Fahd successfully completed his work inside the house, removing the unexploded ordnance he found. However, one of the villagers asked him to inspect the land surrounding the property as well. Unbeknownst to him, the adjacent area concealed a large minefield. Minutes later, an explosion rang out.

According to the account of a witness who was at the scene, as relayed by Walid al-Ghajr’s father, Fahd entered the area believing it to be safe after completing his inspection of the house, before a landmine exploded and killed him. He adds: “There was a minefield that nobody knew existed. The mine exploded in front of him and he was killed instantly. No one was able to reach him directly, and Civil Defence personnel had to retrieve his body using ropes because of the density of mines surrounding him.”

Fahd was no ordinary civilian. After obtaining his secondary school certificate in 2009, he enlisted in the army as a “non-commissioned officer” specialising in engineering. During his military service, he was seriously injured whilst on a mission to defuse an explosive device, leaving him with a permanent injury to his shoulder.

Following the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, al-Ghajr defected from the regime’s forces in 2012, completed his university studies, and then worked as a teacher in schools in his hometown of al-Tah and in displacement camps. In 2017, he was wounded again by an airstrike, which left him with a permanent disability in his left leg.

Despite his multiple injuries, Fahd returned after the fall of the Assad regime to take part in clearing mines and other remnants of war, travelling between Damascus, Afrin and Idlib to help secure areas to which residents had begun returning. Yet his end came from the very danger he had dedicated years of his life to tackling.

The man who survived war injuries and aerial bombardment, and who worked to clear mines across different parts of Syria, was killed in a landmine explosion while carrying out his work.

His father says: “My son survived the regime, he survived the bombardment, and he survived many injuries during the war, but a single landmine after liberation took him from us forever.”

While his children and their mother rely on aid and borrowing from local shops, his father, who is over seventy-five years old, says he was forced to sell his 25 dunums (approximately 2.5 hectares, or 6.2 acres) of olive groves in order to support his children and grandchildren after years of war.

“Fahd left behind four children without a breadwinner,” says the father. “He used to go out every day to save families from the danger of landmines, but today his children are waiting for someone to save them from poverty and hardship.”

The most dangerous job in Syria! 

The clearance of landmines and other remnants of war has become one of the most dangerous tasks in Syria. At the same time, the country is experiencing one of the largest waves of return among displaced people since the outbreak of the revolution, which the Assad regime turned into a war against the Syrian people.

According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 1.6 million people returned to their home areas between the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 and the spring of 2026. This figure includes hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as large numbers of internally displaced people.

Like Fahd al-Ghajr, volunteers and mine clearance workers are paying with their lives for inadequate training, a lack of equipment, insufficient funding and the absence of relevant maps, whilst Syrians are returning in increasing numbers to areas still contaminated with war ordnance.

To document the working conditions of mine clearance and explosive-remnants-of-war teams in Syria, and how a lack of equipment is costing the lives of volunteers engaged in demining operations, the investigative team adopted a multi-source methodology. Over three months of monitoring and reporting, the journalists compiled a database of 27 documented mine explosion incidents that resulted in the death or injury of demining personnel in Syria during 2025 and 2026. The incidents were identified through official and human rights sources, with each case linked to open-source material, video footage and visual content published online, particularly on social media.

To strengthen the reliability of the available evidence, the team collected first-hand testimonies from local residents and cross-checked them against the digital data it had gathered. Interviews were conducted with 12 experts and demining personnel, including members of the Syrian Ministry of Defence and the Syrian Civil Defence, as well as demining volunteers and relatives of victims.

The methodology subsequently included analysing dozens of published photographs and videos documenting mine clearance operations and the destruction of munitions, comparing them with the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS), whilst verifying the visual material by cross-referencing the locations, dates and information contained therein with independent sources.

The team also reviewed reports and documents issued by the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), as well as specialist human rights and international organisations.

The aim was to assess the impact of the absence of minefield maps and the shortage of equipment and supplies on the safety of those working to clear mines and other remnants of war across the country.

Whilst the lack of maps is one of the most significant risks to mine clearance workers, analysis of the visual material and interviews with workers reveals that the problem extends beyond a lack of information to the absence of a significant proportion of protective equipment and supplies, which are considered essential under international standards for mine action (IMAS).

After reviewing 104 photos and video footage collected by researchers documenting mine clearance and munitions disposal operations in various parts of Syria, the investigation team observed that the majority of workers were using “standard military clothing or partial protective gear instead of internationally approved specialist protective equipment, which costs thousands of US dollars”.

The analysis found that 71 visual items (68% of the material reviewed) showed personnel operating without full face protection. In addition, 53% of personnel appeared without protective vests specifically designed for mine clearance operations.

In many cases, specialised vehicles for transporting and destroying explosives were absent, whilst some footage showed munitions being transported or detonated using limited field resources compared to the equipment stipulated in the International Mine Action Standards (IMAS), reflecting a clear gap between the scale of the risks faced by workers and the resources available to them on the ground.

The findings revealed that between 2025 and 2026, 57 workers and volunteers were killed whilst carrying out clearance operations or handling unexploded ordnance; the majority of the victims were members of engineering units affiliated with the Syrian Ministry of Defence, whilst 26 out of 27 incidents were linked to direct field clearance operations, reflecting the scale of the risks faced by personnel in this field.

International standards for mine clearance require the use of a comprehensive system of personal protective equipment, including protective armour designed to withstand the effects of explosions and shrapnel, face and eye protection, as well as specialised detection equipment and safe mechanisms for excavation, transport and detonation. However, these requirements appear far removed from the reality on the ground in which several Syrian teams are currently operating.

According to estimations made by the investigation team, based on the prices of specialised mine clearance equipment, the minimum cost of equipping a single worker with an acceptable level of protection is approximately US$15,496. This sum includes a light protective suit priced at approximately US$9,500 and a specialised Vallon VMH3CS mine detector costing around US$5,996. These estimates do not include the costs of shipping, training and maintenance, nor equipment for safe excavation, transport and detonation. The International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) stipulate that personal protective equipment must provide protection against the effects of an explosion equivalent to 240 grams of TNT, depending on the nature of the work and the distance from the source of danger.

Demining expert Mohammed Adnan al-Farhoud believes that the lack of equipment not only increases the risk of injury to personnel, but also slows clearance operations, delays the return of residents to their areas, and raises the human and economic cost of the landmine problem, one of the most complex challenges facing post-war Syria.

Suhaib Mohammed Zarour, who was injured while taking part in mine clearance operations with the Military Operations Directorate following the liberation of Aleppo, says that the shortage of equipment was one of the factors that increased the dangers of the work.

“When I was injured, we did not have sufficient equipment, and I did not have an advanced detection device that I could fully rely on,” he says. “Even today, the equipment available still falls short of actual needs.”

The issue is not limited to detection operations alone, but extends to the transport and destruction of munitions.

Casualties on a rescue mission

Neither Suhaib’s injury nor the death of Fahd al-Ghajr were the first incidents in which someone was injured or lost their life whilst attempting to clear mines in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime.

In the town of Ain Issa, in the north of Raqqa governorate, two soldiers, Ibrahim Khalil al-Hassan and Musa Khalaf al-Salim, were killed whilst taking part in the clearance of mines laid by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Khalil Hamoud al-Ali, who runs a local demining team and whose team included the two young men, said: “The mine was a strip connected to two mines. The team defused the first mine and thought the area was safe, but the second mine exploded as soon as they moved forward, and they were killed instantly.”

Over more than 14 years of war, vast swathes of Syria have become contaminated with landmines and other remnants of war. Whilst attention is usually focused on civilian casualties, demining workers also pay a heavy price as they attempt to secure these areas. 

Maysara al-Hassan, commander of engineering operations for the 80th Division, says that the former front-line areas in the southern Idlib countryside, northern Hama countryside and western Latakia countryside alone saw an estimated 15,000 mine-related deaths and injuries between 2020 and 2024. The figure highlights the scale of the danger that continues to threaten both civilians and mine clearance teams.

According to Human Rights Watch, landmines have killed and injured more than 600 people, including children, since December 2024, whilst they continue to pose one of the most significant obstacles to safe return, reconstruction and the resumption of agricultural activity in many parts of Syria.

A large proportion of these returns are concentrated in the governorates of Rural Damascus, Homs, Aleppo and Idlib, which are among the areas most heavily affected by landmines, unexploded ordnance and the remnants of military operations. As the pace of return accelerates, the risks facing returnees are increasing, with many finding themselves facing homes, fields and roads that have not yet undergone full clearance or demining operations.

According to data from the Directorate of Social Affairs and Labour in Idlib, some 719,000 people are still living in more than 750 camps in north-western Syria, whilst the government aims to return some 35,000 families to their home regions by 2026. However, the return is not only linked to the rehabilitation of homes and infrastructure; it also faces another, less visible yet more deadly threat: landmines and unexploded ordnance that remain scattered across the vast areas of the cities, towns and fields. 

Fadl Abdul Ghani, Executive Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), believes that the documented figures represent only the minimum extent of the actual losses, explaining that many incidents occur in remote areas or are not fully documented.

He says: “The demining operations themselves have become a source of fatalities, with dozens of casualties occurring during clearance work. This highlights the gap between on-the-ground needs and available resources, and necessitates the establishment of a national coordination structure and the provision of systematic training and appropriate equipment for the teams carrying out the work.”

Data from local and international organisations indicate that landmines and unexploded ordnance continue to pose one of the greatest threats to civilians and humanitarian workers, particularly in areas that have witnessed rapid military withdrawals or frequent changes in control during years of conflict.

The Civil Defence describes the remnants of war resulting from the former regime’s bombardment as a long-term, ongoing threat affecting civilians’ lives, as they remain explosive for years and impact residential and agricultural areas as well as children’s play areas.

A field visit to one of the mine clearance and war debris removal sites in the Khan Sheikhoun area of the Idlib countryside, documenting the transport, processing and detonation of unexploded ordnance. May 2026 – SIRAJ

Mines Without Maps

Maps of mine contamination in Syria reveal the extent of the danger across a vast area of the country, where minefields and unexploded ordnance are scattered across dozens of sites in the governorates of Idlib, Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Rural Damascus and Daraa. This widespread distribution reflects the scale of the explosive legacy left behind by years of war, and makes mine clearance an essential prerequisite for the return of residents, reconstruction and the restoration of normal life in the affected areas.

Three workers in this field say that the nature of the work has changed significantly since the fall of the regime. Instead of dealing with known minefields or specific military zones, teams are now faced with vast swathes of undocumented contaminated areas, ranging from homes and agricultural fields to schools, public facilities and roads.

The risks are not limited to conventional mines, but also include improvised explosive devices, unexploded ordnance and the remnants of combat left behind by years of war. All too often, workers find themselves confronted with various types of explosives laid by multiple parties – ranging from forces of the former regime to ISIS, the Syrian Democratic Forces and other factions – without any maps or records specifying their locations or nature.

According to the report by Mine Action Review for 2025, there is still no comprehensive national database or accurate map of mine contamination in Syria, as mines were laid by multiple parties during the years of conflict, including forces of the former Syrian regime, ISIS, the SDF and other armed factions. Furthermore, cluster munitions dropped by warplanes continue to pose an additional threat, the exact distribution of which is difficult to determine.

A report published by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR)  on 4 April 2026 indicates that the true extent of mine contamination remains unknown, as no comprehensive national survey has been carried out to date, meaning that those working on mine clearance often operate without prior knowledge of where the dangers lie.

In one of the videos reviewed by the investigation team, which was shared by Syrians on social media, an explosives expert appeared explaining how the team operates. Although he lost one of his legs in a previous explosion, he emphasised during the recording that locating these sites often relies on accounts from local residents and reports from the community, given the absence of official field maps.

Malik Salama, a former officer and volunteer in mine clearance, says: “One of the biggest challenges facing demining efforts in Syria today is the lack of official maps of minefields. After years of conflict, no accurate records have been provided specifying the locations or types of mines, which makes surveying and clearance operations more dangerous and exposes civilians and engineering teams to constant risk.”

“When we receive a report of an area where a mine has exploded, we treat the entire area as contaminated and dangerous, because in most cases we do not have reliable maps. And even when we do find maps, they cannot be fully relied upon, as many areas have been under the control of several successive parties, each of which laid mines without documenting them,” says demining expert Mohammed al-Farhoud.

Al-Farhoud defected from the Syrian regime’s forces at the start of the revolution; he had been carrying out his compulsory military service in Aleppo, specialising in the protection of embassies and diplomatic missions. Over the course of the revolution, he became one of the leading specialists in mine laying and clearance. He was injured whilst defusing a mine before later continuing his work with the Syrian Ministry of Defence’s mine clearance teams.

He adds: “If you have a clear map, you can move quickly and work along a specific route; but when you have no map at all, every step becomes a calculated one. You might be able to cover a hundred metres in an hour if the information is available, but without maps, you might need the same amount of time just to cover a few metres.”

Mine detection operations rely on two main methods. The first is technical surveying using metal detectors, which are capable of detecting metallic objects in general, but are not always specialised or advanced equipment designed specifically for mine detection. The second method is non-technical surveying, which relies on interviews with local residents and reports they provide regarding the presence of suspicious objects or remnants of war.

The investigation team contacted the Syrian Ministry of Defence to request a comment on the absence of maps and the number of casualties among engineering teams, but had not received a reply by the time of publication. The team also sought to verify the existence of military maps or records documenting the locations of mines laid by forces of the former Syrian regime or other parties during the years of conflict; however, officials and mine clearance workers confirmed that there is no centralised database or unified national register that can be consulted to identify areas contaminated by mines and remnants of war.

Given this reality, every mine clearance operation is akin to entering unknown territory, where workers do not know in advance what awaits them beneath the ground.

Whilst vast areas of the country remain contaminated with landmines and explosive remnants of war, experts and international organisations warn that the slow pace of clearance operations will lead to further civilian casualties among those returning to their home areas. Richard Weir, senior researcher in the Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, says in a report published by the organisation on 8 April 2025: “For the first time in more than a decade, there is an opportunity to systematically address the proliferation of explosive ordnance in Syria through the clearance of landmines and explosive remnants of war. Without urgent nationwide demining efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim their basic rights, lives, livelihoods and land will be injured or killed.”

How are landmines cleared?

In the absence of accurate maps and given the vast extent of contamination by landmines and unexploded ordnance, mine clearance teams in Syria rely on a combination of field experience and strict safety procedures to identify and deal with hazardous sites. Whilst some missions begin with a report from a local resident or the results of field surveys, every clearance operation unfolds as a series of meticulous steps aimed at preventing further casualties among both civilians and personnel.

In the town of Killi, in the north of Idlib Governorate, near the Syrian-Turkish border, the organisation “HALO Trust” has been working for more than five years with a group of experts, volunteers and local residents to clear unexploded ordnance from homes, farmlands and residential neighbourhoods to which residents are gradually returning.

The organisation relies on two main teams for its work. The first is the non-technical survey team, which is responsible for surveying and documenting sites containing explosive remnants of war and identifying their types. Its members take photographs, carry out field measurements and record data relating to the munitions discovered. Members of this team are strictly prohibited from handling explosives directly or detonating them; their role is limited to documentation and risk assessment.

The second team is the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team, which responds to confirmed reports of the presence of landmines or unexploded ordnance and is tasked with removing or destroying them in accordance with strict standard operating procedures that must be followed prior to any field intervention.

Lama Haj Qaddour (age 32) works as part of this team; she has been leading operations to clear munitions, landmines and improvised explosive devices for around five years in the area stretching from Idlib and south of Saraqib to the M4 international highway.

Last September, a team from SIRAJ accompanied the organisation “Halo Trust” on a field mission to locate unexploded ordnance reported by a local resident near the town of Saraqib. During the journey, the scars of war were evident in the area, which had previously been a frontline between opposition forces and the ousted Assad regime, reflecting the scale of the burden placed on the survey and clearance teams working there.

Al-Haj Qaddour explains that disposing of any unexploded ordnance requires meticulous procedures and specialised training, which the team members have undergone over many years, giving them practical experience in dealing with these hazards. She adds that before commencing any operation to clear mines, bombs or other munitions, the team follows a series of strict safety protocols to ensure the task is carried out with the least possible risk.

This includes preparing the work environment and establishing what is known as a ‘safety perimeter’ – an area marked out around the target to be destroyed – whilst ensuring the area is completely evacuated of residents before the operation begins.

After the detonation, the team carries out a field inspection to ensure the munition has been completely destroyed and that no dangerous fragments remain at the site.

According to Al-Haj Qaddour: “This is of the utmost importance because large fragments may only be partially destroyed,” explaining that dealing with the shrapnel resulting from the detonation is no less important than disposing of the munitions themselves, given that some small fragments “are capable of killing a person”.

