East Aleppo: Years of ‘deliberate’ neglect and poor services

ALEPPO — For seven years, Muhammad Naama, 45, has been waiting for officials in Aleppo to fulfill their promises to restore services to the city’s shattered eastern neighborhoods. He has seen no signs of improvement so far.

Naama returned to his home in east Aleppo’s formerly opposition-held Salaheddin neighborhood in March 2017, months after the Syrian regime regained full control of the city in a destructive military campaign in late 2016 that ended with the largest forced displacement operation in the country.

Since the regime retook east Aleppo, which includes portions of the Old City, its neighborhoods have lacked basic services. Garbage piles up in the streets, electricity is in short supply and water is scarce or does not come at all. To make matters worse, the rubble of destroyed homes sits untouched, and many streets sit unrepaired and unpaved. 

East Aleppo residents feel the neglect is “intentional” because these neighborhoods were once a base for opposition fighters, as Ali Barakat, 30, who lives in the Karam Khasim neighborhood, said.

East Aleppo residents pass the rubble of destroyed homes in the Ard al-Naser area of Salaheddin neighborhood, 20/5/2024 (Laith Hamishli/Syria Direct)

Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods fell out of regime hands in 2013. For years, armed opposition forces were stationed there before they were evacuated—alongside civilians—in late 2016 under a Russian- and Turkish-sponsored agreement. The final battle for Aleppo, during which regime forces and Iranian militias managed to capture most of the area, devastated its infrastructure and services. 

Aleppo city suffered the largest percentage of destruction in Syria during the war, according to a 2019 report by the United Nations Institute for Research and Training (UNITAR). Most of the devastation was concentrated in east Aleppo, which is living with the repercussions to this day.

Neighborhoods without electricity

State-provided electricity does not come to east Aleppo, while it reaches the city’s western neighborhoods for around two hours a day. During the weekend, on Friday and Saturday, power runs for two hours out of every 12, multiple sources in the city told Syria Direct. 

To make do, Aleppo residents—particularly in the east—rely on “ampere electricity,” provided by privately owned, fuel-powered generators. The cost to subscribe to these generators, and the number of hours a day they provide power, varies depending on the neighborhood and who owns the generator, “without government oversight,” Naama said. 

Aleppo city has around 1,300 private generators that are licensed with the government. Only 120 of them—less than 10 percent—serve east Aleppo, according to figures the licensing office of the Aleppo City Council provided to Syria Direct.

Naama pays 65,000 Syrian pounds a week ($4.50 at the current black market exchange rate of SYP 14,700 to the dollar) for a one-ampere generator subscription. He receives electricity for six hours a day, from six o’clock in the afternoon until midnight. At times, there are additional fees, in the event of “malfunctions in the circuit breaker or cable connecting the generator to the house,” he said. 

With one ampere of electricity, “it’s possible to light the house and charge mobile phones,” but it is not enough to run appliances such as refrigerators or air conditioners, Naama added. He cannot afford to subscribe to more amperes, as his weekly salary selling vegetables “might reach SYP 400,000 at best,” around $27. 

Fadel Ahmadi, 50, owns a sewing workshop in east Aleppo’s al-Saliheen neighborhood. He pays around SYP 1 million a week ($68) for a 10-ampere subscription, and receives an average of 10 hours of power a day, except Fridays, he told Syria Direct. In other words, he pays 40 percent more for each ampere than Naama does.

Industrial and commercial facilities’ reliance on generator-provided electricity “raises the cost of production, which increases the price of goods,” Ahmadi said. This hurts his business, as “traders prefer to buy goods from workshops that rely on government electricity, since they’re cheaper.” Aleppo’s al-Sheikh Najjar industrial district is more fortunate, as it receives state-provided electricity 24 hours a day. 

East Aleppo’s generators work in two waves: From nine o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock in the evening, they serve small industry and shops. Other generators supply households from seven o’clock until midnight. 

After midnight, the ampere generators shut down, and east Aleppo sinks into an inky darkness, broken only by candlelight or battery-powered lamps. The gloom “weakens security and allows robberies to occur at night,” Ahmadi said. 

Darkness hangs over buildings in the Masaken al-Ferdous area of east Aleppo, while a few dim lights emanate from the windows of residential apartments, 25/5/2024 (Laith Hamishli/Syria Direct)

Bassel Qawwas, director of the state-owned Aleppo Electricity Company, said on pro-regime Sham FM radio station in June that one third of Aleppo city is without electricity. He acknowledged that the city’s eastern neighborhoods were most impacted, and “have not fully taken their due.”

