Without the hacksaw, the day’s haul is paltry. He and his friend Basel*, two years his senior, used the fine-toothed blades to weaken the steel rods sticking out of building debris, then twisted them until they snapped. They must now resort to picking up scrap off cuts, but after months of scavenging among the same mounds of grey rubble- once opposition suburbs turned battlefield during the 14 years of war – there is only so much left.

To them, steel scrap fetches only 500 Syrian pounds per kilo – the equivalent of four US cents. On a good day, their harvest might come to 25 kilos. On a bad day, a meagre ten. It’s a risky business, and they know it, but it reportedly pays more than picking up plastic.

While Ahmad and Basel’s day is slow, around them, others are swarming across the blasted land. They drift in and out of the scene, swallowed by the open bellies of the buildings, only to resurface in their gouged-out undergrounds, as they pick their way across a pale blanket of shattered masonry, perhaps just inches away from the next sleeping mortar round.

They are covered in multiple layers of clothes and white chalk, their faces half-hidden by dusty rags: men and women distinguishable only by their eyes, bloodshot with fatigue, and by the forms of their white, calloused hands, which they would not shake with visitors. Almost every day, they scavenge from morning until sunset, amid the reek of burnt plastic, asbestos dust, and broken concrete.

For years, long before rebel troops marched over the capital in December 2024, poor displaced families and their children have come to the ruined peripheries of Damascus to collect scrap rebar, aluminium cables, and twisted pieces of iron plates. Under the Assad regime, most of these lands were no go areas. For the past four years of war, Ahmad and Basel’s families have had access under a special agreement: they would be among the many that made up Assad’s personal army of scrappers.

“The Fourth Division would grant you permission to enter here to work and sell to them,” said one of the men that gathered around us during a break from scavenging through the rubble, the face hidden by an ashy rag, “you couldn’t sell to anyone else.” rights

A scene that should haunt us all: one piece of this steel scrap – bought for a mere 500 Syrian pounds per kilo by desperate families during and after the war, with the covert backing of local warlords – may have been used to build a stadium in Brazil, the Hong Kong International Airport or Dubai’s most famous luxury hotel, the Jumeirah Burj Al Arab; it may also have ended up in a brand-new building apartment in Germany, or found its way into motorways in Romania.

Ahmad and Basel are at the bottom of a supply chain that is indispensable for ‘cleaning’ one of the dirtiest industries in the world: steelmaking.

‘Clean’ steel

Steel forms the backbone of industrial society: from railway lines and ships to the beams that support our buildings, and the weapons that can destroy them. The process of producing this durable material from iron ore, carbon, and various other metals is responsible for almost 11% of the global CO2 emissions.

In the last decade, new technologies to produce recycled steel have garnered the industry’s interest: it is cleaner and, most of all, cheaper; electric arc furnaces, under the correct conditions, consume around 70% less energy than traditional iron ore-based blast furnaces. Turkey’s producers were particularly compelled: in two decades they turned recycled steel production into the fifth largest contributor to the national economy. Turkey is now listed among the major steel producers in the world, with a steel export value estimated at $16.1 billion USD.

The issue with scrap metal, indispensable for the production of recycled steel, is that it is limited. There is barely enough of it in the world to meet the demand. As production volumes of steel are surging worldwide, ferrous scrap is now treated as strategic for the future of many national metal industries.

As the world’s largest importer of ferrous scrap, Turkey has turned it into its humble gold. Yet, not all is known about the country’s discreet sourcing network, which experts and researchers we spoke to described as opaque, unmonitored, and hard to trace.

In economies that industrialised early, scrap metal is abundant. Europe’s scrapyards are overflowing with end-of-life ferrous goods, which are the source of more than half of Turkey’s imported scrap. When the corridors of Brussels filled with whispers of a possible export ban – meant to protect the continent’s bleeding supply -Turkish companies began to look elsewhere to keep the imports flowing, sources in the sector told us. And as it happens, few events generate metal waste as swiftly as war.

We estimated that over the last five years, between 6 and 10% of the scrap recycled in Turkey came from countries we can define as in conflict: Syria, but also Libya, Lebanon, Ukraine, Russia, and Israel/Palestine.

Despite the pittance paid to vulnerable people in conflict zones to dismantle entire battle-scarred neighbourhoods, the scrap metal trade represents a $46 billion market.  Because of a lack of international monitoring and an opaque supply chain, Turkey – and the world’s – hunger for scrap predictably attracts exploitative individuals hoping to bankroll their wars.

The New Arab (TNA), in collaboration with SIRAJ and El Paìs, documented the journey of steel scrap headed to Turkish mills from war-torn countries. We searched for documents in abandoned Assad-era checkpoints, sifted through tens of thousands of maritime traffic records, examined satellite images for shipments, and pieced together leads through dozens of conversations with workers and experts across multiple countries.

This year-long investigation proves that, during the last decade, roughly one tenth of Turkey’s ferrous scrap was sourced from war economies. Under Assad’s order, scrap-loaded trucks exited the country from Lebanese border crossings, to eventually turn up in Turkish private companies’ scrapyards.

Trade data show that several Turkish steel mills ship their finished products to European clients – meaning that conflict-sourced steel is most likely used across the continent.

Opaque due diligence

TNA contacted human rights officers within large European construction companies. Though they requested anonymity, they admitted that human rights abuses in the scrap metal supply chain can go overlooked within due diligence processes. They justified this by pointing to the complexities of the trade, notably its fragmented procurement and limited traceability.

Other sources from Artimet, an independent Turkish inspection company monitoring various stages of the scrap supply chain, confirmed to TNA that their quality controls consist of merely visual inspections.

Artimet representatives added that inspections would not probe how the scrap had been collected or who had profited from it. They told TNA that the end client would not care.

Many of the steel companies in Turkey declined to speak to us or ignored our requests for comment. These include Diler, Kroman, Mescier, Yazici, and Yesilyurt Demir Çelik, companies which this investigation found to be involved in procuring scrap metal from conflict countries. TNA also contacted Turkey’s Ministry of Customs and Trade, inquiring about the controls in place to detect conflict-linked scrap metal. We received no response in time for publication.

The general director of one of Turkey’s major steel companies candidly admitted, during a conversation on background, that scrap may be sourced from war-ravaged territories, including Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and Libya: “The steel of the destroyed buildings [there] will become scrap.” The company publicly declares exporting to more than 60 countries.

Many in the sector seem to be mostly clueless about the possible implications of their tainted supply chains.

The Foreign Trade Department of one of Turkey’s major scrap-dealing companies told TNA that they didn’t have specific policies in place to rule out links between imported scrap and warring factions. “We only purchase scrap from places we know and have worked with for many years,” they explained. The same scrap may then be sold to European countries like Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

While the Turkish scrap-dealing company claimed it was not importing scrap from Syria, they admitted to buying from both eastern and western Libya.  Our investigation shows that this is not uncommon: Syria and Libya are just some of the many countries in conflict where the scrap metal trade has been exploited to feed the region’s war machine. Turkish companies are even trading with entities with which the Ankara government has been at loggerheads for years.

Israel, for instance, is among the countries at war from which Turkey buys scrap metal. It remains difficult to determine how much of this scrap originates from Israeli industrial and consumer waste, and how much comes from the devastation it wreaks upon the occupied Palestinian territories. Turkey imposed a commercial embargo on Israel only in mid-2024, in protest of its genocide in Gaza. Despite this, some Turkish media outlets reported that scrap shipments continued through third-country vessels or falsified freight documents, leading the Turkish government to sanction several ships involved. This way of dodging restrictions would be consistent with industry practices revealed by our investigation.

Trading with entities in conflict affected countries is not inherently illegal, but in some cases trade is restricted or banned under sanctions, laws or embargoes. Specifically, for cargoes of steel scrap coming from Haftar’s Libya or Assad’s Syria, the habitual supply standards and procedures are not enough, a senior researcher at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), Blanca Racionero Gomez, explained to TNA.

“It’s not so important if you have suppliers coming from war-torn countries. What’s important is if their supply is financing conflict, is exacerbating human rights abuses and is causing environmental damage. That’s what’s important, and what needs to be addressed through due diligence processes,” said Racionero Gomez.

“Because it’s a conflict-affected area, you need to […] be more vigilant than in other areas where information is easier to access,” explained the BHRRC researcher, calling on any company downstream the steel scrap trade to be held accountable.

Syria’s 4th Division and its army of scrap pickers

Wherever Assad’s special army of scrap collectors went, only cement would remain.

Most of Qaboun, a suburb in Damascus, long contested between opposition and loyalist forces during the civil war, has been reduced to a grey wasteland of pulverised cement. There are paths to walk through the mounds and the waste is partitioned into small islands of debris. Anywhere outside these beaten trails may be unsafe: unexploded ordnance lays below the surface, sleeping but only lightly.

The horizon of desolation, sentenced by the low, uneven expanse of crumbling concrete, is betrayed by cut-outs of lush green, disorienting against the opaque haze that surrounds us. Life is flowing back in, now that the Assad forces can no longer prevent residents from returning to the hull of their homes.

As in many of the areas that bore witness to years of fierce battles, none of the buildings’ roofs remained: not because of the fighting, but because the steel rebars had been stripped from the supporting columns. Some recognised what remained of their home only by the pattern on the floor tiles, recalled Mohammad al-Imam, an activist from Daraya, another gutted town south-west of the capital, which rose to prominence as an iconic arena of civil resistance during the early phase of the uprising against Assad.

As Mohammad walks us through Daraya’s barren streets, ringed by the husks of roofless buildings, he regularly points at floors hanging in the void, pinning it on Assad’s forces: “This one was taken down, you see, look, its iron was removed – but this is not detonation, this has been taken down to take the iron.”

They wouldn’t say anything about the children; anyone could work, confirmed Ahmad’s mother, recalling the four years where they had no choice but to toil as steel pickers for the 4th Division, the Syrian military’s elite unit. Her large blue eyes gleaming over a face powdered in white dust by a day of sifting through rubble. “They used to buy it cheaply, [but sold it] expensively,” she told TNA, “it’s known.”

Formed in the 1980s, the 4th Armoured Division effectively served as a praetorian guard for the Assad family, charged with protecting the regime from internal and external threats. Over the course of the civil war, Western sanctions cut Syria off from the global financial system and the 4th Division became central to the regime’s war economy, developing into an amorphous parastate towering over strategic – and mostly illicit – businesses in Syria (such as the manufacture and smuggling of captagon).

It operated under Major General Maher al-Assad’s command, the brother of toppled President Bashar al-Assad and arguably the second most powerful man in the regime. Their intimidating checkpoints were pervasive across the country, yet the Division’s true circle of power clustered around Damascus’s peripheries.

It’s no accident that Qaboun and Daraya, among the areas to suffer the most extensive pillaging, were under the Division’s control. The scrap metal trade – mostly extracted from plundered private properties and infrastructure in former rebel-controlled areas – was one of the unit’s economic revenues.

