on June 18 last year.
The government of the Syrian regime is cooperating with the United Nations in infrastructure rehabilitation projects, especially in Aleppo, the countryside of Damascus and its neighborhoods, which witnessed a conflict during the past years, and in a statement to the "Hashtag Syria" website, the head of the Harasta City Council, Adnan Al -Waz, said that "an effective cooperation has been launchedBetween the city council and the United Nations Development Organization, after which 90,000 cubic meters of rubble were deported, with a book to remove more of them..
The government of the regime is also cooperating with the Palestinian government agencies in the file of removing the rubble in the Yarmouk camp, south of Damascus, where a joint plan began last September to remove the rubble from the camp between the "Palestine Liberation Organization" and the government of the regime, after which 50 thousand cubic meters of the rubble were deported,And the opening of the main roads, according to what was reported by the French News Agency.
According to Enab Baladi, in the statements of the municipalities in the governorates under the control of the regime, the removal work is concentrated in the main streets in the Syrian governorates, including the governorates of Quneitra and Daraa in southern Syria, as the Reconstruction Committee allocated 500 million pounds to conduct ambulatory maintenance for the most affected sites on the Damascus Highway-Daraa- the Jordanian border, according to the "Prime Minister in Syria" website last September.
At the same time, efforts were limited to areas that are not controlled by the Syrian regime government on some rehabilitation projects on a narrow scale, such as the "self -administration" in the northeastern regions of Syria, and some of the works of the "Civil Defense" organization in Idlib governorate in the northwest of the country.
Building workers carry out tizets near Aleppo Airport, east of Aleppo- February 2019 (National Geographic)
Removing the rubble is the first step in any project of reconstruction, and thus cannot be separated on the grounds that any decision to remove the rubble is supposed to take into account alternative plans, and it is also based on future perceptions..
This justifies the failure of the file to remove the rubble in Syria on a large scale. With the governmental hesitation and slowness in those actions, in exchange for the individual efforts made to it, it does not seem that this process will take place in Syria in the near time.
The engineer and academic, the former Minister of Housing in the "Salvation Government", Yasser Al -Najjar, believes that the removal process is a huge process that needs tight plans and that the Syrian regime is currently unable to play any economic role within the reconstruction projects.
In his speech to Enab Baladi, Al -Najjar added, “Until this moment we cannot say that the system has a plan for reconstruction, and that everything that is going on is (propaganda projects).The following is the reconstruction stage ”.
The reconstruction file relates to the economic blockade imposed by the United States and the European Union countries that pledge the reconstruction of a political solution.
Al -Najjar inferred the crises that Syria suffers from the current period, such as lira, fuel and suffering in the areas controlled by the Syrian regime, that the statements said that the regime is able to carry out its duties, through its responsibility for the reconstruction, describing it as soon as the “ash in the eyes” is in the eyes..
European support for the reconstruction process is related to the political process, in line with its demands in the political transition process, as European pressure continues, along with the pressure of the United States through economic sanctions aimed at limiting financial obligations with the Syrian regime or dealing with it with reconstruction projects.
On the side of the allied countries of the regime, Russia and Iran, the responsibilities are great, and if Iran excludes from the process because of the sanctions imposed on it, the Russian side that imposed itself in the Syrian arena remains..
Al -Najjar believes that the regime is begging the reconstruction from the Russian side and the neighboring countries, noting that the real contribution to the reconstruction projects will be after the end of the political process, through the existence and approval of a comprehensive political solution in Syria and the change of the head of the Syrian regime..
Woven removal law..
On February 12, 2018, the head of the Syrian regime approved Law No. 3 for "removing the ruins of the affected buildings as a result of natural or abnormal reasons or because of the laws that are destroyed by the laws.".
The law included 14 articles that regulate the process of removing the rubble and benefiting from them, in preparation for disposing of them and determining the fate of millions.
The law did not arouse controversy in the media, nor did it take a wide range of legal discussion, although it carries legislation that could be supportive and assistance, and perhaps an institution, for Law No. 10, issued on April 2, 2018, which provides for the creation of one or more organizationals withinThe general organizational plan for administrative units commissioned by the Ministry of Local Administration, which may choose any region you want to impose a new organization plan for it, without returning to the local councils.
