With new authorities in Damascus, Daraa communities monitor local governance

PARIS — Notables and military commanders from the Yarmouk Basin, an area in the southwestern corner of Syria’s southern Daraa province, met on Tuesday in the town of al-Shajara to form a service management council. Many cities and towns in Daraa have taken similar steps since the fall of the regime, forming civil councils to monitor and support municipal and state institutions.

Daraa’s civil councils are “non-governmental, and not a substitute for state institutions,” Akram Abu Hussam, the deputy head of the civil council in the western Daraa city of Nawa, told Syria Direct. The local initiatives aim to “assist the state until the country’s new leadership stabilizes, as we are in a transitional phase and the new government’s personnel are not yet able to cover all issues,” he added. 

Building on recent years of experience filling in for a largely absent regime government in the south, the councils aim to “ease people’s lives, improve services and oversee and track the work of state institutions,” Abu Hussam said. 

Inkhil, a city in the northern Daraa countryside, formed a civil council last week. The body includes a number of subcommittees focusing on education, medical care, bread, water and electricity. Each committee aims to support services and coordinate with relevant government institutions, Hussam al-Shibli, a member of the council, said. Al-Shibli served as the head of the opposition’s local council in Inkhil prior to summer 2018, when the Assad regime retook control of southern Syria. 

Daraa province has seen many civil initiatives in recent years, with community efforts playing a role in managing and administering public services during regime control of the area. Communities and clans footed the bill for public education, compensated for absent police stations, filled a judicial vacuum with clan reconciliation processes and fought drug smuggling.

What is different today is that, rather than compensating for an absent state and institutions, Daraa’s community initiatives seek to monitor and support the work and services of the caretaker government appointed by Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Muhammad al-Jolani), the country’s de facto leader, to operate until this coming March. 

Oversight and support

The idea of establishing a civil council in Nawa was born in 2014, and realized on the ground two years later. The body operated until 2018, when a Russian-sponsored settlement agreement was signed between opposition Southern Front factions and the Assad regime, Bassam Khattab, a member of the current civil council in the city, said. 

“After Syria was liberated, the idea was revived and the council expanded to 65 current members—notables and men from the city,” Khattab told Syria Direct. 

Last week, members of the Nawa council elected a chairman, deputy and secretaries for the council to “manage it and its subcommittees, which oversee public services in the city,” deputy head Abu Hussam said. 

In Inkhil, the civil council works in cooperation with the former head of the pre-2018 opposition local council and the current city council, al-Shibli explained. Subcommittees “monitor bakeries, the health center and municipal projects, and meet with the city council to discuss and support the work of government institutions,” he said. 

The day the former regime fell—just over a month ago—notables in Inkhil held a meeting at the municipal building to develop an “action plan.” The plan included preserving the city’s safety and security, educating young people about the need to refrain from celebratory gunfire and hastening the handover of weapons. Notables also agreed to preserve state institutions and public utilities, form civil committees to overcome public service challenges and call on residents to show tolerance and work together, Mustafa al-Rumman, head of the Inkhil city council, told Syria Direct. 

Eliminating corruption

Daraa’s civil councils “are not authorized to appoint or dismiss government employees,” but do “ask government officials about any defect or shortcoming in the work of their institutions, with the aim of eliminating the remnants of the former regime’s corruption,” Abu Hussam said. 

A few days ago, the civil council in Nawa intervened “to replace some individuals who tried to obstruct the work of the city bakery,” Abu Hussam said. “The bakeries committee played a role in solving the problem, improving the quality of bread and replacing some employees,” he added, emphasizing the council would not allow “any corruption.” 

Council members also met with the heads of the water and forestry departments in Nawa to exchange recommendations. “We provided the water department with some volunteers,” Khattab said. The council “will make recommendations to the current [Damascus] government and provide assessments of the officials,” he added. 

“If an official is corrupt, they must be changed, and the government must implement this request, since the council draws its legitimacy from the local community,” Khattab said. 