Bashar al-Assad used to layer relatives, proxies, and front companies between him and his revenue sources. The Syrian Minerals and Investment Company – a private entity founded in 2018 – worked as one of these fronts through the 4th Division.

In 2019, the Assad regime issued Resolution No. 3061, granting the company the right to import and export key materials, including metals, iron, and aluminium. The firm was in charge of issuing permits for contractors, who would purchase scrap on its behalf.

Two years after its establishment, it had already been sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for its connection with businessman Khodr Ali Taher, a man with long-standing ties with the 4th division. Taher was also known as the “Prince of Crossings” in national media, for the ease he would be wending his way across regime and rebel-controlled areas.

Western sanctions and arrest warrants hang over the heads of many businessmen and military commanders who were part of the 4th Division’s network that capitalised on the bloody scrap metal trade.

Previous investigations have already exposed how the Assad regime and its cronies had been profiting from looting iron scrap from opposition areas that would feed the country’s steel plants. Yet little is known about how scrap has turned into a profitable export commodity sold to Turkish companies; a discreet trade that lasted years, while Turkey-backed opposition militias and Assad’s army have been battling each other.

Burn the evidence

The road winding through the Masnaa-Jdeidat Yabous passage, connecting Beirut to Damascus, is lined with Bashar al-Assad’s faces. Most have been removed from billboards and posters, but those that could not be taken down have been crossed out.

Next to the traffic highway, amid sallow mountain ridges, vehicles laden with goods and people thread the main Beirut-Damascus crossing. An unassuming and doorless single-storey structure stands on the side of the road. Another of the President’s crossed-out faces, plastered over the outer wall, greets passersby.

The place is trashed, full of torched, half-burnt documents. Perhaps, as the news that Assad’s forces were crumbling, someone returned to the checkpoint in a bid to destroy evidence of the regime’s activities, a story often heard in Syria after December 8, 2024.

This was a 4th Division checkpoint located near the Yafour Bridge, in a rural area west of Damascus, along the M1 highway to Beirut,  just 20 kilometers from the Lebanese border crossing. One of the many under the 4th Division’s sway, racked up across major domestic and international highways, part of a strategy to take control of vital export routes.

When Assad’s many faces still towered over these lands, this checkpoint was expecting to see a hundred scrap metal trucks cross in just one month. (We can’t know when exactly – part of the page was burned. The date was lost). Each lorry had to pay its due, the amounts spelled in black ink in an exclusive “pre-feasibility study” we photographed. In just one month, the 4th Division was planning to extract a total of roughly 125 million Syrian pounds [$9,615] from 100 scrap metal trucks en route to Lebanon.

For years, this unremarkable checkpoint quietly collected proof of a major export route for scrap pillaged by regime forces and its transfer to Lebanon. Scrupulous workers amassed records detailing the passage’s ins and outs. Most of them are lost in the arson. But the few pieces we were able to photograph provide insights into how Assad’s economic machine was moving metal scrap and other goods across the country. The documents also offer a rare glimpse into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue likely generated by this checkpoint. Some of the most recent records date back to September 2024.

On 10 April 2024, the Yafour Bridge checkpoint received a fax from another crossing. “For your information, no commercial convoy crossed the post.” Written in a few lines of black printed ink and signed twice, the headed notification passed from Colonel Louay Ahmad Habib, who was in charge of the Manbij crossing (also known as al-Tayhah crossing) between the regime and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to Major-General Ghassan Bilal, Maher al-Assad’s right-hand man. Bilal is also on the EU and US sanctions lists for his affiliation with the Assad regime. By the time we found the document, he had likely already fled.

Documents we photographed confirm that scrap trucks, given their high value, were escorted by units of the 4th Division from the industrial centres of Hasiya, al-Matalla, and Adra across the border to Lebanon.

“They [i.e. the 4th Division] would give you permission to transport the materials to the factory. If you didn’t inform them, the vehicle, materials, and driver would be seized. This is the rule,” said a scrap reseller we talked to in Damascus.

According to the documents, the entity in charge of authorising the deployment of the 4th Division to escort scrap trucks was the Syrian Presidency’s General Secretariat, headed by Mansour Fadlallah Azzam, who is under Western sanctions for his role in the violent repression of the Syrian uprising. He was also Minister of Presidential Affairs between 2009 and 2023. The current whereabouts of Azzam are unknown.

Across the Syrian-Turkish border

The Masnaa passage isn’t the only corridor we were able to identify. Although to a lesser extent, evidence suggests that another crossing enabled metal scrap exports to Turkey.

Under a makeshift tent, nestled by mounds of grey waste and twisted metals that rest along the road connecting the small village of Killi with Idlib, in northern Syria, a collector we interviewed in a crowded scrapyard recounted the days during the war when larger players selling to Turkey would buy material from these very piles.

“This scrap iron comes from homes, and we buy it from local collectors” he explained. “The [local] iron companies buy it from us, export to Turkey, and also sell scrap within the liberated areas (i.e. areas under opposition control before Assad was toppled).” At a distance, young men press large chunks of iron scrap inside a deafening machine.

Turkey’s trade data indicate that, between 2021 and 2024, over 200 thousand tons of metal scrap entered the country from areas under rebel control in northern Syria. Most transited from the Bab al-Hawa border gate, which was manned by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the hardline Islamist paramilitary group which is leading the new Syrian administration.

The Idlib deputy governor, Qutaybah Khalaf, told TNA that, over the years, Turkey-bound scrap may have passed through the rebel-controlled border crossings. But he described this trade as “private work” that saw no involvement from local authorities.

However, experts do not discount the likelihood that entities loyal to the regime could have collaborated with opposition forces in facilitating the scrap trade.

“Even for the captagon trade, for example, there were some people inside opposition areas who were working with the 4th Division and Hezbollah,” said Ayman Aldassouky, a researcher at Syrian think tank Omran for Strategic Studies, who focussed on the 4th Division’s economic network.

Nonetheless, statistics show that only marginal amounts of scrap flowed to Turkey via Syria’s northern land crossings. Turkish customs data may capture just part of the trade, and the 4th Division may as well have used those routes to smuggle scrap directly. But inland roads were fraught with opposition factions, which likely made Lebanon the main route – an off-book trade some deny exists, given the lack of official records. Were it not for a small anomaly in those same data.

The Lebanon route: numbers don’t add up. 

There is no trace of the trucks loaded with metal scrap flowing in through the Masnaa crossing in Lebanese public statistics. Yet something may give it away: the quantity of scrap metal generated locally seems not to keep up with the export volumes listed in national and international statistics. An unregistered source of metal scrap, slipping through the border, could explain the irregularity.

Most Lebanese workers and companies we spoke to deny dealing directly with Syrian scrap, but it seems no secret that Lebanon is a corridor for this trade. A source from the city of  Baalbek – a known hub for smuggling, northeast of Beirut – with personal knowledge of these networks, reported they were offered Syrian steel for a construction project by a contractor once.

Antoine Srour, a scrapyard owner in Beirut, explained to TNA that, in the aftermath of the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, “metal from the South all went to traders from the South. And metal from Dahiyeh [i.e. Beirut’s southern suburbs] all went to traders down there, to Shatila in particular. […] Northerners […] profited from Syrian metal.” In early 2025, media reports  described residents of the marginalised northern area of Wadi Khaled, near illegal border crossings, complaining about convoys of trucks entering Syria loaded with cement, fuel, and other Lebanese goods, and returning with vegetables and scrap metal. Detection would be hard: smuggled goods are often mingled with Lebanese ones, said the anonymous source.

In the Bekaa valley, tribal networks smuggle anything that has value – weapons, drugs, and stolen goods – in collusion with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia Islamist political and military group.

The anonymous source doesn’t believe the traders who denied having dealt with Syrian smuggled metal scrap are telling the truth. Hezbollah has had longstanding ties to Assad.

“Now, after Bashar al-Assad’s fall, I’m not sure how things are – they’re still bringing in stuff and taking stuff out, but it’s not the same as it used to be,” commented the source, “back in the day, when Hezbollah was in Syria, […] if you had permission from Hezbollah, you could just walk in and out whenever the hell you wanted without even an ID.”

International sanctions made the use of ports for exports difficult in Syria, with only a handful of vessels permitted to dock, explained researcher Ayman Aldassouky. This turned Lebanon into the perfect backdoor for the regime, allowing it to save face while doing business with an enemy in war such as Turkey.

Scrap iron and steel are Lebanon’s fourth largest export. UN Comtrade statistics show that over 2 million tons of iron scrap have left Lebanese ports headed to Turkey since 2013. Part of this may have consisted of re-exports from areas under the Assad regime’s control in Syria. The main customers of Syrian scrap exported through Lebanon were reportedly Turkey, India, and the United Arab Emirates, Ayman Aldassouky told TNA.

The other part comes from local production. Here too, waste pickers are often minors, many are Syrians. After Israel’s latest war on Lebanon, districts hit by airstrikes are also turning into a source of scrap, according to locals we talked to and media reports. With no active steel recycling mills in the country, a large part of this locally collected scrap is recycled in Turkey.

The Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade did not provide comment to TNA in time for publication.

Scrap fleet

Iskenderun, southeast Turkey, is a city tailored to industry: the outer roads are jammed with trucks, factories and their piers flank the highway, and a smoky chimney is always fixed on the horizon. Here, bulk ships carrying scrap from war-torn countries have been docking at the steel companies’ private piers for years.

In the Turkish companies’ furnaces, where a soup of metals and alloys is cooked at around 1,600 °C, the trail of the iron scrap’s origins melts away. Turkey’s finished steel ends up all around the world. Major destinations include Spain, Greece, Italy and Romania, but also Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, and Iraq.

Based on data provided by MarineTraffic, a ship tracking and maritime analytics provider, TNA analysed tens of thousands of entries for bulk carriers docking at Turkey’s various ports. As none of the governments of the countries involved in this business would grant us detailed access to customs and trade data, we verified their cargo through satellite images obtained through Maxar and Planet. We could verify at least forty ships in 2023 alone: not only scrap-loaded ships sailing from Lebanon, but also vessels departing from ports in Libya, Russia, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. In most of these countries, Turkish companies purchased scrap metal from both parties to the conflict.

What we identified is likely to be only the tip of this unknown trade, a fraction of the number of vessels whose tainted cargoes help bankroll conflict internationally.

Libya: rebuilding an army ‘scrap by scrap’ 

Following the toppling of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, Libya has been mired in conflict for around a decade. Despite the signing of a fragile ceasefire agreement in 2020, the country remains politically and militarily torn between two competing powers: the UN-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) in the west and the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar in the east.

In mid-April 2023, a bulk carrier going by the name Nezha, approached the port of Benghazi in eastern Libya to fill its cargo with scrap. Two weeks later, it would unload the scrap at the Iskenderun pier of US-sanctioned MMK Metalurji, the Turkish subsidiary of Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, a Russian steel manufacturer that ranks among the largest in the world. The Nezha was previously identified as having violated EU, US, and UK sanctions by docking at ports in Russian-occupied Crimea in 2019 and subsequently had its license revoked.