Before talking about the reasons that make the law to remove rubble complementing Law No. 10, it is worth stopping at some technical points, which make the application of this law at the present time a real problem.
Neither technical committees nor sufficient deadline
Paragraph (a) of Article 2 states that “, based on the proposal of the administrative unit, a decision specifies the real estate region and the affected buildings covered by the provisions of this law, and in the decision the deadline in which the administrative unit must prepare a detailed report on the reality of this region, provided that it does not increaseThis period is 120 days..
This committee consists of a real estate judge called the Minister of Justice, the head of the Survey Department in the competent real estate departments directorate, a representative of the administrative unit of the first category, a real estate evaluation expert, and two representatives of the people.
Engineer Mazhar Sharbaji, the governance and capacity -building official in the "Local Councils Unit" in Syria, notes that a six -person committee cannot end the evaluation of damage within 120 days..
He adds to Enab Baladi that the committee is composed of real estate interests, which is a description committee that can perform part of its work, but the first paragraph of Article 5 gives this committee the authority to estimate the state of construction “if the existing construction is sound from the structural standpoint or not”, and this is notOne of the tasks of real estate interests, according to Sharbaji.Usually, the Engineers Syndicate forms the committees that evaluate the buildings, and they are specialized committees of three, five or seven engineers, including a consultant construction engineer and engineers practicing with soil engineer to examine soil and foundations and an architect of description, and this committee is a typical report that studies the construction mode and conducts the necessary testsThen it submits a report on whether this construction needs to be strengthened or removed..
A boy walks in front of a school in the Sugar neighborhood, south of Aleppo, and most of the buildings are still ruins of 2019 (National Geographic)
How do absent people lose under the law?
The fourth item of paragraph (a) of Article 5 in the law stipulates that the committee “prepare a schedule with the names of the owners (for real estate that is removed from the ruins) within 120 days and submitted to the administrative authority.The rubble, the share of all of them, and other necessary information..
And real estate owners can appeal what was stated in the table within thirty days of the day to publish it, then the unit determines the relevant administration after the expiry of the announcement of the date for selling the rubble in the public auction, and in this case the ruins of the absentees are sold without their knowledge.
In the event that the owner proves his ownership of the ruins of his real estate after the period of appeal and the implementation of the property’s decision, he will obtain the cash allowance according to paragraph (b) of Article 10.
According to paragraph (d) of Article 11, “The value of the peremptory referral is deposited in a special account in the name of the administrative unit of one of the public banks and freezes for the account of the owners of the entitlement who prove their ownership.” But the next paragraph of the same article says, “It is resolved from the funds deposited according to the provisions of the previous paragraphThe expenses of removing and deporting the rubble carried out by the administrative unit..
Engineer Sharbaji explains how this process takes place, by returning to paragraph (B) of Article 3, as it states that “the executive office in the administrative unit has a contract to consent with one of the public or private agencies” in order to deport the rubble, but the risk lies before the contract, and the deal.Which the administrative unit can implement it with the party that is contracted with.
For example, the owner may return after selling the ruins of his real estate and proves his ownership, in this case it can be informed that the real estate price is equivalent to the value of removal and deportation expenses, and therefore he does not get anything from the value of his property.
Sherbaji believes that this law would have been effective if the situation was normal and the country is in the event of a ladder, but in the current case, the law could be unjust and an incidence of people's rights, as a result of the presence of millions of Syrians outside the country.
On the path of Law No. 10
The law defines the rubble as “the waste of the buildings that are diligent, with the materials contained in construction or cladding, and what is not suitable as special possessions or the owner has not been proven to them..
The law also allows the committees under which to determine whether real estate needs to be restored or completely demolished and removed, which could be an important ground for completely removing spaces of buildings and establishing new regulatory areas under Law No. 10.
Engineer Mazhar Sharbaji believes that "this law is complementary to Law No. 10, according to the first, the removal is carried out and according to the second, it is planned.".