The presence of the new governor of Damascus, Maher Marwan, attracted dozens of residents of Qaboun. The gathering itself summarized the state of the suburb. They had gathered on the roof of the old mosque, even though the building was in ruins. But at least it was still standing. A kind of island surrounded by a sea of hundreds of former dwellings reduced to piles of debris.
"People have returned to Qaboun but they have no homes. Mine was there," explained the imam of the temple pointing to a jumble of stones and cement several hundred meters away.
Qaboun is located just six kilometers from the center of Damascus. A suburb where more than 30,000 people lived before the start of the Syrian popular uprising in 2011. The enclave was one of the first to organize massive demonstrations in the spring of that year, which soon turned into armed clashes with the forces of Bashar Asad. The government army began to attack the suburb with tanks in July of the following year, eventually imposing a complete siege of the area.
The siege of Qaboun and adjacent areas like Barzeh did not end until 2017, when the rebels agreed to evacuate the area to Idlib in the north of the country.
The destruction of the suburb began with armored vehicles and artillery. Then with planes and barrel bombs. "But when they regained control, that's when they really razed the neighborhood. That's when they started blowing up and knocking down the houses. One after another," recounts Hamed Taisir, 59 years old.
Of the home and business owned by Ahmed Nuemi, only a tree he planted in 1979 remains, now rising among the rubble. "90% of Qaboun has been destroyed," estimates the Syrian.
Noemi states that the practice of looting the ruins became an "industry" for the Bashar Asad regime with very strict rules regarding the distribution of the "booty." "The Fourth Division kept the copper [the most valuable product], the Presidential Guard the aluminum and iron, and the rest was for the shabiha [militiamen allied with the dictatorship]," he indicates.
Mahmud Abu Azzam, another 67-year-old Syrian residing in Qaboun since 1958, explains that the "contractors" first came with excavators and tractors to finish demolishing the homes. "If it was a tall building, with many floors, they used TNT [explosives]. Then they finished destroying it with demolition hammers," he adds.
According to his account, in Qaboun, crews of over a hundred people used to concentrate daily. A veritable army dedicated to ravaging and looting the suburb.
The systematic demolition of Qaboun from 2017 onwards is an example of the extreme behavior that the Bashar Asad dictatorship plunged into in recent years and in a way an allegory that explains its collapse. The autocrat and his allies decided to devour their own country, pillaging even the debris of areas that had been in the hands of the rebels, leaving behind a devastated landscape.
Capital suburbs like Jobar, Yarmouk, Barzeh, Al Tadamon, Al Asali, or nearby cities like Al Hajar al Aswad or Harasta, compete in showing absolute desolation that is easily distinguished from the destruction caused by bombings: the homes affected by explosions are not completely demolished. Those hit by looters are piles of debris that extend over many square kilometers.
According to an investigation by the online page Voice of Damascus, the origin of the trade around the debris left by the civil conflict began thanks to the initiative of a well-known businessman from Aleppo, Mohamed Rabie Afar, who had significant connections with the Asad clan and especially with the dictator's brother, Maher Asad, leader of the feared Fourth Division.
The same media indicated that the unsolved murder of Afar in 2016 in the center of Damascus led to the emergence of another figure linked to the same unit of Maher Asad: Khader Ali Taher.
All these millionaires - dubbed by opposition media as "warlords" - had their own militias, which assisted the regime in its attacks against opposition forces while also protecting the legal and illegal business network organized around the dictatorship.
Voice of Damascus described a perfectly structured business. There were companies specialized in plundering the ruins, others that classified the scrap metal, recycling factories that melted and recycled the metallic remains, and a basic principle that allowed the functioning of this process: "The Fourth Division and its security office [responsible for economic affairs] received a monthly amount of money in exchange for facilitating the passage of trucks through their military checkpoints and facilitating the collection" of these objects.
Those close to Maher Asad divided the areas of operation, which almost unanimously coincided with populations or enclaves that had stood out in armed resistance against the regime and therefore had suffered immense damage, which was further extended by the action of the metal looters.
The Syrian media investigation pointed out that an average price was even established for the waste, ranging from a maximum of 75,000 Syrian pounds (about seven euros) per kilo of bronze, 45,000 (four euros) for brass, 25,000 (about two euros) for aluminum, or less than 2,000 pounds (less than 20 cents of a euro) paid for iron, which could only be used for melting.
The looted items from Qaboun were piled into trucks heading to the extensive metallurgical complex owned by the wealthy Mohammed Hamsho in the nearby town of Adra, another affluent individual close to the Asad family clique. The last shipments, five large trucks full of scrap, were still in January - many days after the regime fell - in front of the factory entrance.
Within the perimeter, mountains of metal debris torn from homes could be seen, as well as the blackened paste generated by the recycling process in the company's furnaces.
