Um Ahmed left everything when she and her four children fled their home south of Damascus at the beginning of a decade-long civil war – toys scattered around all corners of the house, the certificates she earned when she qualified as a pharmacist.
After moving repeatedly, they now live in the Rukn al-Din neighbourhood of the capital in a gloomy rental flat. It is a far cry from their previous home, which was filled with light from dawn until dusk.
“My house was furnished, the pharmacy was full of medicine, and now I have nothing,” lamented Um Ahmed, who asked to be referred to by her nickname due to a fear of reprisals from the government. “It has all become a dream.”
The ruins of her 100sq metre house in Daraya, a former base for the opposition Free Syrian Army, cost 25,000 Syrian pounds ($20) to clear of debris. She was out of money before she could even begin to think of rebuilding.
An estimated 6.2 million people have been internally displaced by Syria’s long-running civil war, which has plunged the country into a deep economic and humanitarian crisis. A further 5.6 million have fled and are registered as refugees. In 2018, the United Nations estimated the cost of destruction from the war at some $388bn, nearly 20 times more than Syria’s entire economy was worth last year.
The west has balked at paying for Bashar al-Assad to rebuild Syria. The EU and the US have said they will not support the reconstruction of the country until there is a political transition.
Syria is set to hold presidential elections this Wednesday, a process widely denounced as a sham designed to give the incumbent a veneer of legitimacy.
The election is also supposed to suggest the country is moving forward, despite the fact that war is ongoing and the economy has collapsed: the government cannot afford to subsidise enough bread for its citizens, let alone rebuild its destroyed cities.
With international funds not forthcoming, the Syrian regime has levied its own tax to finance reconstruction. In 2012, it formed a committee to help rebuild the country under the control of the then deputy prime minister and minister of local administration, Omar Ghalawanji, who was put on the EU’s sanctions list the same year.
It was while watching state television in May 2014 that Um Ahmed learned about the Syrian Reconstruction Committee and its promise to help people rebuild their shattered homes. She submitted a claim.
The committee has raised an estimated 386bn Syrian pounds ($307m), according to an analysis by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), its Syrian partner SIRAJ, and Finance Uncovered. But there is little evidence that the money has been spent helping civilians such as Um Ahmed who, like thousands of others, has heard nothing since applying for compensation.
Available records show that the regime’s reconstruction committee has mostly allocated funds levied from the tax to government ministries and public institutions, making it impossible to track what is spent. Some of the funds that OCCRP did manage to trace, though a small proportion of the whole, went to refurbish military facilities and housing for government forces. Money spent on civilians has often gone to those in pro-government areas.
These findings are consistent with research from the Carnegie Middle East Center, which found Assad’s regime has used “selective reconstruction” to shore up its political and economic power in some areas, while ignoring poorer social classes that the regime views as threatening.
In July 2017, the reconstruction committee granted 175m Syrian pounds for maintenance work in Mazzeh 86, a Damascus neighbourhood and a backbone of support for the regime. Meanwhile almost nothing has been rebuilt where Um Ahmed lived in nearby Daraya, a former base for the opposition Free Syrian Army, even though it was heavily damaged in the war.
Mazhar Sharbaji, a governance officer from the Local Administration Councils Unit, an opposition group that monitors reconstruction efforts, said the committee “allows for the disbursement of money taken from reconstruction funds, explicitly to the military, police and security services [it] has clearly given money to military security, internal and political security sectors at the expense of civilian victims”.
The reconstruction committee did not respond to several requests for comment. A media officer at the ministry of finance directed OCCRP to the ministry of information to obtain permission to submit questions to the committee. The approval is yet to be granted.
In 2013, the tax was set as a 5% levy on direct taxes, such as on the sale of real estate and renewal of car licences, as well as indirect taxes such as VAT and fees for legal cases (income taxes were exempt).
The cash-strapped government doubled it to 10% in 2017 when Zubair Darwish, then director general of Syria’s general commission for taxes and fees, told Syrian state newspaper Tishreen the money would be spent on “supporting restoration and rebuilding what was destroyed, as well as supporting the resettlement of displaced families”.