We sought comment from MMK Metalurji but received no response in time for publication.

In the last decade alone, Turkey imported over 3 million tons of scrap steel from Libya, according to UN Comtrade data – more than even petroleum.

Although official data do not specify which of the two rival authorities the exports derive from, satellite images show that in recent years one of the most active ports for loading scrap has been Benghazi, in Haftar’s zone of control – a confirmation of Turkey’s most recent rapprochement with the rulers of eastern Libya. All the while, Ankara continues to support the GNU in the west, both militarily and politically.

According to human rights’ groups and the UN, forces under Haftar’s control have committed “horrific crimes” – including torture, sexual violence, and forced labour – against Libyans and migrants alike. Forces under the GNU command have likewise been accused of gross human rights violations.

Experts highlight that scrap metal export revenues have helped fund the rearmament of General Haftar’s forces, as they fight against their rivals in the west of the country.

“They started […] in the mid-2010s. Haftar used the money from the scrap to rebuild his army. Used the scrap from war-devastated Benghazi. Then even when Turkey intervened against Haftar, [he] still continued selling his scrap to Turkey,” said Tarek Megerisi, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Despite a Libyan ban on scrap exports, imposed to support domestic steel production, cargoes of steel waste continue sailing from all ports.

TNA reached out to the LNA as well as longtime spokesperson Lt Col Ahmed al-Mesmari for comment but they declined to respond.

All the ships loaded with metal scrap sailing from ports in Ukraine, Russia, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon and Libya that this investigation was able to identify, bear the risk of being associated with conflict financing and human rights violations.

European and Turkish companies downstream the supply of this trade cannot erase this risk either, explained Racionero Gomez from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Directives from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and UN guiding principles set important benchmarks for companies, but even if corporate policies align with them, “their requirements and stringency vary a lot and one cannot fully trust standards blindly,” said Racionero Gomez, “we need to remember that the duty to protect human rights is on states, so we need regulations as well. We shouldn’t just put all the emphasis on standards.”

Rubble and mortar rounds with no end in sight

That day, Basel and Ahmad’s workday ended early – the sun was already setting over their rubble realm. They spent the remaining hours lingering unpredictably, waiting for the middlemen’s truck to come and pick up the scrap. But the truck would never come; the adults hid the bounty in a big hole, trusting no one would steal it before their return tomorrow.

All of them had small red veins in their eyes. From the 35-degree September sun, from the haze of dust rising from the rubble, or perhaps from the black smoke billowing from the bonfire lit to strip the plastic insulation from copper wires. “They’re more valuable like that,” they explained.

“Are there bombs here?”

“There’s plenty,” Ahmad quickly replied. He wanted to show us one, but we convinced him to desist. His uncle was digging and a rocket exploded on him, the families would later tell us.

Buyers would pay less for scrap originating from war zones, as there might be a chance that bombs and ammunition would show up in their load during inspections at border checks. There is no cheaper scrap than the Syrian one.

Our presence agitated the two kids. In the deserted yard shadowed by once-lively apartment complexes in a suburb of Damascus, they started playing with the shell of an improvised explosive device. With a twist of his arm, Basel threw it in a perfect arc two metres away, back into the rubble where it came from. Earlier that day, standing over a pile of rubble as kings, Basel and Ahmad had claimed proudly that they knew how to stay safe from war’s leftovers.

Assad or not, their lives haven’t changed much. They had been coming here since they were five or six, almost every day from dawn till dusk.

Ever since the HTS-led government has taken over, many of the men of Assad, involved in the scrap metal monopoly, have fled; some of them made deals with the new ruling forces and were reintegrated. The offices of the Syrian Minerals and Investment Company are open again, nestled in the industrial city of Adra. TNA contacted the company, seeking comment on their activities under the Assad regime and on whether scrap-related controls were introduced under the new administration. We received no response in time for publication.

Last June, the new rulers in Damascus imposed an export ban on scrap metal – now valuable for the country’s reconstruction – though it’s hard to say whether it will be respected: provisional statistics for 2025 reveal that minor exports of scrap have continued until a few months ago.

When contacted for comment, Syria’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour directed TNA to regional directorates for further information. Neither the Syrian Ministry of Finance nor the General Customs Directorate replied to our request for comment.

The people managing the scrap trade in Syria may change; Ahmad, Basel and their families will not. Tomorrow, they will still be here, together with the unexploded munitions, the broken cement, and the scrap for which they are paid only 500 Syrian pounds per kilo.

The post Metal scrap sourced from Syria and Libya’s wars fuel Turkey’s steel industry appeared first on SIRAJ.

Amina, her husband, and five children arrived in Lebanon in 2012, seeking medical care for her husband who was injured in a bombing frenzy near Damascus. 

Amina and her family are registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Beirut, and their basic needs, such as housing; food assistance; and the husband’s treatment are mainly provided by charities. They had no idea, however, that they needed to renew their Lebanese residence permits, which they learned of when Amina’s husband was notified of a non-renewal fine of US $800 (1,760,000 Syrian Pounds). By the time he managed to secure the fine’s money and went to pay it, Amina’s husband received a deportation order from the General Security. 

During her stay in Lebanon, Amina gave birth to two other sons. One was born with a congenital heart disease and needed treatment that was expensive in Lebanon. Considering that medical care was free in Syria, the mother set her mind to travelling back with her two younger sons. “On the Syrian border post, the Lebanese authorities gave me a pink form, which was supposedly to help me legalize my status in Syria, except that it contained an order of no-entry to Lebanon because I overstayed my residence permit’s duration,” Amina says.  

In keeping with the regulations enforced by the Lebanese government since early 2015, Syrian citizens adhere to certain entry procedures, whereby they must obtain the border authorities’ approval for entry and provide relevant supporting documents. Syrians are then granted permits of various stay periods. In cases of transit through Lebanon; medical visits; or an appointment with a foreign embassy, for instance, Syrians are allowed a 24 hours stay, which extends to a whole year for residents; university students; and the holders of a work authorization. It ought to be noted that these regulations have been declared illegal and annulled by Lebanon’s State Shura Council under Resolution No. 412/2017-2020, for being passed by an incompetent authority. 

Amina tried to return to Lebanon three months later, having completed her son’s treatment in Syria. It was then that the Lebanese Border Guard told her she was denied access, and the reason, to her shock, was the non-renewal of her Lebanese residence permit. She had no other choice but to return to Syria once again. Amina eventually returned to Lebanon through her husband’s Lebanese personal connections, who helped him send an official letter to the General Security on the border post. Upon entering the Lebanese territories, the authorities confiscated Amina’s passport, and those of her two sons. She was notified of the need to refer to the General Security Office (GSO) in Beirut. 

At the office in question, officials asked her to return 15 days later. She did, and again she was turned down. Amina, for quite a while, kept showing at the GSO, until finally one employee told her to never return, or otherwise he would arrest her. 

This is the story of many Syrian refugees in Lebanon, whose life has stopped because their official documents, particularly passports; identity documents; and residence permits are seized by the General Security. Refugees thus have limited mobility, within Lebanon, while not allowed to go abroad. In addition, they are deprived of their right to seeking job opportunities, and registering vital events at the Civil Registry. Syrian refugees cannot record marriages; or divorces; or even births.  

Playing on Terminology

It was the shared terrain between Syria and Lebanon why scores of Syrians living on the border strip flocked into Lebanon as combat escalated. 

Compared to its per capita, Lebanon has hosted the largest number of Syrian refugees since 2011. And because it is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Lebanon has enforced no laws to protect refugees’ rights, who are usually stripped of their legal status as refugees, and are rather referred to as internally displaced people (IDPs).  By opting for one term instead of the other, the Lebanese government manages to escape obligations it must adhere to should it recognize people it hosts as refugees. The latter are not offered a resettlement; or any of the other rights granted to citizens, including healthcare, education, and work. The distinction between the two legal terms is central; unlike refugees, IDPs have not crossed a border to find safety, and they are on the run at home. For their part, refugees are people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country.

According to Access Center for Human Rights, like Amina, 41 Syrian refugees in Lebanon were subjected to civil documents confiscations in 2019. In three of these cases, group confiscations were committed against civil society organizations employees. An additional 26 cases were documented by the center between early 2020 and 15 October, four of the victims were civil activists. Out of the whole, 22 of the people subjected to such seizures were registered with the UNHCR, and other 13 have entered Lebanon legally.    

As might be expected, seizure of documents denies refugees their right to movement within Lebanon, or travelling abroad; making a living under their poor economic conditions; or even filing civil registration requests, such as registering  marriages and divorces, or adding newborns to civil records.  

Compared to its per capita, Lebanon has hosted the largest number of Syrian refugees since 2011. And because it is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Lebanon has enforced no laws to protect refugees’ rights.

The confiscations committed by the local authorities are a blatant violation of human rights, well-established in multiple international conventions, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 

Founded in 1921, the Lebanese General Security Directorate was called the “first bureau.”  Formally, it is one of the agencies affiliated to the Ministry of Interior, and municipalities, while it is the chief agency to handle refugees-related legal affairs in Lebanon.  

 “Those with reported offences, or working without ‘an authorization,’ are at the risk of having a deportation stamp on their official documents, when arrested by a checkpoint, or during a visit to the GSO. Most of these deportation orders are not implemented, however, because of the pressure imposed by human rights organizations on the Lebanese authorities,”  Nabil al-Halabi says, a Lebanese lawyer and the director of the Lebanese Institute for Democracy and Human Rights (LIFE). So, in most of the cases discussed here, people have to tolerate the victim/offender duality. Refugees are often coerced to breach the law due to such resolutions, which are in themselves a violation of local laws, and Lebanon’s international obligations. Deprivation of legal status makes refugees vulnerable, and an easy prey for the security checkpoints, as it allows for robbing them of their basic rights; denies them legal access to residency; and turns them into outlaws. Once these people leave Lebanon; they will not be able to return in any way. 

No Syrian refugee is spared this deadlock. Amounting to 879,529 registered persons, according to UNHCR figures, Syrians in Lebanon, who primarily reside in areas across Beqaa and northern regions, constitute 15.8% of the total number of Syrian refugees hosted on the world’s level. 

Confiscation Consequences

The Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2017-2020 (LCRP), the UNHCR reports, seeks to provide a framework for an integrated humanitarian-development response in which the needs of the refugees are met– to the extent possible, based on national laws and policies. 

Despite the plan, Amina’s rights to her basic needs, and to reclaiming her confiscated official documents are nothing but a wish, she hopes will be fulfilled sometime soon.  

In 2020, Amina said, “we were asked to refer to the Amioun Municipality, with our children and their documents, for there were instructions to deport us to Syria. We were also to pay a fine of 3 million Lebanese Pounds (LP) on behalf of my eldest son, who is 20-year-old.” There, the family fingerprinted the deportation order; their civil documents were confiscated; and only their expired passports were returned. 