Although Lama works according to a structured methodology for the disposal of explosive devices, munitions and landmines, there remains a fundamental problem facing Syria as a whole: the absence of official records identifying the locations of landmines and remnants of war.

Who is responsible for these ‘fields of death’?

The landmine crisis in Syria cannot be understood in isolation from the parties that laid them during the years of conflict. Unlike many conventional conflicts, where minefields are associated with a single regular army or known defensive lines, the pattern of mine contamination in Syria has been shaped by years of control over the same areas by multiple forces, leading to the accumulation of successive layers of mines and unexploded ordnance in the very same locations.

Testimonies from demining experts interviewed by the investigation team indicate that large swathes of the country have seen successive military factions take control, with each laying its own mines without a unified database or mechanism to ensure the documentation of their locations or the subsequent handover of maps.

Expert Mohammed Adnan al-Farhoud explains that some of the areas in which he works today reveal the extent of the chaos left behind by years of war. He says: “At some sites, we found maps of mines laid by the Syrian regime, but then ISIS took control of the area and laid new lines, after which other groups came and laid additional mines. Therefore, even when we find a map, we cannot consider it complete or rely on it absolutely.”

Syria Is Not Party to International Mine Ban Treaties

More than 160 countries around the world have acceded to the Ottawa Convention, widely regarded as the leading international legal framework for banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines. However, Syria remains outside the convention. Nor is it a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits the use of cluster munitions and obliges signatory states to clear their remnants and assist their victims.

The impact of non-accession is not limited to symbolic or political aspects alone; it also has practical implications for the mechanisms governing mine action within the country. These two conventions impose a range of obligations on States Parties, including clearing mines from contaminated areas within specified timeframes, establishing national risk education programmes, providing medical, psychological and social support to victims, and sharing technical information and maps relating to areas contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance.

Abdul Ghani says that the current situation places a particular responsibility on the new Syrian government in this regard, adding: “Accession to the Ottawa Convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions must be part of the process of rebuilding state institutions after the war. It is not just a matter of banning the future use of these weapons, but also of recognising the rights of victims, drawing up a national demining plan, and ensuring that this tragedy is not repeated.”

Inadequate equipment… and avoidable risks

During a field visit to the Idlib countryside on 9 April 2025, the investigation team documented the destruction of explosive remnants of war carried out by engineering units affiliated with the Syrian Ministry of Defence.

The field inspection revealed that ordinary civilian and military lorries were being used to transport munitions, whilst a number of personnel involved in the operation were wearing standard military uniforms and light footwear, without any specialist protective gear.

The investigation also documented the use of relatively rudimentary field detonation methods, involving the wiring of explosives and manual ignition, in the absence of the specialised detonation equipment used in modern mine clearance programmes.

According to data from UNMAS, only a limited proportion of the funding required for mine clearance programmes has been provided in recent years, which has had a direct impact on the ability of operating agencies to purchase advanced equipment, train staff and secure the necessary protective equipment.

A battle without funding

Despite the widespread contamination by landmines and remnants of war in Syria, organisations working in this field face an additional challenge: a lack of funding to carry out survey and clearance operations in accordance with international standards, and to scale up their response to match the extent of contamination across Syria’s various governorates.

According to UNMAS, the mine action sector in Syria is suffering from a severe funding shortfall. The 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan estimates that $67.2 million is required to fund survey and clearance activities, risk education and victim assistance, with the aim of reaching approximately 15.4 million people affected or at risk. The programme has warned that the lack of funding is limiting the ability of operating agencies to scale up their operations and respond to the extensive contamination across the country. 

Those working in the field emphasise that limited funding directly affects the ability of implementing agencies to expand survey and clearance operations and to provide equipment and training in line with international standards.

The problem is not limited to the cost of equipment alone, as mine clearance operations require long-term investment, including the establishment of national databases, the conduct of extensive field surveys, the training of specialist teams, and the provision of medical and rehabilitative care for the injured. Both non-technical and technical survey operations also require significant human resources, and it may take years to obtain an accurate picture of the actual extent of contamination.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the clearance of explosive remnants of war may take several years.

In an attempt to address part of this gap, the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, through the National Centre for Mine Action and War Remnants, partnered with UNMAS and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).  Together, they launched a project, funded by the Japanese government, to clear mines and unexploded ordnance and rehabilitate agricultural infrastructure in affected areas.

The project aims “to support clearance operations, focusing on affected agricultural areas near former front lines, with the aim of enhancing civilian safety, supporting agricultural recovery and improving livelihoods in the governorates of Idlib, Aleppo and Hama, however, the scale of contamination across Syria far exceeds the capacity of current projects and requires long-term investment and programmes at the national level”.

Amid growing international attention to demining efforts in Syria, Michael Ohnmacht, Chargé d’Affaires of the European Union Delegation to Syria, said during a field visit to the Damascus countryside: “We have witnessed the scale of the destruction. Yet hope still lives on through the courageous work of mine clearance and raising awareness of the dangers. The European Union will continue to work with Syrian partners to make the land safer.”

In an effort to reduce the risks faced by demining workers, the National Centre for Mine Action, under the Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, announced in late 2025 that it would test a drone equipped with ‘magnetometer’ technology, capable of detecting mines and unexploded ordnance at depths of up to six metres below ground. The Civil Defence stated: “This technology can significantly reduce the risks faced by conventional survey teams by minimising the need to approach areas suspected of being contaminated directly.”

Despite these initiatives, data from the Syrian Civil Defence indicates that around 900 sites contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance have been identified, whilst other estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of mines and remnants of war are scattered across the country, making the scale of the challenge far greater than the resources currently available.

When volunteers take on the task

Local communities have been forced to rely on volunteers to secure agricultural land and residential areas in preparation for their return. In the town of al-Bara, located in the Jabal al-Zawiya region, some 30 kilometres south of Idlib, residents recount how their area has been turned into a minefield after years of war. Three of the town’s leading figures explain that the former Syrian army forced most of its residents – numbering around 300 families – to flee between 2018 and 2019, before turning the town and its surroundings into a military zone and planting mines in the land adjacent to the front lines with what were then opposition-held areas.

A few days after the fall of the Assad regime, residents began returning to inspect their homes and farmland, only to find widespread destruction: damaged houses, burnt fields, and landmines planted in farmland and on nearby roads.

Ibrahim Mohammed, a local resident, says that a number of civilians were killed when landmines exploded whilst they were attempting to return to or work on their land. Following repeated incidents, a team of volunteers arrived in the town and spent around a week carrying out mine clearance operations, during which they managed to remove nearly 50 landmines, including around 20 that had been planted on his farmland.

During their search operations, the team of volunteers discovered various types of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines that had been planted around the town and on its agricultural land. According to one team member, the mines discovered included anti-personnel mines of the OZM-72, PMN-1, YM-1 and POM-2S types, as well as PMN mines, and anti-vehicle mines of the YM-2 and YM-3 types. The variety and density of these mines reflect the extent of the contamination left behind by years of conflict in the region, and the ongoing risks this poses to both returning residents and those working on mine clearance.

Today, more than a year after Fahd al-Ghajr’s death, his wife and four children continue to live in a makeshift home made of corrugated iron sheets amidst olive groves. The man who spent years clearing mines from other people’s homes was unable to clear the mine that ended his own life.

• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad. 
• A version of this investigation was published on the Daraj website.

The post Explosive terrain… The unspoken cost of demining in Syria appeared first on SIRAJ.

The minutes of the meeting on May 29, 2024, show how much pressure Assad’s regime was under during its dying days from one of its closest allies. 

At one point in the talks, Russia’s deputy defense minister, General Yunus-bek Yevkurov, even threatened to cut off financing for oil operations if Syria didn’t pay up.

Russia had built up extensive interests in Syria’s oil sector under the Assad regime. In 2015, Russia intervened militarily in Syria, helping regain territory taken by the rebels. In return, Assad’s government had offered contracts to Russian companies to rebuild the energy sector.

“We do not want oil extraction and production to stop, because this will be a strong blow to the Syrian economy,” said Yevkurov, according to the meeting minutes obtained by OCCRP’s Syrian media partner SIRAJ.

Yevkurov did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting. 

Negotiations about the much larger debt owed to Russia have continued under Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel commander who now serves as Syrian president. The Kremlin has reportedly sought to maintain military bases it established under Assad, while Damascus has asked for debt relief and other concessions.

That puts Syria in a delicate position as the new government attempts to rebuild the country, along with its relationships to the international community — including countries at odds with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. 

But Syria needs help from whoever can offer it. The country is devastated after 13 years of war, and the government has few options to pay for reconstruction, which will cost an estimated $216 billion, according to the World Bank. 

To make matters worse, Syria faces a total debt of about $27 billion, according to its central bank. As much as $22.3 billion of that debt is external, with at least $1.2 billion owed to Russia, according to a World Bank assessment of the country’s economy in 2025, referencing official data.

Military Chokehold

Russia also has a chokehold on Syria’s military, which gives the Kremlin even more leverage in negotiations. The Assad family, which ruled for half a century, built up a military primarily on Russian weaponry. This leaves the new government dependent on Russian arms to maintain the strength it needs to enforce security.

“For the past 50 years, all of Syria’s military capabilities have been of Russian origin,” said Osama al-Qadi, a senior economic policy advisor for Syria’s Ministry of Economy and Industry. “Therefore, it needs spare parts, new weapons to modernize its older Russian arsenal.” 

Under Assad, Syria also allowed the Russian military to establish bases directly on its territory.

Al-Qadi has not participated in the talks with Russia, but he said that, in addition to arms purchases, he believes the two sides have discussed Russia’s continued use of its naval base near the city of Tartus. Russia may also be allowed to maintain its Hmeimim Air Base near the coastal city of Latakia “on the condition that it remains under Syrian administration to prevent it from becoming a haven for remnants of the old regime.”

“In return, any debts or contracts signed by the regime with the Russians could be overlooked,” al-Qadi told SIRAJ.

He said he believed negotiations around such an agreement constituted “a significant part of the joint Syrian-Russian talks during President al-Sharaa’s visit to Russia” in January 2026.

When al-Sharaa took over the presidency a year earlier, one of the first things he did was ask for Russian loans taken out by the Assad regime to be cancelled, Reuters reported. By October, he said his government would honor deals the Assad regime had made with Russia.

The Syrian Foreign Affairs and Finance Ministries did not respond to questions about debt negotiations, while the Ministry of Energy said the matter was not with them.

A recent report by the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, noted that 

“Russia retains influence through debt leverage, military basing and security mediation.”

Tough Talk

The leaked minutes, obtained by SIRAJ and its Syrian partner Zaman Al Wasl, show Russian officials using similar leverage in talks with Assad-regime officials.

The May 2024 meeting at the presidential palace in Damascus was attended by a delegation led by Yevkurov, the Russian deputy defense minister, who met with Mansour Azzam, then Syria’s Minister for Presidency Affairs. 

“We have been paying the costs of the Russian soldiers and the Syrian workers,” Yevkurov said, at a monthly tally of $4.5 million. He also demanded that Syria pay an additional $1.16 million monthly for “re-equipping Russian support points that will protect the sites”. 

Yevkurov then said Russia would stop paying those costs from June 2024, and he demanded that Syria pick up the bill. 

Alluding that Syria was withholding payments, Yevkurov warned: “I do not like anyone cheating me… The dialogue with the minister of oil will be in another style.”

Yevkurov said the total debt for the specific services under discussion — which was only part of the much larger bill owed to Russia — amounted to $37.16 million. 

Yevkurov said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not know about that $37 million owed, which put him in a “predicament.” 

“The new Russian Minister of Defense will raise the topic of this debt… or he will inform President Putin about it,” he said. “Surely then the president will ask, how did this happen… I cannot say to the president that I fell short and I do not know how to justify this debt.” 

Azzam was conciliatory as he tried to alleviate Russian concerns, saying: “I believe that we will be able in a very short span to solve all these problems.”

OCCRP could not contact Azzam directly. The Syrian consulate in Moscow, where Azzam is reportedly located, did not respond to a request for comment.

Oil for Protection

Nine years before Azzam and Yevkurov spoke in Damascus, Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war, giving the Assad regime a much-needed advantage.

By that time, the regime was financially depleted and incapable of securing its own energy infrastructure. In return for military support, Damascus reportedly began offering “all possible incentives” to Russian companies to rebuild the energy sector. 

According to the European Union sanctions list, the Russian company Evro Polis LLC “signed a number of contracts with the Syrian regime, through the state-owned General Petroleum Corp.” The company received 25 percent “from the production of oil and gas in fields captured by the Wagner Group,” a Russian paramilitary force fighting for Assad.

The EU called Evro Polis “a front for the Wagner Group,” which was run by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

Prigozhin turned against Putin in 2023, leading a group of Wagner fighters from the Ukrainian front towards Moscow in a short-lived rebellion. He called off the uprising, but died in a mysterious air crash two months later, in August 2023.

By the time of the meeting in Damascus, the minutes show that Russia was intending to transfer the oil contracts away from Evro Polis. Yevkurov asked why the company was still receiving fees for the Ebla and Hayan gas and oil facilities in central Syria.

“According to our information, Ebla and Hayan still pay amounts to the Evro Polis company and we request that you investigate this,” said Yevkurov, asking: “Why do they pay Evro Polis?”

He demanded the Syrian Ministry of Oil sign a contract with a different company, ERPOST-M, which reportedly opened an official branch in Damascus in 2024 to provide security services for facilities, including oil fields. 

By the end of that year, the Assad regime had fallen and Syrian-Russian relations had taken a dramatic turn. 

Syria’s negotiations with Russia have since been complicated by a host of other geopolitical considerations, according to analysts. Al-Sharaa’s government is concerned with preventing both internal rebellion, and Israeli incursions over the border. The new government also needs to balance its relationship with Russia vis-a-vis its diplomatic rapprochement with ِEurope and the U.S.

“The Syrians certainly take into account the fact that the Russians are — among the big countries — the only ones possibly willing to send troops to southern Syria to protect them from Israel,” said Jihad Yazigi, a Syria expert and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

Russia could also choose to prop up the new government’s adversaries, explained Soqrat al-Alou, a Syrian political economy researcher at the Arab Reform Initiative, a Paris-based think tank.

The Kremlin could “stir or contain unrest along the coast through networks linked to Alawite constituencies and remnants of former regime military,” he said.

But accommodating Russia’s desire to maintain a military presence in Syria could alienate countries Damascus wants to have good relations with.

Al-Alou noted that the U.S. appears to accept “a limited Russian presence” in Syria, as “its concerns lie elsewhere.”

“European actors, by contrast, appear more sensitive to the entrenchment of Russian influence,” he said.

Fact-checking was provided by the OCCRP Fact-Checking Desk.

Fact-checking was provided by the OCCRP Fact-Checking Desk.

The post Russia Threatened to Halt Syrian Oil Operations if Assad Regime Didn’t Pay Debt appeared first on SIRAJ.

One of the most prominent examples is the former frontline south of Idlib Governorate, which separated regime forces from opposition forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). This line extends across large parts of the countryside of Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia. It is considered one of the most heavily contaminated areas with landmines, according to Abdul Razzaq al-Qantar, Director of Victim Support Department at the Syrian Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management’s National Mine Action Center.

Between 2020 and 2024, the region witnessed thousands of deaths and injuries caused by landmine explosions, reaching around 15,000 cases, according to statements by Maysara al-Hassan, Operations Commander of the Engineering Regiment in the 80th Division of the Syrian Ministry of Defense.

The absence of maps documenting minefields laid during the years of conflict due to the destruction or removal of documents by regime officers responsible for these operations has been one of the main reasons behind the continued deaths and injuries among civilians and demining personnel after the regime’s fall. According to Fadel Abdul Ghany, Director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the former regime deliberately left these areas without minefield maps or warning signs to maximize casualties after losing control of them.

A previous investigation published by the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ in March revealed a systematic targeting of agricultural areas along the frontline, estimating the cost of mine clearance in the examined area at approximately $137 million (around 15.2 billion new Syrian pounds).

This report, based on open-source intelligence, reveals, through images of hand-drawn maps, a site containing nine minefields. By translating these maps, along with the local mapping systems used by Assad’s forces, into precise coordinates, journalists were able to locate the site in eastern rural Latakia, south of Kabana village. The area spans approximately three square kilometers, yet its threat extends to the lives of residents in several surrounding villages.

SIRAJ’s team reviewed images of nine minefield maps left behind by regime officers after withdrawing from their positions (frontlines) in rural Latakia during the “Deterrence of Aggression” battle in November 2024. The labels on these maps reference several locations in the Latakia countryside, including Kabana village and Jabal al-Zwayqat.