Ahmad al-Weiss (a pseudonym), an employee at the company, said east Aleppo is not intentionally deprived of electricity. These neighborhoods “need to reconstruct the entire electrical system, including necessary ground cables, materials and equipment, and this takes years of work,” especially with a “shortage of capacity and manpower,” he told Syria Direct. 

“The company has worked to supply industrial areas in accordance with its budget” in recent years, due to a need for “industrial facilities to continue their work, and their ability to pay 24-hour operating costs,” he added. One kilowatt hour for industry currently costs SYP 1,900 ($0.12), which is “a lot for household supply,” he added.

Contaminated drinking water

Water access in the city’s eastern neighborhoods is no better. East Aleppo, along with the city’s northern neighborhoods, lack state-provided water, driving residents to rely on wells regardless of the water quality. Filling a single 1,600-liter water storage tank costs up to SYP 40,000 ($2.75) a week, several sources in Aleppo said. 

Even in neighborhoods supplied by the state-run Aleppo Water Establishment, “the water is sometimes undrinkable,” Nuha Aswad, 40, said. At her home in al-Mayassar, she leaves “the tap running for a while, until the color of the water returns to normal and the sediment in it subsides,” she added. Still, “the water smells.” 

Sources from east Aleppo’s al-Qaterji, al-Mayasser, al-Jazmati and Karam al-Turab neighborhoods told Syria Direct the water they receive from the Aleppo Water Establishment’s network is polluted. 

For that reason, Aswad only uses the water for cleaning and household chores. For drinking, she relies on “a well dug during the armed opposition presence in the area,” she explained. Well water was the only water source during opposition control of the area, after Damascus cut off the water supply to the city’s eastern neighborhoods.  

Aswad pays a flat rate of SYP 4,000 ($0.27) a month to the Aleppo Water Establishment for her connection, since there is no meter to calculate the amount of water consumed, she said. When the company requires citizens in the area to install meters, they pay SYP 22,425 ($1.50) for installation, in addition to bills that vary based on water use.

Commenting on water pollution, Fawwad al-Hussein, a resident of al-Mayasser and a member of the neighborhood committee supervising services, said public water “mixes with sewage at a node at the end of the al-Shaar bridge due to the collapse of the lines in this area.” These damaged water lines supply around 700,000 residents of east Aleppo and surrounding neighborhoods, including south Aleppo neighborhoods, he noted. 

Waste crisis

Perhaps the most pressing service issue, given its health implications for east Aleppo residents, is the accumulation of garbage in the street and around garbage containers for days at a time. With poor sanitation, leishmaniasis—a disease spread by sandfly bites—spreads, while rats and snakes proliferate among the ruins of destroyed buildings, residents said. 

Garbage spreads around teeming dumpsters in the al-Mashhad neighborhood of east Aleppo, 23/5/2024 (Laith Hamishli/Syria Direct)

Debris from buildings damaged and brought down by the February 6, 2023 earthquake has joined the ruins of buildings destroyed by the regime and Russian bombing campaign during the final months of opposition control. 

The al-Ansari sector is “among the worst areas, in terms of garbage removal,” Abdulaziz Hamdo, 40, who lives in the al-Mashhad neighborhood, told Syria Direct. Although this area is “among the most densely populated, requiring the daily removal of garbage,” it is only taken away “once or twice a week, leading it to pile up in the streets,” he added. 

“The work of waste removal machinery is limited to emptying dumpsters located on main streets,” Hamdo said. He has filed many complaints with local authorities, but “to no avail,” as he is told “the service sector is short on workers, machinery and fuel,” he said. 

Mamdouh Kharat (a pseudonym), an Aleppo City Council employee, told Syria Direct the reason for the accumulation of waste is a lack of human resources and fuel needed to transport garbage daily. Garbage vehicles themselves are more than 40 years old, and “work within weak capacity,” given the difficulty of maintenance and replacing parts. 

As garbage sits and spreads, skin diseases run rampant, especially among children, who spend time playing outside in east Aleppo’s streets Most cases are concentrated in the head, face and hand area, Syria Direct observed. 

Skin lesions caused by leishmaniasis, a disease spread by sandfly bites, on the face of a child in east Aleppo, 22/5/2024 (Laith Hamishli/Syria Direct)

Since the beginning of March, one clinic in east Aleppo has recorded the infection of 375 children with leishmaniasis, Marwa al-Hussami, a nurse there, said. Its staff receive between 10 and 15 cases a day, she added. 

On one street in the Karam Khasim neighborhood, each family pitches in around SYP 50,000 ($3.40) to pay for someone to clean the street and remove garbage in the morning and evening. It is “expensive for families with limited means, but the government’s actions have not given them a better option,” Ali Barakat, who lives in the neighborhood, said. 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.