The family reached out to the UNHCR, which informed them to change their residence place. After they did so, Amina’s husband lost his job, and her eldest son, who got married and moved to live in another house, was no longer capable of working because his identity document was in the hold of the General Security. “We live in different areas, my son and I. We cannot visit each other for fear of leaving home. I have not seen him in five months,” Amina added.

Unable to retrieve her confiscated passport, nor those of her family, Amina missed the chance of traveling to Turkey in 2015. From Turkey, she intended to head to Europe as many other Syrian refugees did back then. She said, “my son and husband used to work, and now both are unemployed. My son was even offered a job opportunity at Tripoli Port, but he ended up losing it for not having an identity document.” Today, the family has no source of income, and lives in a 30-meter-room—actually a basement in a residential building. They were offered the room in return for tending the building’s door and cleaning its entrance.

According to the UNHCR in Lebanon, refugees face increased protection-related risks, given their lack of legal residency. They are vulnerable to arrest; deportation; eviction; sexual violence; gender-based violence; and child abuse. Furthermore, there is an extreme shortage of basic assistance, particularly in the fields of healthcare; shelter; and sanitation.

The confiscation of documents’ biggest loss, however, was Hassan Ahmad’s, a 28-year-old Syria refugee, who also chose to go by a pseudonym. He failed to register his marriage, and his son’s birth, at the Civil Registry. Hassan’s toddler is now more than a year old, and is stateless.  In 2019, Hassan, who is a Syrian army defector, sought to legalize his status and renew his residence permit through the sponsorship system (Kafala). He also paid 900,000 LP ($600 at the time), but the General Security seized his documents, and instead gave him a deportation form, claiming he entered Lebanon illegally. Hassan so far could not recover his documents.

Hassan got married and had his first son while still attempting to retrieve his confiscated documents. He was asked to pay 400,000 LP ($265) in exchange for his documents, and the General Security told him he must leave Lebanon once he is delivered the documents back.    

Hassan hopes to go to Erbil, in Iraq, but he fears the consequences of the journey. He might be “denied entry.” Such growing concerns are making the thought of travelling abroad a difficult thing, let alone making the decision.

“Neither my marriage, nor my son’s birth, are registered. My wife also entered Lebanon illegally. I dare not move around in Lebanon; I am scared the authorities might deport me to Syria for being an army defector,” he says. Hassan contacted organizations concerned with Syrian refugees’ affairs, including the Norwegian Council, but all his efforts were to no use. He even had an appointment with the protection department at the UNHCR, which was ultimately postponed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. 

450 Cases of Confiscated Documents

The refugees’ failure to obtain official documents is a major barrier to accessing basic and simple services, and may even hamper their daily activities. Among many others, there are as many as three distinct reasons for the unlawful confiscation of civil documents; some people’s documents are seized during arrest; others’ documents are withheld either during the renewal of these documents; or at hospitals, when refugees cannot afford to pay the cost of their patients’ treatment.

When Syrian refugees’ official documents are confiscated in Lebanon; they tend to suffer these consequences:

Arrested

Denied freedom of movement  

Dined travelling abroad

Denied the registration of vital events, such as marriages, divorces, or births

Denied seeking job opportunities

Denied university education

Denied receiving remittances

Denied obtaining internet services, or a sim card 

The Lebanese authorities embarked on two arrest drives in Arsal camps, in September 2014. They arrested a total of 450 Syrian refugees, over two stages and on the pretext of “terrorism”. All the detainees were subsequently, however, gradually, released, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).

Among those arrested were the brothers Maher and Muhannad, who lived in the Baalbek area. In detention, Maher claimed being subjected to beating and torture.  As a result, he developed spinal disk problems, and could no longer work. After Maher and Muhannad were finally vindicated, the military seized their identity documents and released them. “The army told us to refer to the Arsal Municipality to retrieve our documents.  We went there only two days later, but the municipality denied having the documents,” Maher says.

For months, the two brothers sought the municipality, and they achieved nothing every time. In the end, one employee told them: “You better forget about those IDs,” indicating that they might have been lost somewhere between the military, the General Security, and the municipality.  Maher communicated with several concerned organizations, including the UNHCR. He had an appointment arranged with the latter, which was to offer him assistance because his health deteriorated severely, and he could not work. This attempt failed too, given the pandemic’s spread.

The confiscation occurred in 2014. Since then, Maher got married and had children, but was unable to register his marriage, or add his children to the civil records. Concerned organizations intervened, but still failed to help Maher do the registration, since he needed additional documents from Syria.  He could not obtain the requested documents because there was no way he could return to Syria, while a checkpoint of the Lebanese military stood between him and the Syrian Embassy in Beirut. The said checkpoint was set up at the entrance to the Syrian embassy’s area, and it frequently harassed the refugees approaching it.

The two brothers stressed that it was the seizure of their identity documents that they could not obtain passports; or refer to the UNHCR; or even seek job opportunities.  Without identity documents, they cannot navigate the streets policed by security checkpoints.

In a written response to the investigation team, the UNHCR said that “it supports the General Directorate of General Security (GDGS), providing it with equipment, software, and centers’ renovation to increase the directorate’s capacity to process Syrian refugees’ residence renewal requests. It similarly supplies the offices of the Personal Status Directorate (PSD), across Lebanon, with equipment and personnel to help the GDGS accommodate further requests of civil registration filed by refugees.”

The UNHCR added that, through its partners, it provides legal aid, including counseling and representation, and organizes awareness seminars and campaigns to enhance refugees’ knowledge on how to obtain legal residence permits, and civil documents to certify births; marriages; divorces; and deaths that occurred in Lebanon, and access procedures related to family affairs; domestic violence; civil or administrative disputes. Moreover, the UNHCR supports refugees as it conducts birth registrations on their behalf, at the foreigners departments of the PSD, while it also accompanies groups of refugees to the GSO to renew their residence permits.

Also with partners, it presents refugees individual legal advice on registering births, marriages, and deaths, and offers immediate assistance to families to register their children at the PSD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In some particular cases, it even helps refugees obtain documents from the Sharia Courts, which confirm the children’s family lineage. The assistance it often offers includes obtaining retroactive evidence of marriages for those who have married informally earlier on, in addition to documenting marriages, and deaths.

“Voluntary” Return to Syria

The issue in question is not the withdrawal of documents, but it is rather deliberately keeping those documents in the authorities’ custody for extensive periods, for years at times, particularly if a security report is filed against Syrian refugees.  In these cases, the General Security considers these people to be opponents, who want to travel abroad, and recount what they have been through in Lebanon.  This is a security coordination process between the Lebanese authorities and the Syrian regime seeking to impede the lives of these refugees; make them miserable; and ultimately force them, in an indirect manner, to return to Syria, under the so-called “voluntary return,” the Lebanese lawyer Nabil al-Halbi says.

The express purpose of confiscating documents is to impose restrictions on Syrian refugees in Lebanon, according to lawyer al-Halabi. “Four years ago, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry made a statement, demonstrating how the Lebanese authorities are preventing Syrian refugees from traveling to Norway after they had been offered the opportunity to resettle in a third country.  Similar restrictive measures were applied to other refugees who were not allowed to travel to Canada or other countries.”

Violations of the Law

Even though the Lebanese local laws lack legal texts that regulate the confiscation of official documents belonging to persons residing within the country’s boundaries, the Lebanese authorities should comply with their human rights obligations, which are grounded in equally important international conventions and treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  In the latter two conventions, several articles protect people’s right to freedom of movement and legal status, regardless of their place of residence; or the reasons that led them to leave their country of origin in the first place.

Furthermore, the nine core international human rights instruments grant people the right to nationality, as a non-derogable right, which cannot be abolished or suspended by the government, not even during emergency situations. Stressing this right, Article 6 and article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights respectively state that “everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

Individuals acquire legal recognition, when vital events are registered at the concerned departments, such as births; deaths; marriages; and divorces. This is a fundamental human right, through which individuals gain access to nationality, or legal residency, and the corresponding rights, privileges and responsibilities as citizens in a given country. Based on this, the confiscation of civil documents is a violation of these rights, because these proceedings prevent people from conducting necessary civil status registrations, and deny them access to humanitarian aid and basic services, including education; healthcare; and opening a bank account.  Worse yet, these confiscations increase the risk of statelessness.   

The seizure of documents also affects individuals’ right to unrestricted mobility, recognized by Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whereby “everyone has the right to freedom of movement; to leave any country, including his own; and to return to his country,” and the first clause of Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, by which “everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.”

UNHCR’s Role

Of the 41 cases of document confiscations recorded by Access Center for Human Rights, 37 people are officially registered with the UNHCR, which failed to intervene, according to the refugees interviewed by the investigation team. This lack of action on the part of the High Commissioner is at odds with its obligations towards registered refugees, since registration entails protection.

 “The situation spirals when the Syrian refugees subjected to documents seizure are not registered with the UNHCR.  If so, the organization’s Protection Office cannot intervene and is not granted the UNHCR’s authorization to react, even when human rights organizations transfer refugee cases to the UNHCR,” lawyer al-Halabi said.

Al-Halabi urges the international community, and the UNHCR, to address the confiscation of documents, including the cases of refugees who are not registered with the High Commissioner. The UNHCR must act on the situation, and follow up on the matter with the Lebanese authorities, since these seizures have an impact on all rights, including the implied rights to freedom of movement, and work, particularly because the documents are often withheld for an indefinite period of time. “Should the confiscations the Lebanese security agencies embark on be considered legal entitlements, the confiscation’s duration must at least be clearly defined,” the lawyer said, or otherwise, the confiscation will be an “abuse of this entitlement.”  

What the UNHCR can do is to set up a protocol with the Lebanese General Security to process the files of persons whose documents are seized, while they do not have security-related issues. People in this group can at least be granted a six-month residence permit, till their situation is resolved, Muhammad Araji said, a Lebanese lawyer and the CEO of Access Center for Human Rights.

“We live in different areas, my son and I. We cannot visit each other for fear of leaving home. I have not seen him in five months,” Amina added.

The UNHCR, Araji said, must conduct a field survey to identify the number of Syrians who hold a residence permit, and those who have an illegal status, to tackle both groups’ problems in cooperation with the General Security.

In early 2020, the UNHCR reported as its propriety, “ensuring access to protection, temporary legal stay and birth and civil status documentation for refugees, and their protection from refoulement.”

As mentioned above, the investigation team requested the UNHCR’s comment with respect to the confiscation of documents; the steps it takes to address this violation; the measures it adopts to ensure that persons whose documents are seized are capable of conducting civil status documentations, and have proper access to hospitals, and the campaigns it launches with the Lebanese government to make certain that international laws are applied.