However, unlike standard mapping systems commonly used in modern applications, which rely on latitude and longitude or conventional metric coordinates, the Assad regime’s forces used a different metric system. While globally recognized systems are based on the intersection of the Greenwich meridian and the equator as a zero point, the system used by Assad’s army was a local one with an unknown reference origin. This makes it difficult for conventional mapping systems to interpret the coordinates found on these maps.

In collaboration with experts using open-source techniques, journalists analyzed these maps and converted their locally based coordinate system into globally recognized coordinates that can be accurately identified using publicly available mapping tools such as Google Earth, Google Maps, and Alpine.

We presented the maps to an engineering officer, a colonel in the Syrian Ministry of Defense, who requested anonymity, to understand better why the former regime’s army relied on this type of mapping and its military significance. “The Assad regime used this type of mapping and its own coordinate system,” he explained, “to protect its information, making it more difficult for any group that might obtain these maps to interpret them or dismantle the mines.”

These hand-drawn maps use a scale of 1:25,000, meaning that 1 centimeter on the map represents 25,000 centimeters (250 meters) in reality. For example, if a square marking a minefield on the map measures 4 square centimeters, it corresponds to an area of 250,000 square meters, or 0.25 square kilometers on the ground.

We examined nine maps, each marking one of nine minefields numbered from 1 to 9. By converting the metric coordinates used by former regime officers into global coordinates using specialized techniques, we identified five minefields that form the outer boundary of the contaminated area, in addition to four others located within those boundaries.

The coordinates show that the total area covered by the nine minefields is approximately three square kilometers, equivalent to more than 400 football fields. These minefields span large areas of hills south of Kabana village and southeast of the villages of Aiko, Bouz al-Kharba, and Basharfa in the Latakia countryside areas that continue to experience injuries and fatalities due to landmines.

At the center of the minefield zone lies Raqraqiyeh Park, placing the lives of many families and children from nearby villages at significant risk due to the high density of mines in the area.

The terrain further compounds the danger: the nine minefields are not located at the same elevation, as the area consists of multiple hills of varying heights. The rugged landscape also makes it more difficult for residents to detect mines, increasing the risk of moving through the area.

The exact types of mines deployed by the former regime forces in this area remain unknown, including whether they are anti-personnel or anti-vehicle mines. However, the positioning of these minefields suggests that the regime intended to use them as a first line of defense for its positions in the Latakia countryside if opposition forces advanced beyond the former frontline.

To accurately determine the geographic extent of these minefields on the ground, we identified six key coordinate points that outline the boundaries of the contaminated area, forming a hexagon encompassing the nine minefields. The coordinates are as follows:

35.6898، 36.24565

35.69881، 36.24585

35.70798، 36.235

35.70814، 36.22395

35.69913، 36.22376

35.68996، 36.23461

The following map also includes all coordinates of the minefields, along with the surrounding area and nearby villages.

The Colonel added, “Decoding this type of maps is critically important for accelerating demining operations, narrowing search efforts within a clearly defined geographic scope, reducing the number of casualties, and enabling the use of mine-clearing equipment that typically does not rely on precise maps. Most importantly, it helps warn residents in affected areas about the presence of landmines.”

The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented the deaths of 3,485 people, including 872 children, as a result of landmine explosions between March 2011 and the beginning of this year.

SIRAJ has shared all maps, coordinates, and findings from this report with the relevant Syrian authorities responsible for mine action and UXO.

• Creative direction and visual solutions: Radwan Awad.

The post Secret maps left behind by Assad’s army reveal the locations of minefields in the Latakia countryside appeared first on SIRAJ.

The company, Matchworld Group SA, was promoted as possessing the expertise, capabilities, and tools of innovation and artificial intelligence to restore “Syria’s presence on the regional and international stage,” as stated in the announcement. It was expected to “support the marketing of Syrian sports tournaments and activities, and organize international matches and professional training camps.”

However, documents reviewed by the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ) reveal that the company’s regional director, who is also responsible for the Middle East, as stated on his personal social media accounts, had been convicted, on October 4, 2023, of the felony of “abuse of entrusted public funds.” He was sentenced to five years in prison and fined the equivalent of $50,000 for previous sports investments in Syria made under another company.

MoU and the New Syrian Government

Commitment to implementing memoranda of understanding signed with the government has become a topic of public debate among Syrians. Although an MoU is not legally binding, according to lawyer Saeed Manna, the new government began signing MoUs and agreements after the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024, paving the way for contracts with Arab, regional, and international companies.

Government representation in these agreements varied by sector, with relevant ministries and institutions acting as counterparts. The MoU signed between the Ministry of Sports and Matchworld Group falls within this framework.

This MoU is part of a broader, high-level government effort to attract foreign investment to a country whose economy has been devastated by 14 years of war. Around 50 agreements and MoUs were signed in 2025 to strengthen infrastructure through projects in aviation, ports, bridges, and energy, as well as to improve essential services. These agreements also covered vital sectors such as sports, healthcare, education, agriculture, and humanitarian relief.

However, questions arise regarding the seriousness of these MoUs and their potential to translate into actual projects, particularly given the lack of a clear distinction between a “memorandum of understanding” and a “contract,” especially with respect to rights and obligations, which creates confusion around these initiatives.

Economic expert Dr. Karam Shaar explains that “the difference between an MoU and a contract is often highly ambiguous,” noting that contracts can sometimes be written in vague language similar to MoUs, allowing parties to evade obligations later. Conversely, MoUs may include stricter clauses defining conditions for withdrawal without legal consequences.

Nevertheless, this does not absolve government entities from conducting due diligence on companies entering into agreements, according to economic expert Hayyan Hababeh. This raises a critical question: How was an MoU signed with a company regionally represented by an individual convicted by Syrian courts of abuse of entrusted public funds, especially since such MoUs are expected to lead to formal contracts governed by Law No. 51 of 2004, which stipulates in Article 11/4 that contractors with government entities must not have been convicted of a felony or dishonorable crime unless rehabilitated?

Who is Matchworld Group SA?

On July 3, 2025, the Syrian Ministry of Sports and Youth announced via its official Facebook page that it had signed what it described as a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Matchworld Group during an official visit by Minister Mohammad Al-Hamid to Qatar.

According to the announcement, the company is “one of the leading global entities in sports marketing, providing advanced consultancy in sports management and innovation,” and will support Syrian sports marketing, organize international matches and professional camps, and introduce artificial intelligence tools to enhance performance and decision-making.

The MoU includes provisions for developing sports management, modernizing administrative structures, adopting technological solutions, and integrating AI-based performance analysis tools.

Despite these claims, open-source research conducted by SIRAJ, including sports news platforms and international football association websites, found no evidence of prior partnerships, contracts, or notable activities carried out by Matchworld Group SA.

Mentions of the company were largely limited to its own website, which references a partnership signed in April 2024 with a Saudi sports consultancy firm, along with older images of training camps in Switzerland and ticketing services for select events.

Furthermore, a document from the Swiss commercial registry shows that Matchworld Group SA was established on January 31, 2007, and underwent several administrative changes before reaching its current structure on July 6, 2020.

Records also reveal that another company, Matchworld Football SA, part of the same group and specializing in football, was declared bankrupt in the Swiss canton of Vaud on April 2, 2019, before the bankruptcy was lifted on May 24, 2019.

“Background checks should have been conducted on any entity signing MoUs with the Syrian government, but this did not happen, as the state is newly formed and lacks sufficient databases on such companies,” says economic researcher Hayyan Hababeh.

He adds that globally, not all MoUs are expected to materialize into actual projects, but implementing even 30–40% of them could positively impact Syria’s economy.

Economic consultant Osama Al-Qadi notes that an MoU is “closer to a declaration of intent, often non-binding and lacking clear implementation details.” However, cooperation agreements may require investors to submit documentation, clarify project details, and provide company profiles within a specified timeframe; otherwise, the MoU could be considered void.

It remains unclear whether the MoU signed with the Ministry involves any financial commitments or projected expenditures, as the Ministry declined to provide SIRAJ with a copy of the document despite formal requests from the investigation team.

Misuse of Public Funds

In June 2023, Mazen Haj Khalil, a Palestinian-Syrian-Russian businessman since 2016, joined Matchworld Group SA as a partner and regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also appeared in the same capacity at the Sports Investment Forum held in Riyadh in April of the previous year, during the signing of a partnership with a Saudi sports consultancy firm.

However, Haj Khalil is not new to sports investments in Syria. His name appears in documents issued by the General Sports Federation.

According to a document dated June 2, 2012, Major General Mowaffaq Jomaa, then-head of the Federation, requested that Haj Khalil, then-head of the “Smart Sport” company, appoint an arbitrator to resolve a dispute arising from his company’s failure to fulfill financial obligations amounting to $50,000, plus late payment interest.

The contract had granted his company rights to sponsorship, marketing, advertising, and television broadcasting for the 2011 Asian Cup qualifiers in Doha.

A lawsuit filed on July 23, 2012, states that Haj Khalil collected substantial revenues from the investment contract but left the country without fulfilling his obligations.

Subsequently, on June 24, 2013, the Federation’s lawyer was instructed to file a lawsuit demanding repayment of $50,000 plus 9% legal interest.

Under Judicial Decision No. 353 (Case No. 476), issued on June 4, 2014, Haj Khalil was charged with the felony of embezzlement of public funds under Article 8 of Economic Crimes Law No. 3 of 2013, which stipulates a minimum prison sentence of 5 years for such offenses.

On June 30, 2015, the Third Criminal Court sentenced him to five years in prison, fined him $50,000 (or equivalent in Syrian pounds), stripped him of civil rights, and imposed legal guardianship, while waiving residency restrictions.

A Decade in the Courtrooms

After the initial ruling was issued against him, Mazen Haj Khalil filed an appeal, which was accepted. One document indicates that by the end of 2017, the appeal he had submitted against the 2014 indictment had been formally approved.

Eight years later, on June 22, 2022, Judge Mohammad Jassem Al-Abdullah, the First Referral Judge in Damascus, issued Decision No. 300, charging Haj Khalil with the felony of “abuse of entrusted public funds” under Article 8 of Law No. 3 of 2013. The decision also ordered the issuance of arrest and transfer warrants against him and required him to bear all legal fees and court expenses.

On October 4, 2023, the Damascus Criminal Court issued a final in absentia ruling against Haj Khalil under Decision No. 406, convicting him of the felony of abuse of entrusted public funds and sentencing him to five years in prison, along with a $50,000 fine.

Ties and Cooperation with Firas Mualla

Furthermore, Mazen Haj Khalil maintained a relationship with Syrian swimmer Firas Mualla, son of Major General Hashem Mualla, former commander of the Special Units Battalion, which was responsible for the massacre in the Al-Masharqa neighborhood of Aleppo in the 1980s, according to reports by the Syrian Human Rights Committee.

Firas Mualla later held several prominent positions in Syrian sports, most notably as President of the General Sports Federation and the Syrian Olympic Committee, succeeding Major General Mowaffaq Jomaa in 2020.

According to a Facebook post by Mualla dated September 20, 2018, Haj Khalil was responsible for organizing all administrative and logistical arrangements for Mualla’s participation in the Russian Federation Open Water Swimming Championship (Masters category), held on the Black Sea coast in the city of Anapa in 2018.

The team also included Majd Shehadeh, son of Brigadier Moeen Shehadeh, who headed the unit responsible for the protection and escort of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photos shared by Mualla show Haj Khalil, Mualla, and Shehadeh together on the winners’ podium.

In one of his posts, Mualla described Haj Khalil as a “brother and friend,” praising his support, encouragement, and role in facilitating “all organizational and administrative procedures in the Russian Federation” for the European-level participation.

On October 6, 2018, the Facebook page “Tartous, the Beating Heart of Syria” published a photo taken by Majd Shehadeh during a ceremony in which Murat Kumpilov, Head of the Republic of Adygea, honored Firas Mualla and his accompanying team during the republic’s annual celebrations in the capital, Maykop.

The team also included Majd Shehadeh, son of Brigadier Moeen Shehadeh, who headed the unit responsible for the protection and escort of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photos shared by Mualla show Haj Khalil, Mualla, and Shehadeh together on the winners’ podium.

In one of his posts, Mualla described Haj Khalil as a “brother and friend,” praising his support, encouragement, and role in facilitating “all organizational and administrative procedures in the Russian Federation” for the European-level participation.

On October 6, 2018, the Facebook page “Tartous, the Beating Heart of Syria” published a photo taken by Majd Shehadeh during a ceremony in which Murat Kumpilov, Head of the Republic of Adygea, honored Firas Mualla and his accompanying team during the republic’s annual celebrations in the capital, Maykop.

Haj Khalil also shared several photos on his Facebook account on September 8, 2018, showing himself alongside Mualla and Shehadeh on a winners’ podium.

Unanswered Questions

It remains unclear whether the Ministry of Sports and Youth or the Swiss parent company, Matchworld Group SA, was aware of Mazen Haj Khalil’s criminal record and his ties to figures associated with the Assad regime prior to signing the Memorandum of Understanding.

Neither party responded to journalists’ inquiries regarding this matter or the fate of the MoU months after its signing.

Additionally, no response was received from the company’s regional director, Mazen Haj Khalil, to questions sent via email on December 26, 2025

• Haneen Omran contributed to this investigation.
• An Arabic version was published on Daraj and in the Syrian newspaper Al-Mawqif Al-Riyadi.

The post “Deal in the Shadow”: MoU between Syria’s Ministry of Sports and Youth and a Company Linked to a Person Convicted of “Abuse of entrusted public funds” appeared first on SIRAJ.

A relative, Abdullatif Rajbou, described the tragedy to SIRAJ during a visit to Jana’s family, who had recently returned after 12 years of displacement to live amid the ruins of their destroyed home in rural Latakia. He also spoke of the constant fear of hidden landmines: ‘Demining teams removed 140 mines from my land, including a tank mine, as well as eight detonators for which we did not find the associated mines. We are not afraid of the mines we can see, but rather those that are hidden.’

The ‘hidden mines’ Abdullatif refers to are not confined to the village of Ako. They are a reality experienced by thousands of Syrians in areas that were previously on the front line between Syrian opposition forces and the Syrian regime forces. Those areas are now littered with mines and unexploded remnants of war, posing a continuing threat that may persist for years to the lives and futures of Syrians returning home. 

This investigation by the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit – Siraj draws on open-source tools, interviews with residents and victims, and field visits to examine the reality and conditions in some of the towns and villages that previously lay along former frontlines in the southern countryside of Idlib, Hama and Latakia. It documents the suffering of their residents due to the danger, including the human, livelihood and environmental costs they pay as a result, and the impact on the present and future return of displaced Syrians. 

By collecting dozens of reported deaths and injuries in that area using open-source material and databases maintained by independent organisations, determining approximate geographical locations, and tracking patterns of those incidents, our investigation concludes that agricultural land was a primary target of minelaying along the line of contact. 

Based on observed mining patterns in specific areas of the former frontline, our investigation estimates that 13,700 hectares of agricultural and civilian land remain at risk from mines. According to this report, the cost of demining this area alone amounts to US$137 million (approximately SYP 15.2 billion at the official exchange rate). 

The investigation team also conducted field visits in rural Hama and Latakia, which enabled us to document the most prominent types of mines scattered in that area. Many were manufactured in the Soviet era and were held by the former government’s forces, posing a threat to civilians, civilian vehicles and military vehicles.  

The landmines are closely linked to the 14-year military campaign waged by the former Syrian regime against the opposition between 2011 and 2024, and to the repeated shifts in control over large parts of the country—especially in what later became known as the “lines of contact”.

The line of contact: a method of collective punishment 

The areas known as the ‘line of contact’ include southern Idlib province and large areas of eastern rural Aleppo, as well as Jabal al-Zawiya in Idlib, extending to the Kurdish and Turkmen mountains in western rural Latakia and continuing through northern Sahel al-Ghab in rural Hama. 

The region includes dozens of towns and villages, including Ma’arat al-Nu’man, al-Bara and Kafr Nabl in the Idlib countryside, Qastoun, al-Ankawi, al-Ziara and al-Sarmaniya in the Hama countryside, and Ako in the Latakia countryside. Since the formation of the “line of contact” in early 2020, these areas have been a clear target for mining operations by Assad regime forces, which caused hundreds of deaths and injuries until the fall of the regime. Today, returnees face the same threat that prevents them from settling in the villages they were forced to abandon years ago. 

To gain a deeper understanding of the reality of this region, the SIRAJ team, with support from the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), conducted research using open-source data on reported deaths and injuries caused by mines recorded by various civilian and humanitarian sources in these ‘line of contact’ areas. The team also extracted data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED)’s database, an independent US-based non-profit organisation that documents data on armed conflicts around the world. 