Haizam Yussef, an employee for 14 years at the Hadeed Metal Manufacturing Company, explained to this newspaper that they used to receive almost half a dozen vehicles with the same load per day. "They came from many areas, not just from Qaboun. Before the revolution, metal was imported from Europe, but that changed with the war. Transporters were paid according to the weight they brought," he recounted.
The Hadeed management declined to comment on their recent history with this newspaper.
Another investigation by the European Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies confirmed in 2020 the involvement of the Fourth Division in the looting of debris after capturing rebel-held areas and the connection of figures like Hamsho to this business. "For example, after the regime forces regained control of Daraya [near Damascus] in August 2016, groups of looters entered followed by the Fourth Division forces. The looters focused on [stealing] appliances [light cables, switches, lamps, etc.] while the Fourth Division sought scrap metal. They then escorted the scrap trucks to the smelting plants and then to the port for export," the report reads.
The effects of the methodical looting of former opposition strongholds extend along the M5 highway that connects Damascus with Aleppo and passes through the northern province of Idlib. In the city of Hama, the Wadi al Jouz neighborhood - which also served as a base for the rebels - suffered another of the dictatorship's singular decisions: it was razed under one of the new legal provisions supposedly introduced to rehabilitate the country.
Media controlled by Damascus indicated in the spring of 2013 that Wadi al Jouz was an illegally built suburb - which is true - and therefore it was simply a matter of applying existing legislation. However, the irregular districts inhabited by Alawites in the same locality did not suffer the same fate.
"They arrived without warning. With an army of army excavators. It was early in the morning. People had to run out. Grabbing what they could. Then came the shabiha [militiamen loyal to the regime] and took the windows, the cables... everything," recalls Abu Hamed, a 70-year-old Syrian who lives exactly across the street that marked the dividing line between Wadi al Jouz and the neighboring district.
The soldiers razed about 100,000 square meters in just three days.
"They crushed all the neighborhoods where there was resistance", adds Abu Hamed.
The dictatorship's supposed "urban planning" plans were consolidated with other regulations until the approval of the infamous Laws Number 3 and 18 of 2018, which "regulated" the demolition of damaged dwellings and allowed the confiscation of countless properties under the pretext that their inhabitants had not presented documents proving ownership. An impossible task given that most were in exile or were afraid to go to a government building for fear of being arrested.
In the north of the country, in the city of Maarat al Numan, in Idlib, the looting did not affect one or two neighborhoods. It spread throughout the population. What remains of it seems to have suffered an invasion of building-devouring locusts, which have reduced buildings to empty walls from which tiles, cables, switches, windows, doors, and any other salvageable items were ripped off.
Here, the predatory assault by the allied brigades of the central power began in mid-2020, once Damascus managed to evict opposition groups from this town, where nearly 100,000 people once lived.
"They started with the furniture and then continued stealing everything, even the plugs and floor tiles," explains Ahmed Minwer Qutaini, in charge of Maarat al Numan.
The Damascus envoy acknowledges that the destruction is a problem that surpasses them and prevents the return of the city's inhabitants. "Only 600 families have returned. There is no electricity, no water, and very few homes are habitable. Maarat al Numan has 500 villages. 50 have been completely destroyed, down to the last house. The rest have suffered brutal damage," he admits.
The agricultural lands in the surrounding area also show the terrible legacy of this kind of frenzy for plunder instituted by the regime. The road from Maarat al Numan to the village of Maar Shammarin is full of former olive groves of which only the severed trunks remain, some driven into the ground, while others are a series of holes reminiscent of lunar surface craters.
Mohamed Mutaz, 61, had over a thousand of these trees stolen. "Some were over 200 years old," he points out. "They were sold as firewood. They weren't even aware of the value of such an old olive tree," he adds.
The devastation and looting of large regions of the country have become one of the biggest challenges for the new authorities in Damascus, unable to provide housing for the nearly 7.4 million displaced people the country had counted by the end of last year.
A study published days ago by the Syria Response Coordinators group, which scrutinized the capital and rural areas of Damascus, Idlib, Hama, Homs, Aleppo, and Deir Ezzor, estimated that at least 65,000 homes and apartment blocks have been razed to the ground in those areas, and over 113,000 have suffered damage that makes them uninhabitable.
In Qaboun, Governor Maher Marwan, a former rebel settled in Idlib, listened for hours to the complaints of the residents standing on the hill, protected by a cohort of hooded individuals armed with AK-47s.
In the end, overwhelmed by the requests, he had to conclude with a phrase repeated a thousand times in recent weeks. "Nothing that happens in the future can be worse than what we have experienced during the regime", he declared. A mantra that all experts agree has a very short expiration date.