Riham Alkousa
DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Families of military officers who served under Syria’s ousted Bashar al-Assad are being kicked out of their subsidized apartments in a compound outside Damascus to make way for victorious former rebels and their families, local residents and fighters.
The Muadamiyat al-Sham compound, which houses hundreds of people in more than a dozen buildings, is one of several such areas designated for officers under Assad’s rule.
As the army restructures around former rebel forces, with Assad-era officers demobilized, the evictions from military housing come as no surprise.
But their quick replacement in housing fighters who had spent years in a poor, rural rebel-held area shows a sudden reversal of fortune for supporters of each side in the conflict.
The names of rebel factions under the main victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which seized the capital on December 8, were spray-painted on the entrances to buildings, apparently marking them as fighters from each entity.
Three fighters at the base, four women staying there and a local official who issued documents to those leaving the families of the officers mentioned were given five days to leave.
“We will start moving our children’s schools, start our lives from scratch. I am very sad, my heart is broken, these are our lives, my children’s lives,” said Budour Makdid, 38, the wife of a former military intelligence officer who lives in Muadamiyat al-Sham .
Makdid’s husband, who signed documents recognizing the new authorities and surrendered his gun, has already returned to his family home in Latakia province, a former Assad stronghold, and Makdid and their children will join him there, she said.
Like other families leaving the area, she needed a document from the municipal authorities stating that the family was leaving the accommodation and giving permission to remove their belongings.
Local administrator Khalil al-Ahmad, 69, said families started contacting him a few days ago asking for the document and that about 200 requests for the document have been submitted so far.
Ahmad said he was not officially contacted by the new administration about the change, and that he only became aware of it when residents began asking him for documents.
A spokesman for HTS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
DISPLACED
Any sign of how the new Syrian administration intends to deal with former Assad officers, as well as property rights, will be closely watched in a country where millions of people have been displaced since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.
Earlier this month, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was filmed asking residents of his family’s former home in Damascus to leave and allow his family to return.
Some ex-military families living near the Muadamiyat al-Sham compound, but not in the subsidized units from which the officers were evicted, are also leaving.
Eidye Zaitoun, 52, packed her belongings into black plastic bags as she prepared to leave her two-bedroom apartment for the coast. She said that her son in the army had also moved to the coast and there was no reason for her to stay.
The HTS fighters in the compound were not sympathetic.
“We were displaced from our homes, from our regions in a moonless night with only the clothes we were wearing. Thank God they are now allowed to take their belongings out,” said one.
