The Syrians return to the houses they fled to, only to find them flattened Syria War News

Damascus, Syria – 34-year-old Nizar al-Madani stopped in tears while looking around Qaboo.

After seven years of displacement, he returned to his neighborhood in the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, only to find it in ruins.

“We had heard that the regime had demolished the neighborhood, but seeing it with my own eyes was very shocking,” he said.

When Al-Madani and his family were relocated from Gabon in 2017, many buildings in the neighborhood were damaged.

“But today there are no traces of these buildings… The regime has destroyed the characteristics of the neighborhood.”

He wasn’t the only one who went to Qabun to see what was left after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Several Gabonese residents fleeing for their lives are trying to figure out where their homes might be.

Revenge and destruction

Once the al-Assad regime regains control, it will deliberately destroy areas that rise up against it, using various laws to legitimize it.

Among them was Law No. 10 of 2018, which allowed the creation of new urban zones in war-torn areas and gave Syrian refugees just 30 days to prove ownership of their property. Failure to do so will result in forfeiture of the property.

Many people were too afraid to return to Syria or their neighborhoods for fear of being arrested and accused of opposing Assad.

Nadeedah Hannawi, 50, told Al Jazeera that her family fled to the north, where there is no bureaucracy controlled by the regime, and could not prove ownership of their home and did not have ownership documents.

“The fallen Assad regime not only oppressed us; he was trying to steal the houses we built with our life savings,” Hannawi said.

“It was not an easy task to determine where my house and my husband’s shop were,” she said. “Even the cemetery with the graves of our loved ones was destroyed.

“The most important thing today is that the criminal Bashar al-Assad has escaped, his regime has fallen and our lands have been returned to us. We will rebuild it together,” said Hannawi.

53-year-old Mahmud Jahbar also repeated his opinion.

“The al-Assad regime has destroyed our homes and our memories, but we hope to restore the places our children can call home.”