Based on this research, the investigation recorded 75 deaths and injuries caused by mines between January 2020 and till the end of 2024, when Assad’s regime fell. This only accounts for a fraction of the overall civilian harm caused. 

According to Maysara al-Hassan, commander of engineering operations in the Syrian Ministry of Defence’s 80th Division, the number of deaths and injuries caused by mines in these contact line areas between 2020 and 2024 is estimated to total 15,000 cases.

Statistics based on open-source data helped the team map the towns and villages that have seen documented and reported cases of mine victims to form a broader understanding of the patterns of targeting that this region has experienced through the use of mine laying, with civilians bearing the brunt of the impact. 

The cases analysed by the investigation team show that mines caused the deaths of 58 civilians, including three demining volunteers and injured eight others. Vehicles belonging to the White Helmets (now known as the Civil Defence) were also destroyed while carrying out relief work in those areas. 

A clear and recurring pattern emerged: mines were heavily concentrated in agricultural land. This directly contributed to many of the deaths and severe injuries, as farmers returned to cultivate fields and were killed or maimed by explosives. 

Warning: Some links on the map contain graphic images. Please exercise caution. 

This pattern that SIRAJ has observed and documented is not a coincidence. In an interview with SIRAJ, Muayad al-Nofali, director of operations at the non-governmental organisation Halo Trust, which specialises in mine clearance, said that “the Syrian regime was carrying out mining operations with the aim of protecting its forces and directly harming civilians.” Therefore, it deliberately targeted all civilian facilities, such as schools and agricultural land, in areas along the front-line. 

The director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), Fadel Abdul Ghani, echoed this view, adding that the regime was working to contaminate agricultural land with mines to weaken the livelihoods and production of the population, and as a form of collective punishment. He said the former government also failed to provide maps of minefields or warning signs, thereby increasing the likelihood of casualties after areas fell out of its control. 

Abdul Razzaq Qantar, director of victim support at the Syrian National Mine Action Centre at the Syrian Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management, also warned that these agricultural areas are among the most heavily contaminated areas due to the intensive minelaying. 

Indiscriminate mining and ongoing retaliation 

The policy of retaliation after losing control, referred to by Abdul Ghani, has killed thousands and left many more with permanent injuries and disabilities. SNHR has documented the deaths of 3,485 people, including 872 children, from landmine explosions between March 2011 and the beginning of this year (2026). 

Since the fall of Assad in particular, mines have killed 607 people, including 177 children, and injured 1,087 people, including 443 children, between 8 December 2024 and 16 January 2026, according to Abdulrazzaq Qantar. 

Among those injured is farmer Muhammad Marai Mazan, who was injured by a mine explosion on his farmland near the village of al-Ziara, north of Sahel Al-Ghab in Hama governorate, in December 2025. 

Mazan, who grows wheat and vegetables to support his wife and six children (aged between two and fifteen), said he was injured after pulling a strange black string on his land for fear that it would get caught in the harvester. This caused a mine planted about 2.5 metres away to detonate. The shrapnel burned the right side of his body, disfigured his face and arm and the loss of sight in his right eye, as well as damage to his left eye. These injuries continue to hinder his ability to work to this day. 

Mazan explains that his land is located near military headquarters that belonged to the former regime’s army, and that the incident came as a shock to him because the area had previously been cleared of mines and the land had been ploughed. He adds that the mines were cleared by ‘a volunteer from the village of al-Sarmaniya who was also killed by a mine’. 

The 47-year-old farmer now visits the doctor weekly for treatment of his left eye, after undergoing an initial operation. He also suffers from constant pain due to being bedridden for more than a month after his injury. Mazan insists his case is not unique in the area. Al-Nofali, from Halo Trust, described the minelaying as indiscriminate. He explains that “the regime had no clear methodology for planting mines. In addition, Russian forces also planted some minefields, as did Iranian and Lebanese militias such as Hezbollah. It is noteworthy that there was no coordination between these parties in planting mines, and this is the major challenge we face.” 

Death by Russian-made mines 

On 30 September 2015, Russian aircraft carried out their first airstrikes in Syria, marking the beginning of Russia’s direct military intervention at the request of the former regime’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Russian military campaign has claimed the lives of 6,993 civilians, according to a SNHR report released in 2025, the Russian military campaign has claimed the lives of 6,993 civilians. Moscow’s involvement, the report argues, extended beyond shifting the military balance. It says Russia tested weapons in Syria and used civilians as a testing ground. This is an allegation reinforced, noted in the report, by statements from President Vladimir Putin, who said the experience gained in Syria supported the development of Russian weapons. 

Although the fall of the Syrian regime in December 2024 ended Russia’s direct intervention, mines supplied to the former government and mines used in mining operations continue to kill Syrians. 

During our field trips accompanied by volunteers and demining workers in the villages of al-Ankawi, al-Ziara and al-Sarmaniya in rural Hama, the village of Ako and the Kurdish Mountain areas in Latakia province, and through open-source research, the team collected dozens of photos and videos showing mines scattered across agricultural land. Some were buried in the soil and difficult to see, while others were clearly visible. Several mines that were found bore markings and symbols in Russian. Residents also showed us the remains of mines that had already exploded or had been removed by volunteers and clearance teams from the Ministry of Defence. It was not easy to identify the types of these mines and the extent of damage they could cause to civilians and the environment. The team archived these photos and videos and compared them with photos and videos from other areas in the Idlib countryside, revealing a recurring pattern in the mining, the type of mines and the extent of the damage possible. The team shared the photos and videos with a weapons expert who concluded that most of the mines identifiable were Soviet made, though they varied in size, purpose, and the type of explosion they caused. 

According to the expert, one of the mines photographed on farmland in the village of Ako, near the site where Jana Rajbou was injured, is a Soviet OZM-72 anti-personnel mine. It does not explode immediately upon activation but has a mechanical mechanism that propels it into the air to explode and disperse shrapnel over a wide area, increasing the likelihood of multiple casualties.

Other photos from the Latakia countryside show Soviet POM-2 anti-personnel mines, identifiable by their propeller shape. Plastic wires ranging from 9.5 to 10 metres in length, called ‘trip wires,’ extend from the mine. The mine is activated immediately when someone trips or steps on the wire, exploding and scattering its fragments over a wide area in a mechanism similar to the OZM-72.

Open-source footage from mine clearance operations in Jabal al-Zawiya and the forests near al-Bara and Kafr Nabl shows dozens of Soviet-made TM-62M anti-armour mines, which are usually used against tanks and military armoured vehicles. 

The presence of these mines in agricultural forests pose a tremendous danger to farmers who use harvesting machines or their vehicles on agricultural roads, as this mine explodes under pressure ranging from 150 to 550 kilograms to activate the conventional detonator. The danger of this mine is increased if it is equipped with more sensitive secondary detonators, making it susceptible to explosion under much lower levels of pressure or movement.

Video shows the dismantling of dozens of TM-62M mines in Al-Bara and Kafranbel in Idlib Governorate – Facebook

In one of the photos taken during the demining operations, Syrian teacher Fahd al-Fajr appears with eight Russian-made PMN-3 mines behind him. This anti-personnel mine is specially designed to hinder clearance operations, as it is equipped with anti-handling devices and a self-destruction mechanism that make it one of the most dangerous anti-personnel mines.

The Syrian volunteer, who was a schoolteacher and member of the Olive Branch organisation, was killed on 21 February 2025 while volunteering to clear mines in the village of Fatira in the southern rural Idlib.

An environmental disaster 

Mines in agricultural land put thousands of Syrians at direct risk of death or injury from mine explosions and also create a dilemma about how to remove them. Despite mine-clearance efforts since the fall of the Assad regime, many agricultural areas remain contaminated.  Even remote detonations or clearance using mechanical equipment can damage soil and deepen farmers’ losses. In response to questions from the investigation team about the consequences of mine explosions on agricultural land, a spokesperson for the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture explained that there are immediate and long-term effects that could last for years, and possibly decades, if not dealt with carefully. 

The ministry said immediate effects include disruption of soil structure from shock waves, loss of fertile topsoil rich in organic material, deposition of explosive residue and metal fragments, and the death of soil microorganisms essential to crop growth. Long-term impacts can include degraded soil quality, depleted organic matter, and the accumulation of toxic compounds that inhibit plant growth.

The danger is not limited to the soil, warned Dr. Ma’an Daniel Daoud, a researcher specialising in water resource management and investment. He said it can also extend to the contamination of groundwater and surface water in agricultural areas, which can lead to the poisoning of plants and animals. In an interview with SIRAJ, he added that some mines may contaminate drinking or irrigation water, as some contain substances designed to render water resources unusable. 

The Ministry of Agriculture warned that some explosive materials, such as TNT, can remain partially stable in water and soil for many years unless treated appropriately.  

In addition to the direct damage to the soil in the event of a mine explosion, mines continue to keep thousands of farmers away from their land in many areas, such as in al-Ankawi village, north of the Al-Ghab Plain in the Hama governorate. The village is littered with warning signs to not approach due to the danger of mines. Aerial drone imagery of the village shows vast areas of agricultural land that owners cannot approach because of the danger of mines. This forced displacement threatens farmers’ livelihoods and the fertility of their land, which has been left untilled and untreated for long periods. 

Using distance-area calculations in satellite applications and based on the pattern of landmines in agricultural and residential areas, the investigation team estimated that 13,700 hectares of agricultural land and civilian areas in the Idlib countryside, northern Al-Ghab Plain, and Latakia countryside are at risk from landmines. This is roughly equivalent to 19,200 football pitches. This area is equivalent to approximately 10% of the total area of the al-Ghab Plain, which covers 141,000 hectares and is considered one of the largest and most important agricultural areas in Syria. In Ako village, farmers were forced to burn dozens of trees on their land out of fear of mines, which led to many of them exploding. According to farmer Abu Adel, this was the only way to get rid of them. Speaking to SIRAJ, the farmer, who is a native of the village, expressed his sadness, saying, “These trees survived for years after we were displaced, and now we have returned to burn them today because of the mines underneath them, instead of caring for them.”

These desperate efforts by farmers are not a coincidence, but rather the result of the significant challenges surrounding the landmine issue in Syria today, despite the considerable voluntary efforts of many individuals and local and international organisations. 

Victims without support 

Since being injured by a mine that blinded his right eye and impaired his mobility, farmer Muhammed Marai Mazan, his wife and their six children have been living without any source of income. At the same time, he has to cover the cost of the necessary medication he needs following his injury, which amounts to 450,000 SYP (about $40) per week, in addition to the cost of his ambulance and emergency surgery, which amounted to $3,200. 

“In this area, we rely on God and agriculture, and we have no other source of income,” he tells the SIRAJ team, pointing out that no mine action agency has visited him since his injury. He has withdrawn from the outside world and barely leaves his home since his injury, wearing gloves, glasses and a scarf to cover the disfigurement caused by the injury. 

In the village of Ako, where 20 families have returned after displacement, the men of the village gather to drink coffee near the school, and their only topic of conversation is the mines. Farmers continue to suffer daily from the danger that hinders all aspects of their normal lives. 

Speaking to SIRAJ in front of the rubble of his house, farmer Khaled Sando explains the difficulty of living among the mines. “The car is always ready to transport the injured. I have transported four injured people from the village in my car.” He adds that the poor road conditions make reaching the nearest medical centre a difficult task that can take up to two hours. As for the school, which shows signs of recent renovation, Sando says, “They built this school for nine villages.” But “I live 200 metres away and I don’t dare send my children there because of the mines. Who would send their children to school in such conditions?”

Farmer Abu Adel says that organisations working to repair destroyed villages and houses have refused to work in their village because of the mines. “Since we returned, one person has been killed and seven injured by mines, and who knows how many more will be killed and injured in the future.” 

He adds that the Ministry of Defence’s engineering teams respond to all reports of mines and dismantle them, but they have not carried out a comprehensive survey of the village, and their equipment is old and unable to detect all the mines. 

However, outdated equipment is not the only obstacle to demining in Syria. The process is complex and requires years of work and huge funding, according to the Syrian Ministry of Agriculture, which confirmed to SIRAJ that the cost of removing mines from agricultural land ranges from $3,000 to $10,000 per hectare. 

Based on these figures, the cost of clearing the agricultural areas in the area covered by our investigation ranges from $41 million to $137 million.

Furthermore, the reclamation of land damaged by mines requires stages of removal and environmental treatment of the soil, followed by agricultural rehabilitation. The ministry emphasises that farmers are unable to do this without support. 

If the land is not rehabilitated, the effects of some explosive and toxic materials, especially in poor soil, may persist for periods ranging from 20 to 40 years. 

Maysara al-Hassan, commander of the engineering regiment in the 80th Division of the Ministry of Defence, said that the Syrian government has received promises of support from international organisations and the United Nations to expand mine clearance operations. Currently, these promises have not yet been fulfilled. 

Amidst local and international promises, residents of contaminated areas continue to live in daily fear and despair due to the lack of support for their cause. Farmer Khaled Sandou recalls with sadness the names of some of those he rescued who were not lucky enough to survive. 

He says: ‘What are they waiting for? Do they want us to remove all these mines with our own bodies? Almost every week, someone is injured by a mine. At this rate, we will either all be killed or we will detonate all the mines.’

• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad. 

• This investigation was produced with support from the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR). 

The post The Ongoing death: How Russian-made mines are killing Syrians and destroying their forgotten lands appeared first on SIRAJ.

He stood for a long time before a charred wall that had once been part of his home. He ran his hand over the stones, searching for a trace of a color he remembered, for a mark confirming that this place had once been his house. But it was not only time that had changed. Streets had been renamed, houses had new occupants, and ownership — once an unquestioned right — had become a matter of dispute.

Before his displacement, Abu Harb had carefully kept his purchase contracts and ownership documents. He bought his first house in 2010 after years of work and migration abroad, paying for it in cash. The second house was the family home he inherited from his father, and its papers remained preserved even after they were forced to flee.

Upon his return, however, he discovered that the first house had been renovated and occupied by strangers after it had been “sold” during his absence through an intermediary who later died, breaking the legal chain of ownership. As for the family home, it had burned during the years of siege, then was restored and sold multiple times using forged contracts.

“We lost the house three times,” Abu Harb says. “The first time when we left under the bombing. The second when it burned. And the third when we found it in someone else’s hands. It’s like losing memory itself… not just the walls.”

Abdulhadi’s story reveals a broader crisis faced by thousands of Syrians who returned after the regime’s fall, only to discover that the road back to their homes was obstructed not only by rubble, but by a complex web of laws, missing records, and sales and forgery schemes that exploited their forced absence during the war years.

In this investigative report, drawing on personal interviews, analysis of property ownership documents and complaints, and a review of laws and government decisions, we examine how the loss of documentation during the war has prevented thousands of Syrians from reclaiming their homes today. Many are unable to prove ownership of properties that, in many cases, were transferred to strangers during their absence, with ownership altered or homes seized because they stood vacant.

The suffering is compounded in informal housing areas in Damascus and its suburbs, where most sales, purchases, and transfers took place outside official institutions through customary contracts not registered in real estate courts, due to the absence of formal title deeds known as the “green tabou.” Similar complications arise in areas subject to urban redevelopment plans imposed under complex regulatory laws.

Through interviews with families from various areas of Damascus and its countryside, the investigation shows how proving ownership of one’s home, once among the most basic of rights, has become one of the most complex legal and humanitarian battles in Syria today, particularly in neighborhoods subjected to systematic destruction during the war.

Anwar Majni, a judge specializing in real estate and property rights, explains that the problem lies not only in lost documentation but also in the legal framework itself: “There are around 200 laws in Syria related to property issues, some of which contradict one another. This heavy legacy makes finding comprehensive solutions extremely difficult. We need a unified property law.”

Return Without Papers: The Battle for Ownership After the Fall of the Regime

As waves of return began to reach Damascus, its suburbs, and other parts of the country, it became clear that the loss of housing was not linked solely to widespread destruction, but also to many returnees’ inability to legally prove ownership of their homes.

The loss of official documents, the burning of real estate records, the absence of accurate inheritance registries, and the continued enforcement of laws enacted at the height of the war under the Assad regime have all turned the process of proving ownership into a long, costly judicial path, often with no outcome.

Legal expert Malek Al-Awda explains: “The core problem today lies in the loss of property documentation. Thousands of original documents were damaged, burned, stolen, or forged. In the absence of written evidence, the owner has no option but to turn to the courts, a slow and exhausting process.”

In November 2025, the Ministry of Justice issued a circular to heads of judicial courts across the governorates, outlining mechanisms for restoring the records of certain notary offices that had been damaged or lost. The circular stipulated that any request for restoration or re-registration would only be accepted upon submission of a certified “true copy” of the missing document. If such a copy was unavailable, the request would be rejected and the applicant referred to the courts to pursue their claim.