The UNHCR said, “should refugees report similar practices, the legal programs, for instance, the UNHCR will intercede with the Lebanese authorities. Responding to the High Commissioner’s unremitting advocacy efforts, the General Security issued an internal memo, demanding that all its affiliated centers refrain from taking originals of documents, such as identity documents; passports; civil extracts; and entry and exit visas, from Syrians renewing their residence permits. Instead, those centers are to ask for scanned colour copies of the original documents. The memo, thus, ensures that no documents will remain in the hold of the General Security, even when renewal requests are denied, while offering a solid legal ground for intervention should the confiscation violations continue to occur.”

The UNHCR said that it engages in continuous dialogue with the Public Security Directorate, on the central and local levels, to address any inconsistent practices and ensure they are all in harmony.

Concerning its measures, the UNHCR said that, “when documents are seized by individuals, say landlords, employers, etc., or private entities, including hospitals, the High Commissioner intervenes directly, or through legal partners. It plays the intermediary to ensure the documents are returned. In the cases where intermediary proves insufficient, other legal measures are adopted. A warrant is sent, for example, or the case is transferred to a higher authority, such as the Ministry of Public Health, if the perpetrator is a hospital.”

Should it happen that documents are confiscated or held by the authorities, UNHCR assists refugees to retrieve their documents, either by following the established administrative processes, for example, those adopted by the GSO, or through advocacy at the regional or central level, addressing the concerned authorities.

Lacking identity documents poses a challenge to refugees’ access to basic and simple services, and might disrupt their daily routine.

Regarding the education of children whose family documents were withheld, the UNHCR said that children without identity documents can register in schools, provided they have a proof of residence from the mukhtar, or a registration certificate issued by the High Commissioner.

Supported by the international community, other UN agencies, and the civil society, the UNHCR said it sustains communication with the Lebanese authorities to guarantee that Lebanon adheres to its local and international legal obligations.

The investigation team sent the General Directorate of Lebanese Security an email through its official address, copying the human rights directorate and organizations, as well as the immigration directorate, but the emailed entities did not respond. The email inquired into the General Security’s reasons for confiscating the Syrian refugees’ official documents; the requirements refugees must follow to recover these documents; whether the General Security facilitates document reclamation for refugees wishing to travel abroad, or provides them with alternative documents that grant them access to hospitals; or helps them register vital civil events, such as births; marriages; and divorces.

Meanwhile, Amina still waits anxiously to retrieve her documents and meet her son, who has been living away from her for years. Hassan, for his part, hopes to reclaim his documents to register his marriage and add his son to the civil records, so he would obtain an identity document, and never have to live on the margins of life like his parents.

This investigation is hosted by the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), and Accesses Center for Human Rights, while funded by Free Press Unlimited (FPU), and published in Daraj Media.

Contributors to investigation and data collection are Marielle Hayek, a human rights researcher, and Eid Al-khoder, a human rights activist. 

The post Syrian Refugees in Lebanon: Confiscation of Identity Documents, and Denial of Rights appeared first on SIRAJ.

Dalya (46) is a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon. She is also a widow — her husband died in one of the Syrian regime’s barrel bomb attacks, which hit her home in Eastern Ghouta in Damascus Countryside. Besides chronic diseases, as an asthma, hypertension and diabetes patient, what adds to her suffering is that she could not afford to buy any of her medicines for almost six months. 

Working on the farms, Dalya barely made10, 000 Lebanese pounds (US$2) per day. However, as COVID-19 found its way to Lebanon and a nationwide emergency state was declared, in response, she lost her job. Dalya, accordingly, could no longer pay the rent for the place where she lived. 

Dalya, having spent an hour standing there on the street, now sits on her black suitcase, stuffed with all that she owns. I was living in a hangar [barn], set up for poultry farming in the first place, she said. She cleaned the place, connected it with the electrical power grid and laid down water lines. The place was made habitable for a monthly 150,000 Lebanese pounds (about US$25).

“I was two months late on paying the rent. The woman that owned the hangar decided to kick us out, despite these harsh conditions. Is it really possible that while people are ordered to stay at home, we get evicted?” She hugs her children, who were overcome by fatigue.   

A public bus finally stops for the woman and her children. With everything on board, the bus fares to Beirut.  

Dalya is subjected to forced eviction from shelters unfit for human use. Nevertheless, she was not alone in this. Thirty other Syrian families had to suffer the same fate after they sought refuge in Lebanon, escaping the atrocities of war that followed the March 2011 protests.  

Families at risk

Dozens of Syrian families lived in the al-Massri camp in Saadnayel before the landlord coerced them to evacuate, allowing them to stay there till the end of June. 

The camp people, thus, referred to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) several times, but all their attempts at reporting the situation were to no avail. The commissioner did not respond, and they were ultimately evicted. 

The interviewed refugees expressed the same sentiment over and over again; they all lacked stability, particularity under the pandemic. While people around the world seek to stay at home and commit themselves to quarantine, worried over contracting COVID-19, Syrian refugees are being forcibly evicted from their tents and houses. 

A large proportion of Syrians cannot afford to pay rent, neither for houses, nor the lands on which they have set up their tents, especially since many property owners have raised rents exponentially. Furthermore, rents must be exclusively paid in dollars nowadays, given the worsening economic downturn, crashing exchange rates of the Lebanese pound, spiking prices, and mounting rates of poverty and unemployment in Lebanon. 

Syrian refugees’ unemployment rates since mid-March 2020:

61% of women refugees

46% of men refugees

7% of the families are forcing children to work, after parents lost their jobs  

Source: UNHCR – Lebanon 

On June 19, a resident of the al-Massri camp live-streamed the forced evacuation of the camp’s population. The tents were dismantled, but the matter still went unaddressed by any official entities. The landlord denied media outlets and organizations access into the camp to assess the situation or even negotiate the possibility of allowing the people to stay in their sole shelter during these most challenging times while the country is in pandemic mode. 

Due to restrictive Lebanese residency policies, only 22% of an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon have the legal right to live in the country, leaving the vast majority to live under the radar, subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, and harassment. Their lack of legal status means they cannot move freely through the ubiquitous checkpoints that predate COVID19, have difficulty getting services such as health care or education, and find it difficult to register births, deaths, and marriages, Human Rights Watch stated in a report published last April. 

Post-eviction journey

Forcibly evicted from the al-Massri camp, only a few families managed to rent a garage or a small room in a nearby place. Others, however, sought their neighbours or moved to different camps, intending to live with relatives while searching for a place to shelter them. 

Tracking the movement of several families, seven ended up in two hangars, barns, within a 10-minute walk from the al-Massri camp. 

“The barns were still full of trash and livestock waste when we moved in. We rented them for 600,000 Lebanese pounds (US$100), which we divide among us. You can see it for yourself, we are cleaning the place of garbage and dirt. But still, it is not a place to live in,” one refugee said, standing in front of his new place of residence. 

The two barns, where 29 people, including 13 children, live today, have tin roofs, dilapidated, cracked and full of holes. The walls are either destroyed or about to collapse, threatening to crush the people living within them. The place is thus accessible to rats and snakes, while at the same time poorly ventilated and lacking in proper hygiene. The barns are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.  

 “What coerced us to move here [the barn] is that we cannot afford renting a cheap house. At the same time, we cannot set up a new tent due to state laws. So, we decided to use the tent’s canvas and wood to renovate the hangar. We also dismantled the bricks that made the tent’s bathroom and brought them here with us. We reassembled the bricks and patched up the holes in the hangar,” Abu Basil, a Syrian refugee evicted from the Saadnayel  camp, said.  

Abu Basil’s family does not only consist of eight people, but  one of his daughters is also extremely suffering, yet traumatized over her brother’s loss, who died in a car accident when they first sought refuge in Lebanon, seven years ago. 

Furthermore, his suckling granddaughter has been lately diagnosed as having a chronic disease, brain atrophy, and is in need of treatment and sustained healthcare. It is an abject situation that we are in, Abu Basil said, adding that aid and support are necessary. 

In one corner, two birds are kept in a cage, which they also moved to their new residence. Looking at the birds, the family says: “The reason we are keeping them is that we are caged ourselves.”  

23 forced eviction cases were recorded between mid-March and mid-July, all as a result of the refugees’ inability to pay rent for the house or land.

Source: Access Center for Human Rights (ACHR)

Living in non-viable places

Lying in the open air, being the remains of the place it once was, each of the holes in the hanger begs rain and the scorching heat during summer in, inviting also all types of insects and harmful creatures. The place is vast and high-roofed. The residents used the tents’ wood to create partitions. They divided it into smaller areas, craving order and privacy. However, it is impossible to spend winter in that place, for it is particularly hard to keep it warm.   

The families recount their stories, how they escaped death and sought refuge in Lebanon, scared for their lives of the Syrian regime, how they were arrested and their houses destroyed by air raids. They also recount the story of their forced eviction from the camp, keeping the landlord’s name a secret afraid of persecution and harm as they continue to live in the town.  

In fact, these families are scared of going back to Syria. Yet, their living conditions in Lebanon can barely be called safe. 

According to Abu Basil, he and his family were evicted due to the decision providing for dismantling and flattening the camp. The dismantlement of several tents and shelters every now and then grew into a familiar occurrence in different areas, seeking to prevent refugees from settling down there. One reason for demolishing the camp is that many families were two months late on paying the tents’ rent due to the lockdown and their inability to work under the state-imposed COVID-19 mitigation policies. 

A number of the forcibly evicted camp people stressed that the proposed justifications are only a hoax. The real thing, they said, is that the landlord decided to turn the land on which the camp was constructed into a horse barn. 

No matter what the actual reasons are, the reality is that the life of this family and many others has become unbearably difficult. They today live in an unviable place, even after they themselves cleaned it and turned it with their own money from a barn into their living place. 

One resident said that the UNHCR and other international partner organizations have visited the barn and assessed the refugees’ living conditions in their new shelter. They filmed the place and said they were sorry. They also apologized for their inability to provide any aid, “one organization helps camp residents exclusively. The other helps renovate houses, not farms.”

In the barn, the refugees contemplate their near future. Summer is ending and winter is around the corner. But still, the place is absolutely inhabitable. 

“It is harsher than COVID-19, which affects people everywhere. In the case of the virus, measures can be kept to prevent contracting it; medicines can be taken to help boost the immune system and recovery. But we are helpless, nothing can help us get a shelter,” one refugee described their situation as a group.   

In the al-Hindi camp in Bar Elias, another group of Syrian refugees is enduring the same suffering. They were asked to evacuate the camp, and a deadline was already set, while they have no other place to seek given the lockdown. 

Even though his family consists of nine people, Abdulkarim, the father, cannot send his children to work, for they do not have identity documents. To make a living, he thus attempts to find informal jobs, such as gardening, or working on farms during harvest seasons.  

“We were managing. We are now holding to patience because we have only till early September to evacuate the tent. Yesterday, [the landlord] saw me at the tent’s door and threatened me. ‘If you do not leave in a week, your stuff will end up on the street,’” Abdulkarim, a Syrian refugee, recounted his story and spoke of the circumstances pressing him to evacuate the al-Hindi Camp. 