Civil councils’ monitoring committees are evaluating current officials, “monitoring and submitting reports to the council’s leadership,” Khattab said. He is satisfied with the spirit of cooperation “between the civil council and the heads of government institutions in Nawa,” he said, noting that “any official invited to attend a meeting accepts the invitation and listens to our proposals.” 

For his part, Inkhil city council head Mustafa al-Rumman—who served in the same position under the former regime—expressed appreciation for the civil committees, which he said have not hindered his own body’s operations. 

Since the Assad regime fell, the caretaker government in Damascus has made no changes to the “municipalities’ work, and has not dissolved any municipal council,” Assistant Minister of Local Administration Muhammad Ghazal told Syria Direct. He welcomed “civil initiatives that help us regarding the municipalities and their work.” 

“We have appointed people to run vacant municipal councils in some cities, and their mandate ends when the current government’s mandate ends,” he added. His ministry has instructed new appointees to “coordinate with the civil committees on services.” 

Under Syria’s Assad-era Local Administration Law, local councils are made up of elected members who select each body’s president and membership. Each council serves for a term of four years. 

Pending new local council elections or the outcome of a planned national dialogue conference, the current government is conducting a “preliminary staff assessment,” Ghazal said. “There will be a new work mechanism later, once the assessment is complete,” he added. 

Administering urgent services

Since the regime fell, Ahmad al-Sharaa has appointed new governors for several Syrian provinces. Former Ahrar al-Sham leader Hassan Soufan was named governor of Latakia, while Amer al-Sheikh, also a former Ahrar al-Sham leader, was named governor of Reef Dimashq. Daraa’s governorship remains vacant, Yasser al-Kafri, the services supervisor at the local community committee in the city of Busra al-Sham, said. 

Busra al-Sham’s committee is similar to civil committees in other cities in the southern province, but has existed in its current role since before the regime fell. As a result, it has maintained “the approach taken to administer the city before,” al-Kafri explained to Syria Direct. “The city is still run by the same heads of the departments and municipal council, alongside a civil committee that follows the work of government institutions and provides them with staff and financial assistance,” he added. 

“The people of Busra al-Sham have provided the city’s service departments with their needs since before the regime fell, because the state’s resources were limited,” al-Kafri said. For example, a local medical team runs the city’s hospital, while another operates the oxygen cylinder production plant. “The local community bears the expense” so services are provided “free of charge,” he added. 

Civil committee sources in Inkhil, Nawa and Busra al-Sham all confirmed there are no channels of communication so far with the caretaker government in Damascus. 

Daraa still not having a governor, combined with the preexisting disorder in government departments in the south, “have led to a missing link between the directorates in Daraa and the rural sections,” al-Kafri said. 

Al-Rumman, in Inkhil, confirmed “there is no direct communication with the general administration in Damascus.” However, there has been some communication through local members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) who returned to Inkhil “to implement the general command’s decisions in Daraa, regarding the prices of bread, household gas, mazot [diesel] and turning over weapons once a center is set for that.” 

Accordingly, the current role of Daraa’s local councils is limited to “producing bread, [overseeing] its quality and weight, organizing breadlines and searching for the best ways to deliver and secure citizens’ needs,” al-Rumman said. In Inkhil, the council is also working to “develop the health center and meet its needs, especially with a group of local doctors opening specialized clinics there,” he added. 

When it comes to rehabilitating infrastructure and services, “there are no current projects,” al-Rumman said, due to the “lack of sufficient budgets for that.” 

In Busra al-Sham, the city council is continuing work on projects that existed before the regime fell: one project to renovate schools, and another to supply wells with alternative energy sources and maintain water pumps. The council also has contracts signed with international organizations, such as a “sanitation contract” signed with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), council head Suleiman Shahma told Syria Direct. “The council relies on community assistance because its revenues are weak,” he added. 

For the Ministry of Local Administration, what matters most is that “the work of municipalities does not stop, and that they continue to carry out their usual service work: sanitation, sewage, licensing and monitoring violations,” Ghazal said. His ministry is trying to “improve and develop the existing services as much as possible, especially since the budget for these services is available.” 

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