For many returnees, however, these conditions appeared nearly impossible to meet, particularly in areas where courts had been destroyed or their records completely burned.

How Are Properties Classified When They Become Subject to Dispute?

In cities such as Daraya, several residents interviewed by the investigative team confirmed that they no longer possess any documents proving ownership of their apartments or homes, after the records of the Sharia Court and the notary public office were burned during the siege of the city between 2013 and 2016.

With official records gone, proving ownership has shifted from an administrative procedure to an open-ended judicial dispute.

Flora Diop, Assistant Director of Legislation and Real Estate Registration at the Directorate of Real Estate Interests in Damascus, believes that Abdulhadi Abu Harb’s case is solvable as soon as a copy of the title deed is retrieved from the land registry. The forged contracts mentioned were most likely concluded outside official records and therefore carry no legal value. Based on the available information, she argues that Abu Harb may not even require court intervention, as his case appears straightforward and clear.

Homes Sold in the Shadows: Forgery and the Exploitation of Absence

The loss of property did not stem solely from burned documents or missing records; it was compounded by fraudulent sales and forgery carried out during years of forced absence. In Abdulhadi Abu Harb’s case, the house was not merely “seized”; it was also transferred through sales contracts brokered by intermediaries who later died, breaking the legal chain of proof. The family home, meanwhile, was sold multiple times using forged records.

Lawyer and legal expert Hind Al-Saleh explains that this legal vacuum opened the door to organized networks: “Networks of brokers and intermediaries spread, exploiting the absence of property owners. They re-registered homes through illegal means or transferred ownership using forged powers of attorney and substitution contracts.”

In April 2023, an investigative report by the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit, SIRAJ, in collaboration with the British newspaper The Guardian, revealed the existence of more than 20 security-linked networks specializing in property ownership forgery in several Syrian cities under the control of the now-fallen Assad regime.

The joint investigation noted that the absence of centralized judicial records means there is no comprehensive data on the scale of property theft in Syria or the seizure of homes belonging to Syrians living abroad.

A source at the Syrian Ministry of Justice told the investigative team that a specialized court will be established in 2026 to investigate forgery operations that took place under the former regime, to restore properties to their original owners. The source added that thousands of properties had their ownership falsified and were sold through illegal transactions.

Engineer Mazhar Sharbaji, a unionist and former mayor of Daraya, warns of the dangers of compounded forgery in certain areas: “In some neighborhoods, you may find someone who owns two or three shares in a property, yet sells the entire property by falsifying the number of shares. These cases make proving one’s rights later nearly impossible.”

Since the outbreak of the 2011 uprising, Bashar al-Assad’s regime issued 35 laws permitting the confiscation, expropriation, and seizure of property. These laws related to counterterrorism measures, urban planning, regulation of informal settlements, debt collection, enforcement of compulsory military service, communal agricultural lands, and property registries. They primarily affected the properties of displaced persons and alleged political opponents.

In such cases, returnees find themselves facing an unequal battle: their original documents are missing, official records are either damaged or contradictory, while the opposing party holds “formal” contracts that were processed during years of chaos.

Laws That Undermine Property Rights: Wartime Legislation as a Tool of Silent Dispossession

Syria’s property crisis did not emerge from chaos alone. It was shaped by a legislative framework crafted during the war years and used to expand the seizure of assets belonging to opponents and displaced persons, facilitating the confiscation of their properties or their sale at auctions of which the owners were often unaware.

Since early 2011, the government of the now-fallen Assad regime issued a series of laws and decrees related to property rights. These included measures authorizing the seizure of movable and immovable assets belonging to political opponents or individuals accused of supporting “terrorism”, charges widely used to criminalize opponents, activists, and entire communities.

Counterterrorism Law No. 19 of 2012 stipulates in Article 12 that, “In all crimes provided for in this law, the court shall, upon conviction, order the confiscation of movable and immovable assets, their proceeds, and items used or intended for use in committing the crime.”

For legal experts we spoke to, this provision was not merely a criminal penalty, but a gateway to broad asset seizures within a wider political context. It affected thousands of families who left the country or were internally displaced, particularly as Article 11 of the same law authorized the “competent Public Prosecutor or their delegate,” even before any final judicial ruling, to “order the freezing of movable and immovable assets of anyone who commits one of the crimes related to financing terrorist acts or any of the crimes stipulated in this law,” based solely on their assessment that “sufficient evidence exists,” under the pretext of safeguarding the rights of the state and victims.

This expansion of confiscation outside the judicial process was reinforced by Legislative Decree No. 63 of 2012, which granted judicial police authorities, during investigations into crimes against state security or those covered by Law No. 19 of July 2, 2012, the power to submit a written request to the Minister of Finance to take precautionary measures against the movable and immovable assets of the accused.

For example, lists published by the Ministry of Finance revealed 40,000 precautionary asset seizure cases affecting Syrians in 2017 and 30,000 in 2016, most of them justified by what the regime described as “involvement in terrorist activities.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, constitutes one of the foremost international frameworks protecting individual property rights, particularly under Articles 8, 17, and 25. These protections are further reinforced by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

At the national level, the Syrian Constitution protects the right to private property under Articles 15, 16, and 17. These protections are further supported by the Syrian Civil Code and Urban Planning and Development Law No. 23 of 2015.

The restitution of property for refugees and internally displaced persons is a standalone right under the Pinheiro Principles, adopted in 2005 by the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

These principles affirm the right to recover housing and property that was arbitrarily lost, or, when restitution is factually impossible, to receive compensation determined by an independent and impartial court.

In this context, Sharbaji warns that the property crisis cannot be treated as a single, homogeneous file. Each area carries its own story and distinct complexities — particularly regions that experienced large-scale displacement followed by partial returns, or shifts in controlling authorities. These conditions created an ideal environment for record forgery and the exploitation of legal loopholes.

Urban Planning Pretexts… Erasing a Neighborhood from the Map

Alongside laws targeting the properties of opponents and displaced persons, urban planning legislation played an additional role in reshaping ownership on the ground, especially in areas surrounding Damascus. There, complex redevelopment projects were imposed, and entire neighborhoods were classified as “informal zones” subject to demolition or restructuring.

Legal experts point in particular to Law No. 10 of 2018, which authorized the establishment of redevelopment zones and the conversion of property ownership into shares within a regulatory master plan, subject to a limited deadline for proving ownership. The law previously raised widespread fears of dispossessing displaced persons and refugees of their property, particularly amid a lack of trust in procedures under the former regime.

Law No. 23 of 2015 (Urban Planning and Development Law) is also significant. It regulates land preparation for construction in accordance with regulatory plans, whether through subdivision or reorganization. It stipulates that land included within a redevelopment zone becomes jointly owned by rights holders in proportion to the assessed value of their original properties.

On the ground, however, in areas such as Daraya and its surroundings, residents report a sense of injustice in compensation and alternative housing processes. Procedures move extremely slowly, while administrative conditions and requirements accumulate atop an already complex reality marked by damaged ownership records and missing official documentation.

In interviews with eight families, many emphasized that these problems did not originate in the current phase. Their roots trace back to the Assad era, when property and compensation files were managed through a bureaucratic and security-driven system that produced widespread legal chaos. Yet the continued reliance on these mechanisms, without substantive reforms to date, makes the issue appear,  in the eyes of those affected, as a present failure, even though it is in fact a heavy legacy inherited by the current government, which has not yet succeeded in dismantling it.

Al-Khaleej Neighborhood… Destruction Is Not the Only Problem

At Daraya’s entrance from the Damascus side, adjacent to Mezzeh Military Airport, the Al-Khaleej neighborhood, an informal residential area stretching toward Mezzeh, was among the areas most completely destroyed. Today, it appears as little more than a trace: homes erased, rubble cleared, the landmarks of an entire neighborhood wiped from the map.

The question of compensation remains unresolved: How will homeowners be compensated for houses destroyed during military operations? And what authority will confirm that a house once stood here if documents are lost, records damaged, and the neighborhood itself erased?

Abu Rashed, a Daraya resident who recently returned from ten years of exile in Turkey, says he recognized the location of his home by a large tree that once stood in front of it and remains to this day. Another man identified his house by the rare-colored tiles and marble he had installed when he built it. Both, like many others, returned first to confirm that the place still existed, before beginning to ask about the paperwork.

Mohammad Abu Malek, a resident of Daraya, specifically the Al-Khaleej neighborhood, was displaced with his family to Idlib in 2016, before undertaking a sea journey to Europe in search of safety, work, and education for his children. After the fall of the regime, he felt for the first time that returning might become possible.

“For years, I carried the idea of the house in my head because, for us, it holds all the memories connected to Syria,” he says. “I thought, finally, we’ll go back and start over. I returned to Daraya imagining that the hardest thing I would face was the destruction in Al-Khaleej… but I discovered that destruction is not the biggest problem.”

Abu Malek recounts his first impressions: the neighborhood had become rubble, to the point that Mezzeh Airport was now visible from Daraya because Al-Khaleej had been “leveled to the ground.” Yet the deeper shock was not the rubble itself, but what that rubble meant legally. “A house isn’t just walls… a house is a document. If you don’t have a paper, you effectively have nothing.”

Abu Malek’s house was completely demolished due to its proximity to Mezzeh Military Airport. It no longer exists, reduced to a mass of debris. Today, he possesses no document proving his ownership.

“Without an official proof-of-ownership document, I can’t do anything,” he says. “I can’t rebuild it, I can’t sell it, I can’t even submit a formal compensation request. It’s as if the house has become a trace, and I’m just someone trying to prove that I was once its owner.”

A Legal Trap

If urban redevelopment zones generate crisis by converting ownership into shares and slow compensation mechanisms, informal housing areas such as Al-Khaleej produce a different kind of crisis: ownership that is socially recognized but legally fragile.

Sharbaji explains that property ownership in Syria is not uniform. Some properties are formally registered (tabou), with existing documentation; others are recorded through notary offices and are supposed to have official real estate extracts. But a significant proportion of homes were sold through external or customary contracts that were never formally registered, making them difficult to prove before the state.

In these areas, where transactions occurred outside official institutions,  many residents do not possess the “green tabou,” nor do they have contracts registered in real estate courts. With the outbreak of war, this loophole turned into fertile ground for disputes, forgery, and the monopolization of rights.

Interrogation Before Return… Property Access Through Security Channels

During the war years, the battle to reclaim homes in Syria was not only about documents and records, but, in many cases, about navigating the security apparatus of the now-collapsed Assad regime.

In 2023, Abu Ahmad, a resident of the Tishreen neighborhood in Damascus, decided to return to live in his home despite the extensive destruction and the absence of basic services in the area. The high cost of living and the difficulty of paying rent in the capital pushed him to consider returning. But the path back to his house was not open.

Abu Ahmad learned from neighbors and the neighborhood mukhtar that he could not enter the area or even open the door to his home without first obtaining approval from Air Force Intelligence in Harasta. He underwent a security interrogation that included background checks on him and his three sons, and questions about any potential ties to the opposition or issues related to military service. After hours of questioning, he was allowed to return, in exchange for a bribe paid to security officers.

But another shock awaited him inside the house. “I found a family living in my home,” Abu Ahmad says. “They told me they had bought it from a real estate broker for a small sum.”

Abu Ahmad had purchased the three-room house, measuring around 60 square meters, in 2010 for 250,000 Syrian pounds, approximately $5,000 at the time. Today, he possesses no sale contract or official document proving his ownership. The house is located in an informal, unregulated area not subject to a formal land registry.

He is now trying to reclaim his home by proving that he is the rightful owner. But the path is complicated: the original seller died in 2013, there is no documented chain of contracts, no title deed, and no official registry to consult.

In such cases, Mazhar Sharbaji explains, courts may rely on alternative forms of evidence, such as electricity bills or water meters registered in the individual’s name, since obtaining a utility meter theoretically requires municipal inspection and confirmation of actual residence. Yet even these forms of proof do not guarantee a swift or decisive outcome.

How Do You Prove Ownership When You Have No Proof?

When written evidence — a title deed, a registered sale contract, or a prior court ruling, is absent, the judiciary becomes the only available path. Legal expert Malek Al-Awda explains that judges in such cases rely on what is known as “non-written evidence,” including interrogations, judicial investigations, witness testimony, and sworn statements.

“These procedures take a long time,” Al-Awda says, “and they do not always guarantee a quick result, which temporarily deprives the owner of the ability to use the property,  whether for housing, sale, or renovation.”

In practice, many returnees find themselves in a state of “legal limbo”: unable to reclaim the home, unable to dispose of it, and unable to obtain compensation. With prolonged litigation, claiming one’s home shifts from being an obvious right to becoming a psychological and financial burden.

What Is the ‘Green Tabou’?

The “green tabou” is considered the strongest proof of real estate ownership in Syria. It is a copy of the official property registry record and is issued only once. If lost, the owner must request a replacement for a lost document.

The deed includes the property number, its size and location, the owner’s name and share, and all encumbrances on the property, such as seizures, lawsuits, or mortgages.

However, in vast areas where land registry offices themselves were destroyed, this document, meant to serve as a guarantee, has become a missing paper that cannot easily be restored.

Inside the Palace of Justice in Damascus, where the investigative team visited notary offices and court departments, the scene was telling: long queues, worn-out files, and citizens moving from office to office in search of legal advice or a procedural thread that might restore part of what they lost.

Most of those we met were recent returnees after the regime’s fall, confronting a recurring reality: missing or damaged ownership records, homes occupied by strangers, and legal frameworks still operating under exceptional wartime logic. It is a reality that reflects a deep gap between what people expect from justice and what the inherited legal structure currently allows.

Millions Affected by Destruction

The property crisis in Syria extends far beyond individual stories; it spans the entire nation.

According to Abdallah Al-Dardari, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Syria had approximately 5.5 million homes before the war. Of these, 328,000 were completely destroyed, meaning that one in every three homes suffered either total destruction or partial damage.

As a result, around 5.7 million people today require direct housing support — either because they are homeless, living in uninhabitable dwellings, or at risk of losing their property due to missing documentation and complex ownership disputes.

Mu’tasim Al-Sioufi, a director at the organization The Day After, argues that the crisis goes beyond physical destruction to a deeply complicated legal structure: “Around 60 percent of housing in Syria consists of informal settlements. Many of these homes were connected to water and electricity in the 1980s due to corruption. Then came the war and displacement, which further complicated matters, in addition to longstanding issues such as usufruct rights and expropriations dating back to the 1960s.”

According to Al-Sioufi, what emerged after the regime’s fall is only “the tip of the iceberg,” while the real crisis runs much deeper and is far more intertwined.

A table by “Syrian Response Coordinators” showing estimates for Syria’s reconstruction costs as a result of the destruction caused by the Assad regime.

The Legacy of Systematic Looting… The Fourth Division and Beyond

In February 2025, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued a report titled: “Pillage and Plunder: The Unlawful Seizure and Destruction of Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons’ Property in Syria.”

Based on satellite imagery, direct testimonies, and visual documentation, the report documented systematic looting and destruction of civilian homes over a period of 13 years. It concluded that such looting — often linked to military and security formations, including the Fourth Division — represents one of the major obstacles to the return of millions of refugees and displaced persons following the regime’s fall.

According to the report, the areas most severely affected were those that changed hands between 2016 and 2020, where properties were treated as “spoils” or instruments of collective punishment.

A Home Waiting for a Paper… Return Without Guarantees

In response to this landscape, the Ministry of Justice speaks of measures to address the problem. A ministry source — who requested anonymity — stated that the Public Prosecutor’s Office and relevant judicial authorities are pursuing cases of unlawful property seizure, particularly those belonging to forcibly displaced persons, “in accordance with applicable laws and through procedures that ensure justice and transparency.”

According to the source, specialized courts and judicial departments have been designated to handle cases of forged property ownership and lost documents, with the aim of accelerating rulings and unifying judicial interpretations, while also simplifying procedures and reducing processing times.

However, legal experts and rights advocates argue that these steps, despite their importance, remain insufficient without more courageous decisions.

Al-Sioufi proposes expanding the means of proving ownership beyond traditional tools, such as incorporating broader community testimonies or establishing a technical reference body to develop clear, region-specific standards.

Malek Al-Awda stresses the need for transitional solutions, such as granting temporary ownership records valid for five or ten years to safeguard people’s rights until registry issues are resolved. “Without alternative and bold legal formulas,” he says, “thousands of families will remain locked out of their homes — even after they have returned.”

For Abdulhadi Abu Harb, Mohammad Abu Malek, Abu Ahmad, and many others, return remains incomplete. The house exists — or once existed — but the paper is missing. In its absence, memory turns into dispute, belonging into a file, and a right into a long judicial process.