The then minister of finance, Mamoun Hamdan, explained the government needed to collect more funds to rebuild infrastructure and private properties destroyed in the war.
As the public was led to think the taxes were going to rebuild their homes, a system was set up to allow citizens to apply for compensation to a subcommittee in each Assad-controlled governorate who would in turn send claims to the central reconstruction committee for approval.
But a review of documents by OCCRP, SIRAJ, and Finance Uncovered suggests this has not happened. Data from open sources, parliamentary debates and state media indicates Syria’s government allocated 30bn Syrian pounds to the reconstruction committee in 2013, then 50bn Syrian pounds (worth $40m at today’s exchange rates) every year since – a total of 380bn Syrian pounds, or over $1.4bn. Contributions from the reconstruction levy have increased over the years from the equivalent of $56m in 2016 to $132.4m in 2020.
Spending disclosures, meanwhile, show commitments totalling just 263bn Syrian pounds, leaving a potential underspend of 117bn Syrian pounds (approximately $229m, though the value of the pound has fluctuated wildly during this period). Where the money lies remains a mystery.
The documents suggest less than 10% – 24.2bn Syrian pounds – of the funds allocated to the committee since 2014 has been spent on rebuilding citizens’ homes.
By contrast, 90.3% of the budget has gone to government ministries and public institutions, where it has been impossible to ascertain how the great majority of it has been spent. A small fraction, 1.32bn Syrian pounds, could be pinpointed as having been spent on Syria’s military and security forces.
“Society’s lack of oversight on the work of government entities allows the regime total freedom to make use of public resources, even humanitarian assistance,” said Haid Haid, a senior consulting research fellow at Chatham House in London.
“Therefore, the regime can use this money to maintain itself and ensure its continuity either by using it for police and security matters, or to finance itself.”
The Syrian architect Mazhar Sharbaji, who has researched how war-torn countries such as Lebanon, Germany, Japan and South Korea managed to rise from the ashes of war, said the committee “has clearly given money to military security, internal and political security sectors at the expense of civilian victims”.
It is a contention that is difficult to prove, given the lack of transparency. But Sharbaji used the example of Daraya, his hometown. About 70% of the city is partially demolished, and around half is wrecked beyond repair, he said, with electricity almost non-existent and infrastructure and sewage systems completely destroyed. According to Sharbaji, no housing or infrastructure has been built over the past three years.
Analysis of published spending decisions, meanwhile, revealed the reconstruction committee in 2016 granted 50m Syrian pounds to 167 members of the army and the police, 350m Syrian pounds for the restoration and modernisation of military hospitals in the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus, in traditionally pro-regime areas, and approved paying for the reconstruction of homes belonging to wounded auxiliary forces who fought with the Syrian army.
While those funds are a small part of overall spending, Osama Kadi, head of the Syrian economic taskforce, which monitors reconstruction efforts, suggests the reconstruction tax is being used to bail out governmental finances.
“Lack of transparency and widespread corruption within successive Syrian governments for five decades makes it difficult to determine the fate of the huge monies that the regime has obtained from Syrians in the name of reconstruction,” he said.
“Nearly 10 million Syrians still live outside their homes, all the infrastructure continues to suffer from structural problems, as electricity and water are constantly cut, in addition to other services, and basic goods are not well available.”
Former rebel-held cities where the Syrian regime has regained control, such as Old Homs and the surrounding countryside, Rif-Dimashq, Aleppo, Dara’a, Deir Al-Zour, and many others, where the government has been collecting taxes, meanwhile remain in rubble.
“Syrian citizens and businesses are the victims of a systematic government effort to collect funds through a reconstruction tax, while completely failing to deliver,” said economic journalist Sameer Tawil.
Mohammad Bassiki reports for SIRAJ and Nick Mathiason for Finance Uncovered. Ali Ibrahim (SIRAJ) contributed reporting.
This story was completed with support from Journalismfund.eu’s Money Trail Project.