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Bashar al-Assad’s regime has laid out a blueprint for the
reconstruction of Syria. But this rebuilding works towards a social-
cleansing agenda, say Syrian architects and urban planners Fakhani
and Abou Zainedin. They spoke with Alessio Perrone.C
urrently based in London, Hani
and Sawsan (pictured left) are the
co-founders of Sakan, a social
enterprise for affordable and recovery-
driven housing in Syria. In the first few
years of the revolution, they described
themselves as activists.Alessio: You recently wrote that the
Syrian government has started appro-
priating neighbourhoods around the
country. Does this mean that the post-
war reconstruction of Syria has started
before the war has even ended?
Hani: Absolutely. We don’t know for how
many years the conflict will continue, but
the regime has already set out a frame-
work for reconstruction.
Bashar al-Assad is trying to promote
the image that Syria is rebuilding because
it’s a sign of victory – with reconstruc-
tion, they’re declaring to the world that
the war is over.You said that the devastation of Syria can
only be understood by looking at destruc-
tion and reconstruction together. Why?Sawsan: Because when talking about the
devastation of Syria, people usually think
of the destroyed buildings – but there is
much more than that.
If you look at which areas have been
destroyed, you’ll find that the vast
majority are former opposition areas.
First, they were vacuumed during the
war – their populations were forcibly
displaced. Now the reconstruction is
ensuring that the residents will never
return because the state is building
houses they can’t afford there.
We call it the ‘urbicide’ of Syria.
Genocide is the act of deliberately killing
a group with a certain identity. Urbicide
is how you do this in a city: in Syria, the
regime is weaponizing urban planning
to engineer demographic change and
‘cleanse’ certain groups.
Hani: Destruction and reconstruction are
leading to the same political goal. First,
destruction was a military tool used to
drive out a specific group because they
were threats to the regime. Now new con-
struction is coming to consolidate this
displacement.Which areas and groups are being
targeted?
Hani: It’s mostly opposition areas and
informal settlements. Informal settle-
ments host up to 50 per cent of Syrians.
They aren’t slums in Syria. They are con-
crete buildings built on public land, or on
private land but without permission.
Sawsan: It also runs across sectarian lines
and religious identities. In Homs opposi-
tion Sunni neighbourhoods were razed to
the ground, but Alawite neighbourhoods
were largely spared. Why? Because they
were loyalist.
It’s tricky to make it so black-and-
white. No area was 100 per cent for or
against the regime. And the regime was
trying to get rid of informal settlements
even before the war. But there’s definitely
a strategy behind this.How does it work? Can you give us an
example?
Hani: So far, Marota City in Basateen
al-Razi, Damascus, is the only project in
the building stage and it serves as the gov-
ernment’s blueprint for reconstruction.Hani Fakhani and
Sawsan Abou Zainedin
THE INTERVIEWNOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2019 53