In post-regime Syria, returning home is no longer a simple act. It is a legal, social, and psychological battle — one that risks reproducing displacement in a silent form, this time in the name of the law.

This investigation was produced with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and a version of it was published on the Daraj website.

• Research and reporting: Mawaddah Kallas
• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad

The post Residential Property Claims in Syria: A Growing Challenge for Returnees appeared first on SIRAJ.

On a rainy April afternoon, Bassam sat at a Limassol cafeteria and recounted harrowing details from the three nights and three days he spent clinging to an inflatable tire in the open sea, awaiting rescue or death.

In the early hours of Friday March 14, 2025, Bassam, his brother, his cousin and a neighbor followed a smuggler across the Syrian border to Lebanon, where they boarded a small fiberglass boat with a Yamaha engine. In addition to the 21 men on board, the boat was loaded with gallons of fuel and water, and two boxes of dates. Their journey to Cyprus, some 160km westwards, could last anywhere from hours to days, depending on sea conditions and navigation skills.

The recent collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, in December 2024, had created a sudden instability for ethnic minorities like Bassam, and thousands were fleeing for fear of extremist attacks and retributions. (Most of the men on the boat were Sunni, the majority religious group in Syria.)

Eight months before the change in power, in April 2024, Cyprus authorities stopped processing asylum claims from Syrian nationals, claiming that the country’s security status needed reassessment. The island’s proximity to the Middle East had attracted the highest number of asylum applications per capita of any EU country, and the government adopted policies aimed at curtailing the influx of people. But Bassam had read on Facebook that the application process had reopened, and connected with the smuggler who published the misleading posts. He was told that the passage costs $3300, with $2000 due upfront, he told the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism Association (SIRAJ).

With good weather and calm seas, the fiberglass boat the men boarded in the pre-dawn hours should have reached Cyprus while there was still daylight, but the journey took longer than expected.

The timeline is murky, but phone records obtained by reporters show that one of the perished passengers, 21-year-old Hassan, called his father from the driver’s satellite phone at 18:16. The sun had already set and, according to Bassam, they could see the lights of the Cypriot coast.

But the waves grew bigger under the March full moon, and the small boat filled with water faster than they could empty it, Bassam recalled. When a big swell overwhelmed the struggling vessel from the rear, the men quickly found themselves in the blackness of the sea.

Bassam had a small plastic water bottle tucked into the pocket of his pants, and the inflatable tire the smugglers had distributed to each passenger. The frigid water, as low as 16 degrees, was turbulent. At first he was near five men, including his brother, but soon the waves separated them.

When the sun came up the next morning Bassam said he first looked for his brother. He saw him from a distance but couldn’t reach him. He could hear the others calling out to each other, and praying.

Bassam had been saving his small bottle of water, but as he tried to help a man next to him who slipped out of his inflatable tire, a wave took it away. Later he watched another man let go of his tire to try to swim to Cyprus, only to drown.

Bassam didn’t know how to swim, so he held on, floated, and prayed to God. He said he saw many boats – commercial and fishing boats – and called out to them, but they passed him by. At one point he saw a military helicopter, but it too passed him. Eventually, his parched throat stopped making noise. When he awoke on Monday he was completely alone.

Bassam survived an estimated 64 hours before a white helicopter appeared above him and proceeded to pull him out of the sea. An hour earlier, a Cypriot coast guard vessel had spotted the only other survivor, Raad. The rest of the men from the boat had perished.

Reporters from Cyprus and Syria have pieced together the most comprehensive account of the three days and nights, based on interviews with authorities, survivors, and NGO workers – as well as officials’ public statements, and vessel and flight-tracking data.

A rescue helicopter hoists a survivor from the sea. Credit: CNA, March 18 2025. Republished with permission.

The Confounding Search

When relatives stopped hearing from the men that night, and couldn’t reach anyone on the satellite phone, they began to panic.

Watch The Med Alarm Phone, a group of volunteers assisting refugees in distress in the Mediterranean, said a relative contacted them on Saturday, March 15, and shared the satellite phone number, and a photo someone sent from their journey. The image had geolocation metadata that allowed Alarm Phone to estimate coordinates and the time the photograph was taken. (Reporters were unable to independently verify the metadata.)

Alarm Phone sent an initial email alerting authorities of a boat in distress, and the estimated coordinates at 11:11pm Cyprus time. By then, more than 24 hours had passed since the sinking.

When Alarm Phone volunteers followed up their emails with calls to the Cyprus-based Joint Rescue Coordination Center, which oversees multi-branch emergency responses, they were told that authorities were investigating.

JRCC told reporters that they launched an immediate search and rescue operation that night, but also underscored that they considered Alarm Phone’s distress alert unconfirmed.

“Many tips end up being confirmed but not all,” JRCC’s then-Deputy Commander George Economou told CIReN (he has since been appointed commander). “There were cases where they shared information that did not correspond with reality,” he added, in reference to Alarm Phone.

“For us there is a gradation of information,” JRCC’s then-Commander Andreas Charalambides told reporters. “If a piece of information that somebody is in danger is not confirmed, there is a specific process we follow and begin to investigate until danger or no danger is confirmed”.

“The process follows the same steps we follow as if we have confirmation – it’s just that no rescue occurs. So from the search and rescue part, we begin the search until we have confirmation.”

Reporters understood that the referenced process included contacting the satellite phone service provider, scanning key areas with onshore cameras and radar, and issuing a radio alert to nearby vessels.

According to Economou, the patrol boat out at sea that night – Pentadaktylos – was ordered to the location shared by AlarmPhone in their email.

Vessel tracking data obtained by OCCRP and analyzed by reporters shows that Pentadaktylos was on its usual patrol route that night, but it did not approach Alarm Phone’s coordinates, remaining at least 30km away between midnight and 8am.

Only after Pentadaktylos docked at Ayia Napa marina, around 9am on Sunday, does data show activity in the area indicated by Alarm Phone.

Authorities told CIReN that around 9am is when they independently obtained from the satellite phone company the coordinates of the last location of the boat driver’s phone, just 20 nautical miles from Alarm Phone’s coordinates, and confirmation that the last signal was sent 30 hours earlier.

Tracking data shows the Cypriot police boat Evagoras Pallikaride patrolling in an area 20-25km north of AlarmPhone’s coordinates on Sunday.“

According to officials, search and rescue helicopters were also deployed on Sunday, and air tracking data shows a surveillance plane circling the area. Officials later stated that they searched some 2750 square nautical miles.

However, when the first survivor was located by the Coast Guard on Monday afternoon, the minister of justice publicly stated that it was “completely random and coincidental,” echoing statements by the defense minister. The JRCC also stated that Monday afternoon is when they launched a search and rescue operation that led to the rescue of the second survivor and seven bodies.

According to Economou they were found within 12 nautical miles of the NGO’s coordinates and within 14 nautical miles from the satellite phone’s last known location, 37 hours after the initiation of the search.

The  JRCC declined to explain the inconsistencies identified in this investigation, and referred reporters to a press release from March 19, 2025, which stated that there were discrepancies in the testimonies of the survivors rescued two days earlier, and that they may have been unrelated to the shipwreck flagged by Alarm Phone on Saturday night.

The vessel “Pentadaktylos” on patrol on March 15-16, 2025. Credit: Global Fishing Watch

Navigating the System

After the shipwreck, AlarmPhone issued a public statement, questioning whether Cypriot authorities acted in “a timely and adequate manner,” what concrete steps were taken, and whether the response to the incident will be investigated.

Political parties AKEL, VOLT and GREENS and NGO Cyprus Council for Peace also demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the shipwreck.

Reporters confirmed in April that a police investigation into the shipwreck is ongoing but did not recieved an update on the status by publication time. JRCC did not reply to questions about an internal investigation into its response.

The survivors, meanwhile, are in legal limbo in Cyprus.

Bassam now lives in Limassol with relatives who support him while he awaits approval of his asylum claim. Raad doesn’t have permanent housing or material support.

By mid-2025, authorities resumed processing of Syrian asylum applications, though most applicants have been rejected, the Ministry of Migration told CIReN.

“Decisions have already been issued, mostly rejecting a significant number of applications, always following an individualized assessment,” the ministry said in an email.

But the survivors told CIReN and SIRAJ that they haven’t heard anything about their cases.

Corina Drousiotou, the senior legal advisor to the UNHCR-funded asylum rights NGO

Cyprus Refugee Council, said the men were released from the hospital shortly after the rescue “without any support by the state, psychological or material,” in terms of benefits or accommodation. Drousiotou added they were initially denied access to the Social Welfare Service and the benefits asylum seekers are entitled to.

“One of the survivors belongs to a minority and has had support from the relevant community, whereas the other survivor does not have community support and is still struggling, as the benefit he receives is often delayed which leads to him being homeless,” Drousiotou confirmed to CIReN.

The Cyprus Refugee Council said they expected Asylum Services under the Ministry of Migration Policy to prioritize the cases of the two survivors due to their vulnerability, but “to date the cases are still pending.”

The Deputy Ministry of Migration and International Protection did not respond to CIReN’s request for comment on the status of the cases.

“I won’t go back,” said Bassam, who studied chemistry at a university in Syria, but is not allowed to work in Cyprus due to his status. “The situation there is terrible — nothing but killings, kidnappings, and chaos, even in our own areas.”

The post Surviving a Shipwreck, Drowning in the System appeared first on SIRAJ.

His work, described as “close to suicide,” was nevertheless in high demand. Exchanging foreign currency through official channels rarely reflected its real value on the parallel market. Most people holding foreign currencies, particularly dollars and euros, who wished to sell or even buy them turned to the parallel market to avoid suspicion, especially after several laws criminalized first the trading of dollars and later even their possession.

Despite the heavy security pressure and the regime’s attempts to criminalize dealings in foreign currency, the driver did not know that the passenger who had entered his car was an informant working with Military Intelligence Branch 251 (the Al-Khatib branch).

During the exchange, the informant took a photo of the agent inside the car and sent it to his superior in the branch via WhatsApp. A screenshot of that message later appeared in an official document signed by the head of Branch 251 and addressed to Department 40 on 29 November 2023, ordering the immediate arrest of the transfer agent, his handover to a police department, and the confiscation of the phones in his possession “with utmost urgency for the purpose of investigation.”

This currency exchange agent was not the only one arrested. The former Syrian regime deployed all available tools to track down and detain anyone dealing in foreign currencies, whether exchanging them or, later on, merely possessing them after issuing a series of laws aimed at centralizing control over hard currency in Assad’s hands.

Economic researcher Khaled al-Turkawi says that all the measures taken by the Assad regime were designed to extort anyone holding dollars or other foreign currencies, forcing them into two choices: either exchange their money through the regime at the rate it dictated, or face legal prosecution. He notes that these laws had little to do with economic policy and were instead intended to extract funds to sustain military operations and pursue victory.

As part of the “Damascus Dossier” project, the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ reviewed digital copies of numerous documents showing how the Assad regime used its intelligence agencies to track and arrest anyone dealing in U.S. dollars or other foreign currencies following Decree No. 3 of 2020, issued by the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which criminalized transactions in any currency other than the Syrian pound.

The “Damascus Dossier” is a collaborative investigative project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in partnership with the German public broadcaster NDR. It brings together journalists from around the world to uncover disturbing new details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, and 126 journalists from 24 media organizations across 20 countries spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing these documents, consulting experts, and interviewing Syrian families still searching for loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule.

The Damascus Dossier investigations reveal the inner workings of Assad’s security apparatus and its links to foreign governments and international organizations. The leak consists of more than 134,000 files, mostly written in Arabic, amounting to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

The documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence and General Intelligence Directorates.

Both agencies have been subject to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The documents include internal memoranda, reports, and correspondence revealing the day-to-day operations of Assad’s surveillance and arrest network, as well as its coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and communications with United Nations agencies operating inside Syria.

The highly sensitive database also contains the names of numerous former Syrian intelligence officers.

Recruiting Informants to Seize the “Dollar”

In a document dated 16 December 2023, the head of the Military Intelligence Branch 251 ordered Department 40 (Al-Khatib Branch) to arrest three money transfer agents operating in different areas of Damascus on charges of dealing in foreign currencies.

The document includes detailed information about the locations where the agents worked and businesses they used as cover to provide money transfers, as well as photographs secretly taken by intelligence officers during currency exchange operations. It also contains personal details such as phone numbers and other identifying information.

As in the previous document, the branch chief attached screenshots that appear to have been sent directly by the officers responsible for surveillance and reporting during the operation.

These operations were not only aimed at enforcing decrees and laws issued by the regime’s authorities. According to economic researcher Khaled al-Turkawi, they also served a much broader economic objective: monopolizing foreign currencies in the country and redirecting them to sources close to the regime and individuals within Assad’s inner circle.

After Assad banned trading in U.S. dollars and other foreign currencies, Syrians began using coded language to refer to the dollar in personal conversations and over the phone. They used nicknames such as “the forbidden one,” “parsley,” “the green,” or “number one.”

However, this strategy did not escape the Syrian intelligence services under Assad. One intelligence document summarizing surveillance of specific phone numbers indicates that Syrian intelligence identified a man in Sweida province as dealing in U.S. dollars after he asked about the price of “number one,” a coded reference to the dollar during what appeared to be a wiretapped phone conversation.

Criminalizing the Trade and Possession of Foreign Currency

Possessing foreign currency, especially U.S. dollars, had long been considered taboo in Syria. Even carrying $100 in one’s pocket could expose a Syrian to questioning, as holding such currency was considered illegal.

As a result, working in currency exchange outside the control of the Syrian regime was widely viewed as a “suicidal profession” because of the extreme risks involved, particularly in recent years, when the regime’s need to extract additional funds intensified.

Trading in the U.S. dollar and foreign currencies was first officially banned in Syrian markets in 1986, through Law No. 24 of 1986, issued under Hafez al-Assad. The law criminalized buying or selling foreign currencies outside licensed banks and exchange companies, as well as possessing large amounts of dollars without authorization. Violators faced prison sentences and financial penalties. This law laid the foundation for the criminalization of foreign currency trading in the local market.

Law No. 24 remained in effect until 2013, when Bashar al-Assad, two years after the outbreak of the Syrian uprising, issued Law No. 29 of 2013, titled “Combating Illegal Dealings in Foreign Currencies.” The law criminalized trading foreign currencies outside official channels, including licensed banks and exchange companies.

It also criminalized buying or selling dollars or other foreign currencies on the parallel market, as well as transferring money or speculating on exchange rates. Notably, the law imposed harsher penalties, including prison sentences ranging from three to ten years, depending on the severity of the offense, in addition to substantial fines.

In 2020, the Syrian pound experienced a sharp collapse. For the first time in its history, the exchange rate reached 1,000 Syrian pounds per U.S. dollar in January 2020, and by the end of that year, the dollar had risen to approximately 3,000 Syrian pounds.

This collapse prompted Assad, on 4 October 2020, to claim that the fundamental reason for the pound’s decline was the freezing of billions of dollars in deposits belonging to Syrians in Lebanese banks following Lebanon’s banking crisis in 2019.

During a visit to the “Producers 2020” exhibition, Assad stated that between $20 billion and $42 billion of these deposits may have been lost in the Lebanese banking sector, describing the figure as “terrifying” for Syria’s economy. He added: “They took the money and placed it in Lebanon, and we paid the price.”

Yet this statement was not Assad’s only response. Earlier that same year, he had already tightened restrictions on Syrians holding foreign currencies through Decree No. 3 of 2020. For the first time, the decree explicitly used the phrase “prohibition of possessing foreign currencies.”

Article 1 of the decree states that “it is prohibited to deal in any currency other than the Syrian pound as a means of payment or for any type of commercial transaction.” The decree significantly increased penalties and introduced legal provisions allowing authorities to confiscate foreign currencies involved in such transactions.

Dominating Hard Currency

It appears that the Syrian regime’s aim behind these laws was not to regulate the flow of currency in the market, nor even to protect the Syrian pound, but rather to secure Assad’s share of every dollar entering Syria, according to economic researcher al-Turkawi.

“The purpose of all these laws was to centralize the sale of dollars through the Central Bank. The regime wanted all foreign currency transactions to take place through the Central Bank for three main objectives.”

The first objective, according to al-Turkawi, was the collapse of the Syrian pound, which had effectively become unacceptable for international trade, as foreign suppliers increasingly demanded payment exclusively in U.S. dollars. This made it difficult for the regime to finance the army or settle payments to Russia or Iran without dollars, as well as to pay for essential imports such as food supplies.

• Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad

The post “‘The Green’ in Assad’s Hand”.. How the Syrian Regime Recruited Informants to Trap Those Dealing in U.S. Dollars appeared first on SIRAJ.