The refugees’ living conditions turned severe when the landlord decided to raise the rent on the land where the tents are set up for a number of refugees. To his misfortune, Abdulkarim was among the refugees notified of the need to pay the additional rent money.  

The landlord is whimsical, Abdulkarim said.  He has relatives neither in the camp nor in the area, unlike several other families who make up a network of relatives there, preventing the landlord from pressing them into paying further money in rent, which he finally kept as it is. He asked Abdulkarim and numerous other families to pay 300,000 Lebanese pounds (US$), or otherwise leave. 

“What coerced us to move here [the barn] is that we cannot afford renting a cheap house. At the same time, we cannot set up a new tent due to state laws. So, we decided to use the tent’s canvas and wood to renovate the hangar. We also dismantled the bricks that made the tent’s bathroom and brought them here with us. We reassembled the bricks and patched up the holes in the hangar,” 

Abu Basil, a Syrian refugee who lives along with his family in a hangar near the al-Massri camp in al-Bekaa, Lebanon. 

Affected by Lebanese pound’s turmoil

Over twenty refugee families across al-Bekaa were interviewed, they were all equally distressed due to the dire living conditions in Lebanon, a situation that has been thus for months. 

They are basically grappling with mounting prices and the Lebanese pound turmoil, which has been begging to the dollar, for it takes between 6000 and 8000 Pounds to buy a dollar, while the official bank exchange rate is 1500 pounds. 

This spiralling reality increased the refugees’ inability to pay the rent for their homes, since many have turned unemployed with the spread of COVID-19 in Lebanon. To cope with their tightening finances, a group of Syrians is borrowing money to pay the rent, others are reducing their food consumption. 

Intissar (41), a Syrian woman, shared the same house with 11 members of her family, including her father, a pneumonia patient, her mother, who suffers from chronic diseases, her widowed sister, along with her children, her brother, his wife and their children.

Intissar’s family rented the house seven months before they were expelled from it. When COVID-19 hit Lebanon in March, Intissar’s volunteer work in an educational organization stopped, so did her monthly grant of 300,000 Lebanese pounds (less than US$50). Worse yet, digging wells, her brother’s work, also stopped due to the imposed curfew.

“We could not pay the rent for three months in a row, which prompted the women owning the house to evict us in June. We turned homeless at the most critical time. A few days before we left the house, we borrowed money and paid her all the dues, but she unscrew the taps, vandalized the house and filmed it. She then went to the police station, and filed a complaint against my father,” Intissar said. 

“On top of everything, and as if it was not enough that she expelled us from the house during the pandemic, she also demanded $100 as a compensation for the damage she did herself,” Intissar added, yelling. 

UNHCR’s role

A segment of Syrian refugees blames the United Nations High Commissioner for the deteriorating living conditions, especially when it denied a large proportion of refugees the aid it provided them, who could no longer afford food and drink, not to mention the rent, given that dozens of Syrians turned unemployed.

According to human rights reports, a large number of Syrian refugees lost their jobs. As a result, their living, economic, social and psychological conditions declined further, since most of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon depend on seasonal or day labour which either stopped completely or became rare. The lacking job opportunities, however, ensued the pandemic, which coincided with the country’s economic slump. Therefore, the refugees’ conditions under COVID-19 cannot be assessed in isolation from the existing economic crisis.

In a report, Access Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), a Syrian human rights organization that documents and monitors Lebanon-based Syrian refugees’ conditions, recorded over 23 cases of forced evictions and/or the threat of forced evictions between mid-May and mid-July 2020, all as a result of the refugees’ inability to pay rent for the house or land (in the case of those living in the camps). 

Cases of eviction and/or threat of eviction were not limited to individual cases, for others occurred on the camp level. Several Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon have been threatened with eviction, and a few families were indeed expelled from them. Furthermore, the ACHR recorded two cases of camp evictions, and other three cases of camps threatened with eviction. 

As of mid-March, a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon found that 61% of Syrian refugee women and 46% of Syrian refugee men have lost their jobs, whereas 7% of the Syrian families are sending their children to work, after their parents turned unemployed. 

Due to a lack of money and rising food prices, the report added, refugees face difficulties buying their basic necessities. Till May 18, 75% of refugees went further into debt to pay for basic necessities, and 78% of families consulted reported difficulties buying food. 

 “Having lost their jobs, while goods prices soared insanely, the refugees have hit the low of almost no daily income — that is they cannot pay the rent for the house or the land on which the tent is set up. This increases the cases of both individual and mass eviction or threats of eviction of refugees from their residence places, whether in the camps or concrete homes, despite the COVID-19 outbreak and the urge to sustain quarantine,” an al-Bekaa-based Syrian human rights activist said, describing the living conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

The Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ)

The post Sleeping in the Open Air, or in a Barn: Syrian Refugees Left Homeless in Lebanon  appeared first on SIRAJ.

In Lebanon, the presence of Syrian refugees has been part of the discourse of public influential figures. As investigative journalists, we were prompted to analyze this discourse. Over the course of 10 months of work, we have documented, filtered and analyzed thousands of Tweets to identify supporters of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and those who oppose taking them in.

During the period of our reporting, Lebanon witnessed numerous campaigns and advocacy calls, among which were those triumphing the Syrian cause, or advocating the conditions of refugees in Lebanon. For example, hundreds of Syrian and Lebanese activists have tweeted in the last two years under the hashtag  #عرسال_تستغيث in an attempt to send a distress message about the horrid living conditions refugees endure in camps.

This data-driven story revealed that more than half of the tweets included in the analysis sample rejected Syrian refugees. Male rejection was more pronounced than women, with 95% of male tweets rejecting refugees, compared to 5% of tweets by women

Influential Figures

Our team of journalists and technical team at InfoTimes collaborated with a team of editors from the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit (SIRAJ) to study and analyze the tweets of a group of Lebanese public figures from February 2011 to September 2019, where 101 individuals were selected according to their public presence and activity on Twitter, as well as their influence on the Lebanese street.

The data collection process from the social networking platform Twitter was done using algorithms specially designed for this process.Following the collection of Tweets by the figures under study, they were divided into three sectors according to their professions. The first included 41 figures working as journalists, opinion writers, and rights activists. The second sector comprised of 36 politicians, party members, government officials and statesmen. The last sector included 24 celebrities, mainly singers and actors.

Following the software algorithms, we examined and filtered approximately 238,000 tweets to extract tweets related to the subject of the Syrian asylum in Lebanon. A total of 1,454 tweets were written by 68 Lebanese of the total figures monitored in the search process.

Then we sorted the tweets and classified them into three main groups: group 1 has positive tweets – tweets that contained sympathy and support for the presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Group 2 has negative tweets – tweets that included opposition, repatriation and hatred for the presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and called for their return to their country. Group 3 was the neutral tweets – those tweets that did not contain words of sympathy and support nor words of hatred and hostility.

Flagrant Hatred

The analysis of tweets showed a conflicting view of the refugees, as 30% of the Lebanese figures supported the refugees, while 51% rejected them, which explains the emergence of voices calling for the return of Syrian refugees, describing the as “displaced”.

These percentages illustrate the officials’ position concerning Syrian refugees, and the apparent division of the Lebanese public on this matter. There was no apparent conflict of opinion or change of attitudes by any of the figures being researched. Even if sympathy emerged among one or two people who oppose the Syrian asylum in Lebanon, it was a manifestation of some humanity, but it does not rise to be a visible change in the general attitude of this character. Nevertheless, 19% of the public figures’ Tweets were neutral.

The analysis revealed high rejection of refugees,  where the list of negative Tweets amounted to 114. Some of these public figures are from the axis supporting the Syrian regime and some from the anti-Syrian axis, such as figures from the “Marada”, figures from the Future Movement, figures from the Lebanese Forces Party, figures from the current “Azm”, in addition to figures from The Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), government officials, and MPs in the Lebanese parliament.

But the most prominent and obvious role in the rejection of refugees and prominent support for the Syrian regime, was played by the Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, leader of President Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, who often called for the need to return the “displaced” Syrians to their country.

Sympathy and Support

On the other hand, there were those who supported the Syrian refugees and positively dealt with their situation, such as figures from the Progressive Socialist Party in Lebanon, figures from the Future Movement, media personnel  and human rights activist Nabil Halabi, Lebanese journalist Tony Boulos and journalist Rima Maktabi, celebrity Fadel Shaker, media personnel Dalal Moawad, and others.

Lebanese women were present in dealing with the situation of Syrian refugees on Twitter, and they had smaller portion of negative Tweets. Only 5% of 736 Tweets by women were negative. Women accounted for nearly a third of positive posts. Lebanese journalist Rima Maktabi was at the forefront of the most supportive of Syrian refugees throughout her Tweets for eight years.

Hatred in a Historical Context

In the search for the reasons that have created the rejection of Syrian presence in Lebanon, even before the Syrian protests and the outbreak of military actions, a historical factor related to the political relations between the two countries emerges, namely the length of the Syrian army’s presence in Lebanon during the period of the Lebanese civil war until 2005. This role was manifested in the exercise of absolute rule in Lebanon and the imposition of “trusteeship”, domination, and control. This presence was associated with abuses, repression and oppressive practices that restricted public freedom. This created a general aversion in Lebanon towards any Syrian, whose presence was described as an occupation.

In line with this sentiment towards the Syrian people in Lebanon, another factor related to the economic situation in Lebanon is highlighted. Some say that the Syrian workers in Lebanon reduce the job opportunities of the Lebanese and adds to the unemployment crisis, as pointed out by the Lebanese Minister of Labor Sajaan Azz in the London Arab newspaper, who said that “about one million Syrians compete with the Lebanese labor without controls, and that is a heavy burden on the Lebanese economy and on the opportunities available to the Lebanese labor force. “

The Battles Move from Twitter to the Ground

The hate speech that emerged through the tweets of some politicians and public figures against Syrian refugees in Lebanon, was not words written on social media, but translated into reality in many situations, where the levels of attack and harassment of refugees by local municipalities in some areas, as well as state agencies and authorities, were heightened, according to human rights defenders.

In an April 2018 Human Rights Watch report, it was stated that at least 13 municipalities in Lebanon had forcibly evicted at least 3,664 Syrian refugees from their homes and expelled them from municipalities, and that evictions by municipalities were discriminatory and illegal. The report also said that another 42,000 are at the same risk because of their “nationality or religion”.

Human Rights Watch reported that this operation resulted in refugees losing their income and property, and disrupted their children’s education, including those who had been absent from school for months and others who had completely stopped attending school.

But how can social media and Twitter’s rhetoric affect the fate of the nearly one million Syrians living in this country? Through this question and through data obtained after analyzing the Tweets, we wanted to talk to people on the Lebanese street to know more about their opinion on the issue of Syrian asylum in Lebanon. Opinions were divided between supporters of the idea of returning refugees to their country, and those who support their presence in Lebanon, but under certain conditions.

