Counter-point
EFFORTS MADE TO DIVIDE SYRIANS INTO WARRING SECTARIAN GROUPS DID NOT WORK AS SYRIANS OF ALL ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS BACKGROUNDS CONTINUE TO LIVE TOGETHER, 80 PER CENT NOW IN AREAS UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL
During Syria’s six and a half years of war nearly half its 23 million people have fled their homes or the country, four of its major cities have suffered damage and destruction, vast swathes of the countryside have been depopulated and tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed. Nevertheless, Syria’s pluralistic society remains largely intact; ethnic and religious communities have not been separated as happened in Iraq after the disastrous 2003 US invasion and occupation. Unlike Iraq, where the US ruled by dividing Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, Syria retains communal coexistence. Sunni and Shia Muslims, Druze, Alawites, Kurds, Christians, Circassians, and Armenians who lived together comfortably before the war still do. The mix of communities has been stirred but has survived.
Damascus has overtaken
Aleppo as the country’s most populous city. It is estimated the influx of displaced people from all communities has trebled the population of the capital and nearby towns. The latest to come are from Raqqa, the former Daesh capital, and Deir al-zor, where Syria’s army is still battling Daesh in several quarters of the city. The population of the coastal cities — Latakia and Tartous — have at least doubled. Today more than 80 per cent of Syrians still in the country live in government-controlled areas where they have relative safety, security, and services. My small hotel near the old Hijaz railway station in central Damascus has, throughout the war, hosted Syrians fleeing hot areas and seeking permanent accommodation in Damascus.
At present Damascus and the coastal cities are losing some temporary residents as people return to hometowns. For example, since eastern Aleppo was returned to government control last December, half a million people have gone back to neighbourhoods formerly held by al-qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah alSham and other insurgent groups as well as the western sectors of the city, which were always under the government.
Unfortunately, the Us-sponsored Kurdish Protection Units/ Democratic Union party has expelled Arabs and Turkmen from Kurdish-held villages in the north and is refusing to permit former non-kurdish residents to return unless they were born there. The Kurds are also trying to dictate to the majority Arab inhabitants of Raqqa, recently freed from Daesh, with the aim of compelling them to align with the Kurdish-dominated region along the Turkish border.
During my recent visit to Syria, I travelled from Damascus to
Homs to Deir al-zor to Aleppo and back to Damascus, a trip of 1,700 kilometres. While in Homs, which has 24 hours seven days a week electricity and water, I visited three former flashpoints: the Old City and the districts of Baba Amr and al-waer, where fighting was fierce. While people are rebuilding and moving back to the Old City, there are vast neighbouring areas which can only be bulldozed. In Baba Amr and al-waer, streets and blocks of flats have been cleared of rubble, rubbish and unexploded ordnance. While there is considerable destruction and damage in both, most is concentrated along the front lines. Buildings behind, particularly, in al-waer, which was a large, mainly middle class dormitory suburb with 150,000 residents before being seized by insurgents in 2014. Today, the population is believed to be 45,000. In the neighbourhoods of Deir al-zor I drove through there are many abandoned buildings which can be recovered. Electricity and water need to be restored. That may have to wait until Daesh is expelled from the entire city.
Along the desert (badia) road between Homs and Deir al-zor stand empty villages, abandoned houses and fields. The road bypasses the splendid ruins of Palmyra, the town of al-qaryatayn, where residents have returned, and an oil facility belching thick black smoke. The road also skirts an area dubbed “Daesh country,” where the group’s fighters still lurk and from where they mount occasional raids against army posts and vehicles travelling along the road. At the beginning of last month, Daesh remnants returned to al-qaryatayn, recaptured by government forces in 2016, killed 125 soldiers and 116 civilians, and kidnapped 38, some of whom have escaped.
The patched and rutted secondary roads between Deir al-zor and Aleppo pass through a desert wasteland where dozens of villages — out of a total of
160 — were abandoned due to the 2006-10 drought, which was deepened and lengthened by climate change. Inhabitants of this former farming and livestockraising region migrated to the main cities, swelling poor suburbs with undereducated, unemployed, discontented youth who were easily persuaded to join insurgent groups.
The drought-abandoned villages largely consist of structures undamaged by fighting: simple mud brick or breeze block houses and outbuildings, windows and doors empty, walls crumbling. There are no herdsmen, no goats, sheep or camels. Olive and fruit trees, formerly provided with drip irrigation, are stunted due to the lack of water. We paused at the ancient city of Rasafeh, in Raqqa province. Rasafeh, founded in the 9th century BC, was originally an Assyrian military camp which became a Roman outpost, a centre for Christian pilgrimage, and the residence of 8th century Umayyad Caliph Hisham bin Abd al-malik. The ruins stand empty, deserted like the draught-ravaged villages, this time by tourists. In 2010, eight million visited Syria.
Several larger settlements, where residents had survived the drought and joined Daesh, had seen heavy fighting when the army advanced through Deir al-zor and Raqqa province toward the Deir al-zor city. Wrecked tanks and other vehicles remain in the desert where there had been skirmishes. Eighty per cent of the province had been held by Daesh; today its presence has shrunk to, perhaps, 10 per cent.
The western sector of Aleppo has partial electricity and water, the eastern quarters are reviving rapidly. The cotton crop, once a staple of Aleppo’s commerce, is being gathered. The cultivated countryside is green. The distinctive beehive house villages typical of northern Syria are, like those in the desert, empty. Instead of living on the land, farmers commute from Aleppo and nearby towns. The deserted regions of Syria are unlikely to be repopulated when the guns finally fall silent.