Accounts differ regarding the fate of senior military commanders and intelligence chiefs in Syria. Some are rumored to have fled to Russia, while other sources suggest that several are hiding in Iraq and Lebanon.

What all sources agree on, however, is the panic that swept through the regime’s hard core on the night it fell; a fear that drove one of Assad’s most senior figures, Major General Kifah Melhem, former head of Military Intelligence and Director of the National Security Bureau until the regime’s collapse (succeeding Ali Mamlouk), to abandon his office and flee, leaving behind numerous documents and papers. Among them was a particularly sensitive document: his personal phonebook.

This phonebook, one of the key documents reviewed by the investigative team at the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ, as part of the international investigative project “Damascus Dossier,” contains approximately 400 names.

The phonebook does not specify the nature of Melhem’s relationship with those whose numbers appear in his personal contacts. In this report, however, we attempt—solely through examining the phonebook and its contents—to understand the extent of Melhem’s power and centrality within the former Syrian regime, as reflected in the web of relationships recorded in his contact list.

“Damascus Dossier” is a collaborative investigative journalism project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in partnership with Germany’s public broadcaster NDR, bringing together journalists from around the world to uncover new and horrifying details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, and SIRAJ, together with 126 journalists from 26 partner media outlets across 20 countries, spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing the documents, consulting experts, and conducting interviews with Syrian families who are still searching for loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule.

The “Damascus Dossier” project exposes the internal structure of Assad’s security apparatus and its connections with foreign governments and international organizations. The leak consists of more than 134,000 files, mostly written in Arabic, equivalent to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

These documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence and the General Intelligence Directorate.

Both intelligence agencies have been subjected to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The materials include internal memoranda, reports, and correspondence that reveal the daily operational mechanisms of Assad’s surveillance and detention system, as well as its coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and its communications with UN-affiliated agencies operating inside Syria.

The highly sensitive database also contains the names of numerous former Syrian intelligence officers and operatives.

…

According to an investigation published by The New York Times on 15 October 2025, Kifah Melhem is currently residing in Russia alongside several former senior military and intelligence officers. It goes without saying that Melhem’s relationships extend both vertically and horizontally across the sprawling arms of the Syrian regime. Yet the personal phonebook he left behind offered the SIRAJ team—who examined its yellowed pages—a rare opportunity to glimpse the hidden communications of one of the Syrian regime’s most senior war criminals.

Who Is Major General Kifah Melhem?

Major General Kifah Melhem hails from the village of Jneinet Raslan in the countryside of Tartous Governorate, where he was born in 1961. He began his military career in the Republican Guard before being transferred to the Military Intelligence in 1994. He steadily rose through the ranks until, on the eve of the Syrian uprising, he became head of the notorious Investigation Branch 248 in Kafr Sousa, Damascus, which falls under the command of Military Intelligence.

In 2012, as protests intensified during the Syrian revolution, Bashar al-Assad appointed Melhem head of the Military Intelligence branch in Aleppo, and later in Latakia, where he gained notoriety for his role in suppressing protests and torturing detainees, according to human rights reports, including those issued by Human Rights Watch. Other reports indicate that he worked alongside Hilal al-Assad—who was killed in 2014—to recruit and arm shabiha militias to suppress demonstrations in both governorates.

This absolute loyalty to the regime, combined with a long record of human rights violations, led to Melhem’s appointment as head of the Information Branch (Branch 294). He was later appointed by Bashar al-Assad as Director of Military Intelligence, a position he held from 2019 until early 2024. During this period, Melhem’s responsibilities expanded to overseeing torture, killings, and extrajudicial executions. He exercised significant oversight over the widespread crimes committed at Saydnaya Prison, prompting the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom to impose sanctions on him in 2020 for his role in war crimes and human rights abuses in Syria.

In early 2024, as part of what the Jusoor Center for Studies described as a “restructuring of the security apparatus,” Bashar al-Assad appointed Kifah Melhem Director of the National Security Bureau, following the dismissal of Major General Ali Mamlouk.

Assad also issued a secret directive linking all security branches directly to the National Security Bureau—a move interpreted by analysts as an attempt to curtail the power of security branch chiefs after Assad’s control over them had weakened in favor of Russian and Iranian influence. This was achieved by appointing younger, more loyal figures, foremost among them Kifah Melhem.

Syrian researcher and writer Hussam Jazmati noted that Melhem’s appointment was “the cumulative result of repeatedly proving his loyalty and devotion to the regime and to assigned tasks.” Jazmati linked the decision to a period of regime “confidence and relief” in early 2024, coinciding with renewed Arab and international engagement with Bashar al-Assad. This environment, Jazmati argued, led Assad to believe he no longer needed a strong and influential National Security chief, but rather a disciplined figure resembling a ‘secretary’ more than a power broker.

A Pyramid of Phones and Ranks

Naturally, Melhem relied heavily on military and security personnel for coordination and communication. Yet his connections to economic elites, business figures, civil authorities, and opposition figures remain more opaque—particularly given the reputation of officials like Melhem, who were known for extortion and intimidation to keep individuals aligned with the Assad regime’s interests.

It is unclear when exactly Melhem began recording phone numbers in his personal phonebook, or when he stopped before fleeing. Between the entries and the ranks preceding many numbers, the book includes figures who have since died, others who were promoted and later fled with the regime’s collapse—like Melhem himself—or who remain out of public view.

Examining Melhem’s personal phonebook is, in effect, an attempt to map the hierarchical structure of Syria’s intelligence apparatus—its agency heads, branch chiefs, regional commands, and functional specializations.

Melhem followed a highly consistent system in recording contacts: he would list the rank first, followed by the name, and then the security branch or military formation to which the individual belonged, whether it was part of the Syrian regime forces or of other “friendly forces,” as the regime used to describe its Russian and Iranian allies.

The system used in Melhem’s phonebook is precise, classified, and strictly rank-based, granting its owner, then Director of the National Security Bureau, rapid access to the personal and office numbers of Syria’s most senior security officials.

Jazmati attributes this meticulous organization to Melhem’s background in engineering and his earlier close working relationship with Bassel al-Assad, his former classmate at Lycée Laïque and the Faculty of Engineering. Melhem reportedly served as Bassel’s liaison to the Prime Ministry and senior state officials, making fast access to people, phone numbers, and addresses an operational necessity.

Senior Figures in the Phonebook

Melhem’s phonebook is filled with top-ranking figures from Assad’s intelligence services, foremost among them Military Intelligence, which Melhem himself headed before his appointment to the National Security Bureau.

Among the names is Brigadier General Kamal Hassan, who was later promoted to Major General and succeeded Melhem as head of Military Intelligence after Melhem’s promotion, before fleeing to Russia during Assad’s escape.

Today, Major General Hassan is considered one of the key figures behind armed defiance against Syria’s transitional government. Reports, including a Reuters investigation published on 6 December, indicate that Hassan—as well as Assad-linked businessman Rami Makhlouf—has been spending millions of dollars to fund thousands of fighters along the Syrian coast in an attempt to ignite a military rebellion.

The phonebook also includes the names of eight Major Generals from the army and intelligence services, including:

• Mohammad Rahmoun, former head of Air Force Intelligence in the southern region
• Wajih Abdullah, former director of the Military Office at the Presidential Palace
• Adib Salameh, deputy director of Air Force Intelligence
• Badi’ Maalla, commander of the Unified Coastal Command in Baniyas, which was responsible for overseeing aerial operations along the coast

Maalla is known for originating the use of “naval mines” to bombard civilians in Syria and was also responsible for Hmeimim Airbase, home to Russia’s largest military base in the country.

Other figures include:

• Hassan Al-Kurdi, former head of the Military Vehicles Administration
• Mufeed Khaddour, former head of Military Intelligence Branch 291
• Adnan Ismail, commander of the Third Division of the Syrian Army
• Jamal Younes, later promoted to Major General and head of the Security and Military Committee in the eastern region

In one departure from his usual detailed entries, Melhem recorded a number labeled only as “Major General, Director of the Political Administration,” without a name. This likely refers either to Abdul Karim Suleiman, who held the post from 2004 to 2018, or to his successor Hassan Hassan.

Colonels, Brigadiers, and Branch Chiefs

Below the rank of Major General, Melhem’s phonebook lists numerous Brigadiers and Colonels across various military and security formations. Among them:

• Brigadier Tawfiq Haidar, Director of the National Security Office, which replaced the National Security Bureau under Ali Mamlouk in 2012, following the bombing of the National Security Office in Damascus
• Brigadier Ghassan Ismail, Deputy Director of Air Force Intelligence
• Brigadier Shafiq Sarem, an officer in the Syrian Army
• Brigadier Taha Haj Taha, former head of the Political Security branch in Latakia
• Brigadier Imad Mohammad, affiliated with the Air Force and Air Force Intelligence, who died in 2019

Notably, the phonebook includes many branch chiefs of Military Intelligence and Military Police across Syria, all of whom served under Melhem during his tenure as Director of Military Intelligence until early 2024. Among them:

• Brigadier Samir Nizam, head of the Military Police branch in Damascus
• Brigadier Tamer Al-Dakhil, head of the Military Intelligence branch in Aleppo
• Brigadier Wafiq Nasser, head of Branch 256 (Military Intelligence)
• Colonel Osama (surname not listed), head of Branch 217 of Military Intelligence in Suwayda

Once again deviating from his usual clarity, Melhem recorded several numbers without names, including:

• Head of Branch 248
• Head of Branch 235, known as Palestine Branch (likely Mohammad Khalouf or Yassin Dahhi)
• Head of Branch 237, known as the Wireless Communications Branch

All of these branches fall under the authority of Military Intelligence.

The Less Fortunate Ranks

While Major General Kifah Melhem and many senior figures of the former regime, including Bashar al-Assad himself, are reportedly enjoying a comfortable life in Moscow today, and while many of the names listed in Melhem’s phonebook have gone into hiding out of fear of accountability, some of the individuals recorded in his contacts were far less fortunate.

For these figures, their names now amount to little more than ranks on paper, having failed to escape as Melhem and his peers did.

On page five of Melhem’s phonebook appears the name of Brigadier Ali Al-Saleh, who was unable to flee like Melhem and others and ultimately fell into the hands of the security forces of Syria’s new transitional government, according to a January 2025 report by Al Arabiya TV Channel.

In April, Syria’s transitional government security forces also announced the arrest of Brigadier Hamed Barhoum, whose name likewise appears in Melhem’s phonebook.

Syrian security forces published photos of Barhoum following his arrest. He was detained along with other members of the fallen regime and was found in possession of a Kalashnikov rifle.

Meanwhile, Brigadier Habib Safiya, who served as head of the Military Police in Aleppo, was killed in a car accident on the Damascus highway in 2019, amid speculation that the incident was a staged assassination linked to internal power struggles within the regime’s security apparatus.

Friends of Many Nationalities

Since the beginning of foreign intervention in its favor to counter the Syrian revolution’s growing momentum, the Assad regime frequently used the term “friends” to refer to its military allies, particularly during the Russian intervention, which shifted the balance of the war in the regime’s favor before its eventual collapse.

These “friends” were at times Russian, at other times Iranian, and later included countries such as China, as well as entities like Abkhazia. Among the regime’s most fervent loyalists, they were even referred to as “brothers.”

Russian and Iranian “friends” feature prominently in Kifah Melhem’s phonebook. Scattered throughout its pages are the names of Russian and Iranian translators, as well as military officers such as “Major Yuri,” who appears elsewhere as “Colonel Yuri,” and a Russian lieutenant colonel named Edgar. Melhem also recorded the number of a Russian Major General named “Bilal,” who appears to have been operating in Qamishli.

The presence of Iranian “friends” or “brothers” is even more striking. The phonebook includes the number of Hajj Amer Al-Haidari, described by Melhem as the “Commander of the Zayn al-Abidin Brigade,” a militia formed in Deir Ezzor with support from Iran and Hezbollah. It also lists Mohammad Al-Saeed, commander of the Jerusalem Brigade (Liwa al-Quds), a Palestinian-Syrian militia founded in Aleppo in 2013, which multiple sources say received financial and logistical support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Beyond militia commanders of varying allegiances, the phonebook also contains the name and number of Major General Jamil Al-Sayyed, widely described as “the (former) Syrian regime’s man in Lebanon,” where he served as Director of General Security. He was previously arrested in connection with the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, before being released years later.

Melhem also mentions his Syrian friends and fellow citizens. For example, Raji Falhout’s name is included. Falhout founded the “Dawn Militia” in Suwaida, which was supported by the Military Intelligence branch that Melhem led for many years. Falhout’s fate remains unknown after battles with other military formations in the province in July 2022, which resulted in the elimination of his militia and the loss of contact with him.

The Octopus General

The hundreds of names and phone numbers handwritten by Major General Melhem reveal the breadth of his influence and power—not only within Syria’s military and intelligence circles, but extending across civilian institutions, the medical and media sectors, financial elites, and even figures described as part of the “opposition.”

At the top of Melhem’s contact list appear the names of Syria’s most powerful economic figures under the Assad regime. These include Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and owner of the country’s largest financial empire—later curtailed after he was sidelined in favor of Asma al-Assad; Abu Salim Daaboul, former head of the Presidential Office under both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad and one of Syria’s wealthiest businessmen; and Hussam Qaterji, one of the regime’s most prominent economic fixers, who is subject to international sanctions for his illicit business activities.

Non-military government institutions are also represented in Melhem’s phonebook. It includes numbers for several ministries and ministers, most notably Mansour Azzam, Minister of Presidential Affairs, who press reports say was aboard the private aircraft that transported Bashar al-Assad to Moscow. The phonebook also contains a number labeled simply “Prime Minister,” without a name, corresponding to an internal contact line.

For a figure of Melhem’s rank, the identity of the prime minister appears less important than the office itself. The same pattern applies to the entry for the Grand Mufti of the Republic, recorded without a name. However, the last person to hold that post before it was abolished in 2021 was Sheikh Badr al-Din Hassoun, who was arrested following the fall of the Assad regime and later appeared in a video released by the Syrian Ministry of Justice before a prosecutor.

Melhem’s reach extended even to figures long described as part of the “internal opposition,” or what the regime preferred to call “opposition under the roof of the homeland.”

The phonebook includes a contact for opposition figure Alaa Arafat, who was a member of the Syrian Negotiations Commission and the Moscow Platform. Melhem appears to have considered him a representative of opposition figure Qadri Jamil, whose name is written in parentheses next to Arafat’s.

On the same page, Melhem recorded the number of opposition figure Mohammad Said Rassas, seemingly as a representative of Hassan Abdul Azim. Both men are members of the Communist Party and the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, raising questions about Melhem’s dealings with Syria’s internal opposition.

In response to questions from SIRAJ, Rassas stated that he was unaware of why his number appeared in Melhem’s phonebook, stressing that there had been no prior communication whatsoever. He also said he has been subject to a travel ban since 2008, issued by the National Security Office—the same body later headed by Melhem after it was restructured into the National Security Bureau.

Rassas also spent 15 years in prison between 1980 and 1995 after being tried before the State Security Court for his membership in the Communist Party.

Amid the dense web of military, intelligence, and political contacts, the phonebook also contains numbers for ordinary professionals—people essential even to the daily life of a general accused of war crimes. These include contacts labeled “health worker” and “barber,” as well as a number for “Abu Shaker – Immigration and Passports,” the civil registry office where Syrians often waited for hours to obtain travel documents. For an official of Melhem’s stature, having such contacts meant fast-tracking procedures for himself and those close to him.

Here, we present readers with a digital version mirroring the original phonebook left behind by Kifah Melhem, the former Director of the National Security Bureau under the ousted Assad regime. All phone numbers have been redacted to protect privacy and to respect ongoing and potential accountability processes related to violations committed during the former regime.

Creative direction and visual design: Radwan Awad
Editing and supervision: Manar Rachwani

The post “Damascus Dossier”: What Did Major General Kifah Melhem Leave Behind in His “Phonebook” After Fleeing? appeared first on SIRAJ.

That day, Haneen, who was working from Damascus with media outlets opposed to the Assad regime under pseudonyms, moved through several neighborhoods in the city. Around midday, she entered an educational center to use its internet connection and electricity. Suddenly, an unfamiliar man entered one of the halls, quickly scanned those present, and left. Minutes later, he returned and asked everyone to present their personal identification.

He began with journalist Haneen, who was sitting near the entrance. After identifying himself as an officer from the Political Security Directorate, he took her ID card. He did not check the documents of anyone else in the room because Haneen was the target.

Haneen was arrested and transferred to the Air Force Intelligence branch at Mezzeh Military Airport. During her detention, she was subjected to various forms of torture, both during interrogation and outside it, after investigators retrieved all the data from her communication devices. “I ended up in the hospital,” she told the investigation team, explaining that she was arrested through surveillance of her communications. She believes she was tracked by a device known locally as al-Rashida, technically referred to as an IMSI catcher.