“The Syrian displacement crisis in Lebanon has turned into a social crisis with significant economic and other implications, and this requires the cooperation of several parties to find a solution, such as Syria and the United Nations,” said Elias Melki, secretary of the Lebanese Forces political formation body.

As such, Melki puts forward his party’s proposal to establish camps in the Syrian territories that are not affiliated with the Syrian regime or the opposition, but fall under international auspices until the political solution in Syria matures. He also stresses the need for the Syrian regime to cooperate to return the refugees to their land, “if it is keen to do so.”

Elian Saad, a young woman affiliated with the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), said “I encourage the return of displaced Syrians to safe areas in Syria for many reasons”.

On the security front, Saad sees Syrian asylum as a danger, especially in the camps that she considers “hotbeds of the terrorist cell”. She also encourages the cooperation of international organizations with the Syrian regime for the return of displaced persons, especially since many areas have become safe.

On the other hand, Sobhi Amhaz, a Lebanese journalist, objects to the term “safe return”, considering that the return must be voluntary in accordance with all international conventions, because the concept of safety is relative.”It is not enough that the region be safe, [it is different] for Syrian opposition activists, for example,” he says.

Amhaz believes that “there are Lebanese cultural legacies that consider anyone who is a foreigner to be an outsider to the Lebanese fabric.”

He also misconstrues the idea of “increasing unemployment due to Syrian asylum in Lebanon,” stressing the absence of clear policies in the Lebanese labor market before 2011, so there is no responsibility on the Syrians. On the contrary, he believes that the Lebanese state benefits from donations and money that is pumped into its treasury, which it receives in return for receiving refugees.

Mohammed Hassan, founder of the Access Center for Human Rights, commented on the results of the analysis, saying: “The aggression against foreigners is not new behavior, before the Syrian asylum in Lebanon, there was enslavement of foreign workers, especially Domestic workers who come to Lebanon in very difficult conditions from their home countries”, through the offices that bring in domestic workers, which falls under domestic law.

He added that the recent increasing hostility towards Syrian refugees was represented by speeches through social media and Lebanese media, which is the main reason for the increasing tension between the Lebanese and Syrian societies.

Hassan summarized the most prominent violations caused by hate speeches from Lebanese politicians and official media that violate local and international laws. This includes the decisions of the Lebanese municipalities to prevent the movement of refugees and forced them to work forced labor and pay monthly contributions for municipal services already funded by the government, as well as decisions of deportation “legalized” by the Lebanese General Security at Beirut airport, which violates the Convention under Article II, Article III of the Convention against Torture, And the Lebanese Constitution.

Report by: Mohammad Waked, Ammar Al-Khasawneh

Researchers: Abdul Rahman Al-Khader, Ahmad Rahal, Manar Abu Hassoun

Translation: Aya Nader

Edited by: Mohamed Zidan, Mohamed Bassiki

The post Analysis of Tweets Showcases Hatred Towards Syrian Refugees Among Lebanon’s Elite appeared first on SIRAJ.

Two kilometers of the Turkish-Syrian border, Yusuf entered into an old house located at Reyhanlı suburbs – south of Turkey, opened carefully a brown big canvas bag and take out slowly a heavy stone inside it to avoid breaking it.

When he lifts the stone, I saw a human portrait was carved carefully on a white stone, with big eyes, beard and curly hair’s head.

After the man removed the bag fully, an athletic naked body was appeared of pure marble, standing leaning on a column covered with the skin of a dead lion.

“What a beautiful statue!” Yusuf said with a smile while staring on it, it is from Syria with a half meter height, made of greenish stone, “it will change my life and make me a rich person “as Yusuf said to the investigator.

That just has entered from Syria by Yusuf , hoping to make him rich , this is what motivate us to search more against the backgrounds of transferring, smuggling of Syrian archaeology and selling it, especially after spread of excavation & illegal trade inside the country, and Crossing borders to neighboring countries, which has accompanied the war-years since 8 years, thus the Syrian bleeding was not limited to immigration of millions people from the country but exceeded it to smuggling stones (archaeology).

The smuggled archeology trading networks are getting benefit by selling ,purchasing  and smuggling it to the neighboring countries, which include multiple parties of normal citizens, brokers & traders , who were founded by a virtual environment-Social Media for trading of such goods by advertising and selling it.

Four months of tracking, a team of journalists in this investigation has detected the way of merchandising the Syrian smuggled archaeology by using Social Media to create a demand on such goods, as Yusuf did, and to support selling operations, where you can find who sells the archaeology pieces and who interested of purchasing it.

And you can find details of the exhibited pieces, price list, delivery method and others, and what led us to achieve this investigation to know how they are trafficking of such archaeology? Who buy them? Where can you find their last place?

No official statistics for the amount of smuggled & stole Syrian archaeology in the last few years, or which crossed the border by smugglers, mediators and border’ traders, the international “UNICCO” organization’s estimates are considered the illegal trading of the cultural properties from Syria & Iraq are one of the main income resources for organized crime (its income estimated between 7 & 15 billion dollar yearly).

On 13 February 2019, the Turkish police announced seizure of four – “priceless” old books, were written by the Syriac & Aramiac language included a book depicts the life of Jesus Christ, and the police think the books may were smuggled from Syria museums, but after examining the books later has showed no stamps on it refer to its registration, and some parts of the books were torn, that mean it was containing museum archive’s numbers which was stolen from.

Before that /168/ of Syrian smuggled archaeology pieces were seizure by the authorities, dating back to Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman era at Gaziantep province.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning in 2015 against the background of growth the Syrian archaeology trading due to the conflict, and referred that Syrian stolen archaeology are sold in the European black markets.

Thus an alternatives were found, most of selling archaeology & antiques’ transactions are currently done by limited networks or by Social Media including Facebook, instant messaging by using WhatsApp and Telegram apps.

eBay website is showing pictures for Syrian originally antiques with different prices, and by technology the network reaches to potential purchasers with more security and anonymity, what is proven by this investigation.

“The most famous areas for smuggling the archaeology to the neighboring countries & world are the big archaeological areas, like Palmyra city (2100 B.C), Afamia city – Hama countryside (300 B.C).Forgotten Cities in Idleb like: Sergila, Bara and citadel of Samaan which it’s dating back to Byzantine era.” According to Ex-Director of Archeology and Museums in Al-raqqa city, Prof. Anas Al-khabour, who worked in Alraqqa city between2003-2008 and living in Sweden currently, professor in Gothenburg University, Specialist in the cultural threatened heritage in conflicts areas like Syria & Iraq.

Where do the archaeologies come from?

Yusuf -35 years old, with a big body & light beard on his corny face, was exhibiting some archeological pieces like: Golden currencies & Romanian glass bottles on his “Facebook” page, with fake name.

The investigator communicated with him and asked to meet, he thought we are traders want  to buy what he have for the first time , then we had introduced our self as journalists, after a while, he accepted to meet us at café in Antioch border city with Syria.

The young man who is trading in selling of small archaeological pieces like: Romanian coins currencies or gold ornaments, adding to glass – manufactured bottles was hiding in close apartment a statue to “Hercules” got it out of Palmyra city, after he had found it with his cousin at one of the farms in the archaeological area.

“Hercules” is famous as a hero with a super power, and he is son of the famous Greek goddess “Zeus” which represents as an iconic of western arts, literature & popular culture at the Greece and the Romans, and his existence in Palmyra city not a coincidence because of the city dating back to Greece & Romanian era and it is an extension of it in year of 282 AD.

“When I stared at the clay covered- statue for the first time, I thought that I will become a rich, so I exhibited it to traders, but I was chocked because they didn’t pay me the required sum” as Yusuf says.

Yusuf wants against the statue an amount for/ $100.000/ one hundred thousand dollars (equals to 55 Fifty–Five million Syrian pounds), He explains in a faint voice after he lit a cigarette and said “In Syria the traders exploit us”.

The international UNESCO organization is estimates the volume of this trade between Syria, Iraq & the world to 7 -15 billion dollars.

The most profit works

The sculptures , statues, miniatures , cuneiform tablets, clay / pottery boards, currencies and old Mosaic panels, which dating back to previous civilizations lived in Syrian lands since thousands years are the most important things for this trade ,shown by social media pages , and what are revealed by the brokers & traders who were met by the investigator.

Persons & networks ensure transferring collectibles by smuggling it to neighboring countries then selling it to third parties or keeping it until obtaining the required price which estimates of thousands dollars.

At the border area, Syrian pieces dating back to an old civilizations & kingdoms alongside Euphrates River are offered to sale, it is one of the oldest world civilizations, like: Mary’s Archaeological City which flourished in the third millennium B.C, Dura Europos (300 B.C) and Syrian coast areas like Ugarit (6000 B.C).

“Most of the smuggled archaeology is come from areas outside the control of Syrian regime, where archaeology excavation’s operation & looting of archaeological sites were done” According to Al-khabour’s survey.

He clarifies that” The excavation operations are going in advance – known sites, where the archaeological missions had worked in, in addition to undiscovered sites like Archaeological hills, and there are also many public markets for stolen archaeology inside Syria”.

Ghawzangh Shu, Implementation and Facilitation Director in the world customs organization (WCO) said at Paris International Conference of 2014, which is discussing” the Heritage and cultural diversity’s that both are endangered in Iraq & Syria”, “Looting the cultural properties is one of the oldest organized crimes across the border, and today became widespread phenomenon all over the world, smuggling the cultural heritage still forms a catastrophe hits the countries’ heritage across the world.

Yearly, thousands of ِArchaeological pieces disappear from the museums ,churches, private groups and public  foundations, starting from old weapons down to the paintings, currencies, watches, religious antiques, archaeological pieces and  cultural heritage , all of them exposed to steal”.

“Most of the smuggled archaeology is come from areas outside the control of Syrian regime, where archeology excavation’s operation & looting of archaeological sites were done”.

“The clear relation between this kind of crime, tax evasion & money laundry has confirmed, and no one can estimate the profits from the looted, stole or smuggled artworks reliably, but experts agree that it represents one of the largest illegal world companies which value reaches to billion dollars and that seduces the organized crime” , according to Shu.    

Marketing the looted pieces

To become a rich person is aim of every person working in this trade and isn’t enough finding the archaeological pieces after illegal excavation, but there is also selling or transferring it outside Syrian- border, what exactly Yusuf did when he had found Hercules statue.”We had communicated with a smuggler in Idleb, then we entered the statue on a donkey back, because it is heavy I can’t run while I am lifting It.” as the man explained us the operation.

Yusuf described us this operation inside the house we have met, indicating from the room mountain -view’s window to a mountain road which you can see it directly by eyes through the window” from over there I entered, I paid one thousand dollars (equals to 550 thousand Syrian pounds) for a smuggler”.

The Statue’s trip

Yusuf moved the statue from Palmyra city to Raqqa by a car at the beginning of 2107, the city was then under “Isis” organization’s control.

