Not even the tombstones in the cemeteries are still standing in Bab Amro, stronghold of the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad in Homs. It could be the Ohio of Syria, the average province shared by Sunni Muslims (70% of the population), Shiite Alawites (20%) and Christians (10%) for centuries, but the industrial capital of the Arab country has become a martyr city, symbol of the barbarism with which the regime punished its own people. “I had to look for food in the garbage for three years so as not to die of starvation, like other neighbors,” Abdul al Mulhen, 70, describes the long siege to which the army subjected Bab Amro until 2015, under artillery fire and explosions of barrel bombs dropped from helicopters. “Without food or medicine, we remained in a hell in which it was better to die,” remembers this retired state official, in the heat of a drum where some firewood is burning at the minibus stop. Among the rubble, skeletons of buildings stand out in which those who never left Bab Amro, like Al Mulhen, live poorly.
The third largest Syrian city, a central crossroads between Damascus (160 kilometers to the south) and Aleppo, between the Mediterranean coast and the desert interior, lost 40% of its 1.2 million inhabitants, including its conurbation. Like the rest of the Arab country, the gross domestic product of once-prosperous Homs has plummeted by 50% over the last decade, the World Bank estimates.
In a decade of complete control of the city, the regime barely addressed the reconstruction of Homs. Shortly after his overthrow, the titanic task is left in the hands of the new authorities. The Islamist militiamen who won two weeks ago have become security guards, like Hussein al Hayan, 31, who boasts of having been a police officer for “three days.” Sheikh Shamir al Homsi is the provisional mayor. This Sunni cleric who arrived from the rebel stronghold of Idlib (northwest) together with the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) militias concentrates all power, military and civil, but is not present either in the office or in the official residence of the councilor. Nobody can find him.
“We have detailed plans to rebuild the neighborhoods devastated during the war, with plans and budgets, but I couldn’t say what the cost is, the Syrian pound is no longer what it was…”, explains engineer Abdalá Albouab, 62, head of the municipal administration. When the war began, the local currency was exchanged at 50 units per dollar. Now between 12,000 and 14,000 pounds are given. “We also have nothing to rebuild Syria with,” he admits, “and without some kind of Marshall plan for international investments we will never get ahead.”
In the era without Assad that is beginning, electricity and gasoline are scarce, and large wads of bills are needed to pay for everyday purchases. Syria’s new Islamist leaders, who have come to power by force of arms from a past bordering on jihadism, prefer to remain in the shadows. This saves them from having to answer questions from the foreign press about whether they plan to ban the sale of alcohol or impose the wearing of the Islamic veil on all women. Senior officials show their faces for now in the new Syria.
“Our goal is for Homs to become a normal city again,” Albouab summarizes the transitional municipal program. Compared to other large Syrian cities, such as Deraa, in the south, or Damascus and its periphery, the apparent remoteness of the war since 2015 is palpable in the urban center, such as the iconic Clock Square — still the scene of celebrations for the fall of the regime—and the surrounding commercial streets. Waving the new national flag, doctor Bilan al Zabak, 27, has embarked on a round trip, like seven million other internally displaced people due to the conflict. He had to leave Eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus region, after the chemical attack in 2013 and escape to Idlib. “I have returned to visit my parents for the first time in 11 years,” he explains in the same square, “but my life and my family are now in the north, where I am now heading again.”
Among the more than five million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, sisters Ashia and Yasmin Kabaji, with five children at 36 years old and six children at 34 years old, respectively, have just returned to the desolate district of Bab Amro, from where They came out 12 years ago. “We have already been able to educate them all,” says the eldest of them. “In the Lebanon camp, just across the border, we couldn’t make a living. Our husbands are still in Beirut, working on whatever is coming up, but they will return soon,” says the youngest. His house still partially stands. At the moment they have been welcomed by relatives waiting to be able to rehabilitate the home. “It is still uninhabitable, but we are better in Syria,” agrees with his sister Yasmin Kabaji. “We just need God to send us peace and freedom,” Ashia replies.
Of the 190,000 inhabitants registered in Bab Amro in 2011, only a fifth remain today in the former insurgent stronghold, although hundreds of them are returning every day from the diaspora in a ritual of reunion. First they locate their living relatives, then the graves of the deceased, and then they check to see if their houses are still standing. The reconstruction of Syria is already being tested in Homs, where the absence of essential services hampers the return of refugees who want to resettle in their country, even in a semi-ruined home.
Civil servants earn less than 30 euros a month and in the private sector salaries are not much higher. Moonlighting is the norm. 90% of the population is below the poverty line, and one in four Syrians is mired in extreme poverty, in a country where the income necessary to support a family is estimated at between 200 and 300 euros per month. . So that the new Syria does not collapse from starvation, the new authorities have promised to increase salaries starting in January. The economic crisis in Lebanon, where many Syrians had deposited their savings during the war, and the control of oil fields by the Kurdish militias, backed by Washington, have just emptied the coffers of a country ruined for more than a decade. of contention. Without the lifting of the sanctions imposed on the regime by the US and the EU, the terminally ill patient will hardly be able to be revived. Among many other needs, more than 8,000 schools must be rehabilitated and a third of the health system must be put back into service so that Syria stops being a failed state.
The cost of rebuilding the Arab country will be enormous. The Central Bank has confirmed that the 26 tons of gold (equivalent to about 2.2 billion dollars or about 2.1 billion euros) deposited in its safe in 2011 are still intact, but of the 14 billion dollars of foreign currency reserves recorded then by The International Monetary Fund only has a couple of hundred million left. Estimates from 2020 suggested that at least 250 billion dollars, almost 240 billion euros, would be necessary to repair the most serious damages of the war.
“With what I have been able to save in Lebanon, I am going to rebuild my house in Bab Amro. But first I have to return to Sidon to look for my wife and five children and settle my affairs,” acknowledges Ahmed Bizan, a 44-year-old transporter also back in Bab Amro. “I hope that together we can build a new Syria,” he longs, “because without democracy and prosperity we will have to leave Homs again.”