“Shortly before my arrest, I started receiving SMS messages to reset passwords on my phone,” Haneen said. “When I was arrested, I saw three cars parked outside. The arrest happened just minutes after I arrived at the center and sat down.”

Haneen was not the only person arrested after being tracked through surveillance technologies under the former Assad regime. Arrest records show dozens of “targets” detained after being digitally monitored by security forces during Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The technologies used by the Assad regime to spy on Syrians and arrest them are typically employed by states to protect national security and combat organized crime. Assad, however, repurposed these capabilities to pursue political opponents—and later, individuals involved in business activities.

This occurred at a time when the Syrian regime and its allies on Syrian territory (Hezbollah and Iran) were themselves subject to Israeli intelligence penetration.

Digital copies of documents shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) as part of the “Damascus Dossier” project with the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ, reveal that before its fall, the Assad regime received training from technical and intelligence specialists from the People’s Republic of China and Iran on the use of so-called Rashida devices—4G systems designed to “track wanted individuals” and apprehend them.

The Damascus Dossier project is a collaborative investigative initiative led by the ICIJ, in partnership with Germany’s public broadcaster NDR. It brings together journalists from around the world to uncover new and disturbing details about one of the most brutal state-run killing systems of the 21st century: the regime of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

ICIJ, NDR, SIRAJ, and 126 journalists from 24 partner media organizations across 20 countries spent more than eight months organizing and analyzing the documents, consulting experts, and interviewing Syrian families still searching for loved ones who disappeared during Assad’s rule.

The Damascus Dossier project exposes the internal structure of Assad’s security apparatus and its connections to foreign governments and international organizations. The leak comprises more than 134,000 files and documents, primarily in Arabic, amounting to approximately 243 gigabytes of data.

The documents span more than three decades, from 1994 to December 2024, and originate from Air Force Intelligence and the General Intelligence Directorate in Syria.

Both agencies have been subjected to extensive U.S. and European sanctions due to their brutal practices, including torture and sexual violence.

The leaked materials include internal memos, reports, and correspondence that reveal the day-to-day operational mechanisms of Assad’s surveillance and detention network, as well as coordination with foreign allies such as Russia and Iran, and communications with UN-affiliated agencies operating inside Syria. The highly sensitive database also contains the names of several former Syrian intelligence officers.

The Assad regime continued training its personnel on the use of Rashida 4G devices until the end of 2024. Digital images of documents reviewed by the investigation team,  dated 2023, show that several intelligence officers received advanced training on Rashida 4G systems from what the documents refer to as “Chinese friends.”

In 2024, intelligence services continued—and intensified—this training program.

In addition, Assad adapted all available tracking systems to ensure the survival of his rule, including the pursuit of political opponents and individuals who possess foreign currency.

The Rashida, internationally known as an IMSI catcher (International Mobile Subscriber Identity catcher), is a device that intercepts mobile phone signals and captures the unique international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) associated with them.

Training Under the Supervision of “Chinese Friends”

In September 2024, as the Assad regime was struggling to survive amid growing international isolation and the mounting impact of sanctions under the Caesar Act, intelligence agencies were keen to enhance their counter-espionage capabilities. They organized specialized training courses to that end.

A classified cable titled “Report for the Attention of Brigadier Engineer, Head of Branch 280” was issued under a Top Secret designation.

According to the document, a request was made to “nominate an employee to attend a training course in counter-espionage.” The cable asked the brigadier to nominate two employees to attend a second round of practical training on “source management and technical processing.” Shortly thereafter, Warrant Officer First Class Hussein was assigned to attend the course.

In the same context, a covert tracking system was installed, and personnel were trained to operate it and follow protocols for coordinating with the Communications Directorate to meet target-tracking requirements. Ten intelligence officers from the Directorate were trained on operating the Rashida system for covert tracking and on carrying out training missions to increase their operational readiness and tracking capabilities.

These developments formed part of a comprehensive work plan detailed in a document titled “Tasks Accomplished in 2023,” which also records the “implementation of a training course for personnel under the supervision of Chinese friends on the use of the Rashida (4G).”

Tracking operations carried out by Assad’s intelligence services in 2023

Rim Kamal, a legal officer in the Human Rights and Business Unit at the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP), said that surveillance constitutes a violation of privacy, but what follows can amount to crimes against humanity, such as torture and enforced disappearance.
“This means that companies involved may have contributed to international crimes,” she noted, adding that several countries have enacted laws to regulate corporate activities and mitigate risks associated with their operations.

She also pointed to the European Union’s recent adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which imposes a legal obligation on large companies—including certain non-EU companies operating within the European market—to identify, prevent, and address human rights and environmental risks and adverse impacts throughout their supply and value chains.

Targets Under Surveillance

Another exclusive document indicates that a group of targets referred by the Director of the General Intelligence Directorate was processed, detained, and arrested. Additional cases were handled based on information received by the Directorate through officers of Branch 280 and other intelligence sources.

At the time, the Syrian intelligence apparatus was headed by Hossam Louqa (born 1964), a Syrian intelligence officer believed to be currently in Russia. Louqa served as Director of the General Intelligence Directorate from 2019 until the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.

Drawing on decades of experience within Syria’s security services, Louqa played a central role in strengthening the country’s intelligence community and was known for his involvement in a wide range of security and intelligence operations inside Syria.

Under Louqa’s supervision, 233 targets (see illustration below)—all civilians—were tracked to arrest them. Among these were:

• 178 cases under unspecified “various topics,”
• two cases involving corruption in state institutions,
• five cases related to passport issuance,
• 11 drug-related cases,
• 17 cases involving transactions conducted in currencies other than the Syrian pound, and

20 individuals wanted by the intelligence services.

Of the 233 tracked targets, surveillance and follow-up memos were issued for five wanted individuals, while 12 targets remained under processing. Six targets were referred to Branch 300, seven to Branch 285, and the remaining cases to Branches 235 and 315.

A document summarizing activities completed in 2023 states that intelligence branches cooperated to arrest targets referred to them through the Rashida system. In the final quarter of that year, 30 targets were tracked, and seven arrests were carried out. These included 11 targets linked to Branch 322 (four arrested), five targets linked to Branch 345, four targets linked to Branch 320, and ten training targets.

Each year, intelligence branches compiled summaries of their surveillance activities in a file known as “System Targets.” The investigation team reviewed a document detailing targets tracked by the surveillance system between 2019 and 2024.

For each target, multiple phone numbers were listed, along with the names of subscribers and the alleged charges justifying surveillance. The records show hundreds of mobile numbers linked to their owners, locations, and accusations ranging from political to economic offenses—such as “communicating with a terrorist,” “special target,” “livestock smuggling,” or “discussing weapons.”

In some cases, targets were pursued for contacting a Lebanese number and insulting Hezbollah, while others were accused of conducting transactions in foreign currency. The final outcome for each target was recorded, often indicating arrest and detention, continued pursuit, or failure due to phone line deactivation. In some instances, surveillance led to numbers registered to individuals already detained, with the SIM card later reused by another person. Others were arrested after being tracked through their IMEI.

In an undated document reviewed by the investigation team—believed to date to 2024—Branch 280 of the General Intelligence Directorate offered assistance in tracking 19 individuals in November, shortly before Assad’s fall, using Rashida 4G devices. Four notorious security branches known for repression and torture—Branches 322, 318, 325, and Counter-Espionage Branch 300—jointly requested the arrest of these 19 individuals. Four of them were arrested using the Rashida systems.

Abusive Use of Technology

Since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, the Assad regime has systematically exploited technology to entrap opponents. Internet services were cut off from entire communities that relied on social media to report violations against civilians during protests against Assad.

Mehran Ayoun, director of the Salamtek team specializing in digital security and digital citizenship, said: “In the early days of the Syrian revolution, communications were completely cut off from the city of Douma and its surroundings. Yet at the same time, phones inside the city were receiving a signal, confirming the presence of Rashida devices impersonating cell towers.”

Ayoun added that in its final phase before collapse, the regime increasingly used Rashida devices to track traders and individuals engaged in financial activities, aiming to extract as much money as possible—not for criminal investigations or the public interest. He noted that in the final period before Assad’s fall, there was no revolutionary or military activity in major cities, particularly Damascus.

He emphasized that while states may possess IMSI catchers, their use normally requires a judicial warrant and must serve the public interest. Unauthorized data interception results in prosecutions and financial penalties—something that never occurred under the fallen regime.

Waseem Hassan, a telecommunications engineer who previously worked on building Damascus’s Al-Nasr Exchange within the central Operations and Maintenance Center (OMC) for landline communications, said that the rear section of the Al-Nasr Exchange building was—and remains—responsible for monitoring and controlling all communications in Syria. The same building housed communications monitoring rooms operated by Branch 225.

Hassan defected and left Syria after Branch 225 tasked him with developing an algorithm to detect relationships among callers. “If a group of people frequently call each other, that indicates they are an organized coordination group,” he said.
“At the time, the head of Branch 225, a brigadier, told me I had full authority to assemble a team of engineers and programmers to develop the algorithm internally, because procuring it from abroad would require a tender process and too much time.”

Before defecting in the early days of the Syrian revolution, Waseem Hassan accompanied one of his colleagues on a multi-day tour with technical equipment. He later discovered that the device was using a Rashida system, without his knowledge at the time of what kind of data was being collected. Prior to the mission, a communications antenna had been installed on the vehicle and connected to the device.

Intelligence Training in China

Possessing IMSI catcher devices is not, in itself, a violation. Most countries around the world own similar equipment, typically using it for strictly security and military purposes, in wartime, or to maintain public order and combat organized crime. However, following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, the Bashar al-Assad regime expanded its surveillance capabilities by acquiring new 4G Rashida systems and receiving technical training with direct assistance from China, then a key ally of the regime.

Syrian-Chinese relations date back to 1956, following Syria’s independence. During the Cold War and throughout the 1990s, relations remained limited before improving significantly in the early 2000s, driven by increased trade and economic exchanges.

By 2004, economic cooperation had grown substantially, with China becoming one of Syria’s largest suppliers of goods. Documents from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence indicate that between 2012 and 2024, Syrian intelligence officers and military personnel received training in various technical fields from Chinese military and intelligence officials. Syrian delegations traveled repeatedly to China for this purpose.

Documents dating back to 2012 show that the leadership of Air Force Intelligence sent several military personnel to China to attend a three-and-a-half-month workshop on YLG-6M military radar systems.

One document reviewed by the investigation team lists the names of Syrian officers dispatched to China for training in various fields related to communications and defense. These officers were nominated by Air Force Intelligence, which at the time was headed by Jamil Hassan, who is subject to both U.S. and EU sanctions.

China was among the countries that politically supported the Assad regime during the years of the revolution and used its veto power multiple times at the UN Security Council to block resolutions condemning Assad.

Neither the Chinese Embassy in Berlin nor the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to requests for comment from the investigation team and journalists from Germany’s public broadcaster NDR.

Data Extraction and Lock-Breaking Capabilities

Under Assad, security services also conducted training programs under Iranian supervision, which included equipping a so-called “Lock Unit” within one intelligence branch with specialized devices to open various types of locks. The unit received manual tools for opening vehicles, duplicating keys, detecting lock frequencies, and copying them onto new keys.

According to a document outlining activities completed in 2023, a training course was conducted to “qualify Syrian intelligence personnel in opening residential and office locks.”

In parallel, the Digital Crime Detection Unit was equipped with advanced skills, including specialized training in data recovery from hard drives, USB flash drives, and memory cards, particularly from damaged devices.

Syrian intelligence sought to further enhance its technical capabilities with Iranian support by keeping pace with modern applications, monitoring and tracking social media, and employing social engineering techniques, in addition to training in opening modern mechanical locks and electronic and mechanical safes.

Intelligence officers also received training in opening modern biometric vehicles, cloning frequencies of modern car remote controls, and acquiring the necessary tools and equipment for such operations.

Documents from Syrian intelligence dated 2012–2014 indicate that Iran trained Syrian military personnel, including on how to respond to unguided missile attacks on aircraft. The documents also allege that Iran assisted in maintaining Syrian government aircraft on several occasions and sold aircraft to Syria.

Another document from 2018 refers to a chemical weapons facility in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus (Haran al-Awamid), reportedly operated primarily by Iranian workers.

Another document dated 2023 indicates that “Iranian colleagues” trained Syrian intelligence officers in opening vehicle, office, and residential locks and duplicating keys—training that appears aimed at improving their ability to pursue intelligence targets.

Neither the Iranian Ministry of Justice nor the Office of the Supreme Leader responded to requests for comment from the investigation team and NDR journalists.

Surveillance Technology Before the Syrian Revolution

The Assad regime had a long-standing history of importing surveillance technologies and electronic equipment to monitor communications and internet traffic.

Open-source research identified several companies worldwide that supplied the Syrian regime with surveillance technologies prior to the uprising, showing how the regime acquired communications equipment that enabled the tracking, arrest, and torture of dissidents based on intercepted calls and communications.

One month before the Syrian uprising began, in February 2011, the regime obtained a U.S.-made Central Monitoring System (CMS), supplied to the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment.

The supplier later paid a USD 100,000 fine to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

The system was capable of collecting data on internet browsing, email, online chat, and Voice over IP (VoIP) calls. The U.S. State Department concluded that the system could be used by the Syrian government to intensify repression against the Syrian population.

The regime also acquired Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies, enabling intelligence services to monitor internet activity, including browsing and email communications. One company reportedly sold DPI systems that could be used by the Syrian regime for surveillance purposes.

Following the outbreak of the revolution in March 2011 and the imposition of international sanctions, the Assad regime appears to have turned increasingly to China for technological systems. Numerous Chinese companies have faced allegations of selling telecommunications equipment to authoritarian regimes such as Iran and Syria. A Reuters report revealed that Chinese tech giant Huawei used front companies under names such as Skycom and Canicula.

Assad’s Interest in Chinese Technology

Months before the regime’s fall, Branch 280 prepared a detailed study of a Chinese company, which was reviewed by the investigation team. The study included extensive information about the company’s smart solutions, related systems, and technologies involving identity verification, data storage, and transportation systems. However, it remains unverified whether the company supplied any equipment to the Assad regime or established any commercial relationship with it.

Engineer Waseem Hassan said, “During my work, most of the equipment came from Huawei. They provided all the technologies and equipment, to the extent that employees competed to be selected for training missions to China.”

He added that in 2011, following sanctions and the withdrawal of many companies from Syria, Huawei significantly expanded its presence with the Syrian government.
“I personally worked with Chinese technicians who came to install servers and other equipment. Chinese experts were continuously operating at the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment,” he said.

According to a report by SC Media, multiple companies in Hong Kong and China sold Rashida (IMSI catcher) devices on the black market for up to USD 15,000, contingent on “promises of legal use.”

Legal Responsibility of Companies

Rim Kamal, a legal officer at the Human Rights and Business Unit of the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP), said there are legal consequences in such cases.
“Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies can become involved in violations in several ways.”

She added that even if companies do not directly cause harm, they may be complicit through intermediaries.
“It is the responsibility of the selling company to know who will ultimately benefit from this technology before completing the sale,” Kamal said.

Access to Sensitive Data Without Judicial Authorization

Digital copies of documents reviewed by the investigation team show that security agencies had access to sensitive information on all mobile phone users.

Security branches routinely submitted names, phone numbers, or national identification numbers to Branch 300, which coordinated with the Communications Directorate to retrieve data such as incoming and outgoing calls, subscriber identity, last known geographic location, and in some cases, recorded call and message content—confirming expert testimony.

When asked whether security agencies could access subscriber systems without facilitation or consent from telecom companies, Alaa Ghazzal, a digital safety and information security specialist, explained: “Most systems—particularly subscriber identity, coverage, IMEI, and IMSI systems—require telecom companies to grant access in order to retrieve data.”

He added that telecom companies control both subscriber identity systems and coverage systems.

Subscriber identity systems provide phone number data, including subscriber identity, point and date of purchase, and sales outlet information. Coverage systems provide data on cell towers connected to a device or number, enabling location tracking.

Mehran Ayoun, director of the Salamtek digital security and digital citizenship team, said:
“This means that security branches have access to telecom companies’ infrastructure, as evidenced by their ability to know when someone uses a new phone number or to identify all numbers associated with an individual via their national ID.”

Neither Syriatel nor MTN, Syria’s two mobile phone operators, responded to questions from the investigation team regarding intelligence access to sensitive user data or the role of cell towers in facilitating arrests.

Creative coordination and visual solutions: Radwan Awad
Research contribution: Wael Qarsaifi

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