Then he moved the statue by a car to Al-bab city – northern Aleppo countryside, which it was under Isis control also then moved later to Idleb which was under Factions of the Free Army’ control, finally settled down in Harem city at Syrian –Turkish border.

This transferring operation indicates to Isis’ control on the Syrian cities, which is facilitated the excavation operations & archaeology’s illegal trade from the transferring operation down to ability of offer & sale it.

“Isis’ organization was giving excavation permissions by Alrekkaz /Ore Office – the responsible of what are under the land from oil or archaeology, against of taking 20% of the found pieces’ value” as Yusf says.

According to Al Khabour, Yusuf and others who we have met in this investigation, thus the archaeology markets are outside Syria border at the neighboring countries such as: Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq & Jordan.

Gulf’s big Traders

Archaeology traders are communicating with each other usually at south of Turkey by communication apps & instant conversations through internet network, thus they are following-up the archaeology smuggling operations which include: Archaeological stone pieces, gold & metal pieces.

Isaac and Juma are “small” Syrian traders as they are saying, because they think that “there are rankings for trade, starting from the archaeological pieces’ owner then the brokers’ role down to the “whale”- the man who buys everything”.

The situation in Syria motivated the illegal archaeology’s trade, and the local people started to excavate for antiques & treasures due to lacking of resources & poverty, as happened with Juma & Isaac who are getting benefit from social media and the development of technology in the selling, buying, demand and offer.

Issac asserts that social media made the work much easier, he doesn’t need any more to travel from Gaziantep to Şanlıurfa  – the border cities with Syria for instance.

To see the archaeological entered pieces from Syria, he only asks the piece’s owner to photograph, write his name and the date beside the archaeological piece, to make sure of its authenticity & existence, he informs who need it, after that will be examined by an experts, and finally the purchasing operation will be done.

“The archaeological pieces are sold a lot to Arabian Gulf merchants who buy archaeology & gold, paying big sums which sometime exceed to million dollars, and they are using transfers at the black markets to prevent detection the big transferred sums.” as Issac says.

Issac allowed us going with him to know his handling way with other traders, so we went to his friend Juma house beside Turkish Gaziantep city.

Juma prefers to come at night “it is more safety” and he clarified that by a phone call to Isaac “To avoid any trouble” upon his opinion.

Juma opened the door, due to issac’s loud voice calling him.

Juma-30 years old, with a pale brown face & slim body sounds very afraid of working in such field, “If his order were revealed, he will spend the rest of his life in prisons”, as he says.

At his poor house, he saying “we are talking with you due to existing many big mafias who steal the sculptures & massive archaeology, but for us as poor people we are working in simple things just to live in this country, where everything is few for us”.

Directly the talk about Juma’s archaeological pieces began between Isaac & juma for their prices, quantity, where are the rest of the pieces? And where they are come from? , He informed him all the details.

Juma has Romanian metal currencies, the value of each piece for $300-500 (equals to 165 – 275 thousands Syrian pound), the total of them /150/ metal pieces still in Syria,” all of them found during excavation at north of Manbig city, and to bring them to Turkey are very easy in case of paying a good sum” as he says.

A Popular trade

Omar Glick, the Turkish Minister of Culture & Tourism talked about his ministry’s policy to prevent entering the Syrian cultural heritage to Turkey.

And he talked about the big development in smuggling of the Syrian cultural things across the Turkish border since beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, but the government is seeking to limit the smuggling operations across its border and inside its lands.

According to Turkish act No.2863of 1973, to transfer or smuggle archaeology are punished by aggravated imprisonment & seizure, lately were arrested smugglers & Syrian archaeology’s traders, according to News agencies & Turkish media.

Is this archaeology real?

We tried to make sure of Yusuf’s statue authenticity, and the truth of other archaeological Collectibles’ pictures, thus we sent the statue’s picture after their permission to Stefan Lund -Swedish archaeologist, specialist Prof. in Middle East archaeology – Gothenburg University &   Sweden international researches center.

Prof. asserted the statue’s authenticity, and it is a priceless statue in Europe and costs a lot of money, and he says “It is Hercules statue with distinguished lion skin dating back to the Greek- Hellenistic era”.

Prof. Lund’s asserts of the statue’s authenticity & importance are repeated by another archaeologist, who was working as a previous head of an archaeological mission in Syria before 2011, and right now is working as a Prof. in the Middle East archaeology’s Department -European university, refused mentioning his name for legal reasons relate in his work And to prevent him from appraising the archaeology at the black market.

We showed him the statue & other archaeological pieces’ pictures from social media and black market in Turkey, they are (Boy head, Hercules marble statue, two small marble statues and all of them dating back to Hellenistic – Greek era), his answer by E-mail on 19 last March to the investigator was:” clearly some of the pieces from Palmyra city, of the art style side, and some contain Aramaic inscriptions can be identified easily, thus no doubt of its origin from Palmyra and Roman era”.

According to Prof. these archaeological pieces are:” popular to some extent in eastern Mediterranean Regions ,including Syria and mosaic paintings dating back to Hellenistic-Greek era can be found in the rich excavated private houses  in eastern Mediterranean , and the pieces are authentic certainly”.

Transit Countries

“Turkey & Syria’s neighbors are “Transit” countries, because the last market for this archaeology is Europe, where they are sold in auctions or in the old arts antiques shops”.

According to Al-khabour, who has a deep knowledge in Syria’s archaeological heritage and cooperated UNESCO organization in Syrian archaeology protection matter.

He says:”London market is an attractive for these archaeological pieces, especially the smuggled one”, adding:”in the European market there are big demand for archaeology, and this place is the best market for selling these pieces with big sums”.

These archaeological pieces are ” popular to some extent in eastern Mediterranean Regions ,including Syria and mosaic paintings dating back to Hellenistic-Greek era can be found in the rich excavated private houses  in eastern Mediterranean , and the pieces are authentic certainly”.

Forging certificates of Origin

We tried to search & make sure of Khabour’s words, if these markets are attractive for smuggled & looted Syrian pieces or whether they are the last place for them.

Communicating with smugglers, brokers or even who work in this field is very difficult, due its danger, where our both attempts with two merchants failed after we had communicated them by “social media”, then we tried again with one of the merchants & brokers in Europe and no one accepted to talk even.

Georgin 50 – years old is trading of both Chinese & Egyptian archaeological pieces, living in Germany – France from Denmark originally.

We talked with him as an archaeological pieces’ owners who have archaeological pieces for sale not as journalists, thus he accepted to meet us after he had asked for pictures.

He met us in his car at one of the European capitals “what is the archaeological showed piece for sale?”He asked directly after our arrival, so I gave him Hercules statue picture.

While he was staring at statue’s pictures put his eye glasses on and asked” Are there any documents for the statue?”,”No” We answered , then he asked “Does it exist in Europe?

“No” I answered, “it is in Turkey “, and He said “We will talk if the statue arrives to Europe”.

The intended documents by Georgin’s question are like a passport known as “certificate of origin” should be available with any sold & traded piece legally.

Because maybe the statue was at one of the art pieces auctions, and there are documents for the statue’s buying -selling before, or was owned by known family in the world and have old pictures for the statue in their houses.

He explained for us the necessity of the smuggled archaeological pieces’ documents to trade it legally, by forging their related origin certificates, thus they become ready for legal trading, then to show them in The International Auctions Houses for sale with fancy prices.

This is one of the methods which the looted Syrian archaeological antiques-finds find their way to the international markets, auctions and show houses across the world and avoiding the seizure & governmental control.

“It is an organized old networks flourished in Iraq since 2003, during American invasion then in Syria after the occurred problems”. As Khabour commented on the above mentioned merchant’s words.

Supply market to Europe

The main information’s memo – Annex No.6, issued from UNESCO in 2014 – “Preservation of heritage and cultural diversity is a humanitarian and security necessity in the light of the conflicts of the twenty-first century”, which indicates to:” the smuggling feeds the illegal trade’s system of the cultural properties, one of the main incomes for the organized crime (estimates between 7 -15 billion dollars yearly).

The trade methods exceed the neighboring countries like Lebanon, Turkey & United Arab Emirates to supply the art pieces’ markets in the United Kingdom, Switzerland & United State of America between other markets.

It is a global scourge that can only be combated at the international level, by cooperate of the governmental agencies like: Customs & Police Departments and the interested parties in art market, including auctions houses, museums and amateur of archaeological things collecting”.

The red –list & Interpol

Some of the European states are trying to enact new laws to limit the looted archaeology trading of the in conflicts- states like Syria, due to the link of this file with financing terrorism and extremist groups such as “Isis” organization for instance.

These efforts come right now after in the past were allowed to sell archaeological pieces which had reached to Europe, according to Khabour.

This situation has been continued until 2016, where the Germany government initiated to limit this trade through providing that submitting an identification document with each piece or proof that it belongs to an important persons, and then will be allowed to sell or show it.

Each piece doesn’t accomplish these conditions will be considered smuggled & from illegal source, as khabour indicated.

There are other efforts are leading by organizations like International Council of Museums “ICOM” that responsible of the world museums.

The investigator communicated with the museum administration in order to know the shapes & pictures of the looted smuggled Syrian archaeology.

Some of the European states are trying to enact new laws to limit the looted archaeology trading of the in conflicts- states like Syria, due to the link of this file with financing terrorism and extremist groups such as “Isis” organization for instance.

The administration asserted that a guide under title of “Red emergency list of the threatened Syrian cultural properties” that issued, printed in 2013 & distributed to the international police “Interpol in order to identify the Syrian archaeological pieces, to help art professionals, heritage specialists & law enforcement officials to identify the looted Syrian archaeological pieces which be traded in the International Art Market”.

The guide contains pictures & shapes of archaeological pieces and chronology in order to identify them, intercept and confiscate them providing that delivering them to the country of origin, and these pieces should be registered & numbered at the country of origin, and information’s intersection with Interpol to facilitate the process of intercepting, controlling and to limit trading of them.

“UNESCO” role as an international organization to document, preserve the material & cultural heritage for peoples, but it refused to communicate with us despite of sending questions by e-mail to its office on last 25 March without any respond, thus “UNESCO ” role limited on activities which concentrate on accomplishing harmony between the initiatives and multi solutions regarding archaeology trading as Khabour describes it.

Yusuf impatiently waiting who buy Hercules statue and don’t care if the statue has later an authentic or forged certificate of origin, but only cares of selling it with good price and he says who buy the statue should transfer it in any way they want, clarifying that: ” a German man was paid $55 thousand dollars for the statue, but I did not sell”, according to him.

Adding,”I will keep the statue with me until obtaining of the best price”.

Yusuf returned back Hercules statue to the canvas bag, tied it tightly by a metal tape, holding it as baby between his arms and left the room saying with a shy smile while staring to the bag:”Hercules, you will not see the sun until a well-paid customer comes and appreciates your value”.

The post Syria: “Stones Smuggling” appeared first on SIRAJ.