Salvaging iron from Syria’s ruins a risky trade, but ‘a way to live’

IDLIB — Nour Raad al-Fares stands over a chunk of concrete, part of what remains of a destroyed building in the northern Hama countryside town of Kafr Zita. Wielding a sledgehammer, he pounds it to extract the iron rebar inside, working without protective gear. 

“We work on trust—God is the protector,” al-Fares told Syria Direct with a tense smile. The work is exhausting, as he only uses manual tools in his labors: sledgehammers and some ropes. Power tools are too expensive. 

Men like al-Fares ply their trade among the rubble of buildings destroyed by years of Assad regime bombings and the devastating February 2023 earthquake. Perched precariously on mounds of twisted metal and concrete, they wear thin shirts that offer little protection. Extracting iron from the ruins is one of the only livelihoods they can find.

Iron salvage has become a popular form of survival work in northern Syria—a way to eke a living out of destroyed buildings, an all-too-plentiful resource. Hammers striking concrete form part of the soundtrack of a society trying to rebuild with its bare hands, using the ruins of its own cities. At the same time, it is a largely unregulated and hazardous sector, posing risks not only to workers but to those who use recycled materials for construction. 

Destruction and survival

Al-Fares works as part of a small crew of four laborers, paid to extract rebar from destroyed houses at the owners’ request. Each job is different, the amount of physical effort and risk varying from building to building.

“We finish pulling iron from the roof of an ordinary building in one workday, while a hourdi [hollow block slab] roof takes several days” because it is twice as thick and contains more rebar, he said. 

The pay also varies. “Some customers give us iron for the work, and some pay one dollar per square meter of regular roof and two dollars for a hourdi roof,” he added. Sometimes, they agree to a “lump sum for the entire building.” 

Al-Fares and those working with him often find themselves “on the brink of danger” from “part of the roof collapsing without warning,” he added. Sometimes, “it is impossible to pull iron from some roofs with manual equipment,” so they have to abandon the job. Occasionally, property owners renege on their agreement, and do not pay. 

“The risk isn’t limited to the roof collapsing while working on it. Sometimes we face bigger dangers, such as unexploded war remnants,” al-Fares added. Then, there are the “painful memories of the places we are working in: someone died here, another lost a foot there,” he said. 

Al-Fares does not consider his work a “profession,” since it is “not pleasant, easy or safe,” he said. “Our work is a way to live. There is no other.” 

When men like al-Fares complete their work, the collected rebar is delivered to the owner of the property, who in turn sells it to straightening workshops, locally referred to as al-jalasat. There, the rebar is straightened and cut to be resold as recycled material used for casting stairs or secondary building columns. One ton of used rebar sells for between $200 and $300, depending on its quality, while the same amount of new rebar costs up to $710. 

The price difference drives the popularity of recycled rebar, despite controversy over its technical suitability and durability, al-Fares said. He personally knows many people, including his neighbors, who have used recycled rebar to repair their homes “because iron is expensive.”

Often, “the work is not worthwhile,” compared to its physical demands, he added. Time and again, he has agreed with building owners to extract and sell the iron, only to “discover that the roof has no iron,” he said. “After the crushing, our work is for nothing.”

While this trade is both risky and common in devastated areas, it is not regulated, and much of the work is done without security approvals from relevant authorities. As a result, laborers are exposed to “cheating and scamming” on top of risking their safety, al-Fares said. 

For iron extraction to meet security and safety standards, the process of “removing each stone from its place and retrieving every metal rod” must go through “a precise system of coordination and inspection,” Ali Muhammad, an engineer with the Syrian Civil Defense, said while supervising rubble removal in Aleppo city.

“We don’t remove a stone without official permission, and we don’t demolish without a report from the safety committee and legal consent from the property owner,” he told Syria Direct, procedures that crews like al-Fares’s do not follow. 

Rebuilding from the ruins

In a country facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world and struggling to emerge from a war that left its economy and infrastructure in ruins, “the word reconstruction does not only mean raising new walls,” said Taha Muhammad al-Shahin, who owns a rebar straightening workshop in Kafr Zita. “It starts with the sound of sledgehammers destroying the remaining ruins and extracting iron.”

Once rebar from destroyed buildings arrives at shops like al-Shahin’s, the sorting process begins “to select the rods that are not corroded by rust, then they are manually straightened with a hammer until they are 90 percent straight,” he said. “The rods are then sorted by thickness: 10 millimeters and 12 millimeters, which are the gauges used in construction.”

Al-Shahin’s workshop can process one ton of iron per day, at a cost of between $70 and $80, he said. 

Asked about how the iron is checked to ensure it is suitable for reuse in construction, al-Shahin said it is “only inspected visually.” Other necessary assessments—tensile tests, bending tests, rebound tests, hardness tests or corrosion resistance tests—are not conducted. 

“There is no monitoring by the local authorities, but we have our own supervisor at the center who we trust. He evaluates the iron and takes notes,” al-Shahin said. He trusts the quality of the product based on not receiving any complaints from his customers. 

“We see our work as a realistic, struggling solution, especially given the absence of organizations’ role in construction, lack of real alternatives and decline in consumer purchasing power,” al-Shahin said. He described the process of rebuilding using recycled iron as “popular reconstruction”—repairing life using the debris of war. 

Civil engineer Safaa Kashour is more troubled by the use of recycled metal. “There are large quantities of iron under the rubble. Some of it may be partially usable, while some may not be usable at all,” she told Syria Direct. “Some rods may appear relatively intact, but they have undergone thermal and structural deformations due to explosions or fires, and no longer meet the standard specifications for tensile strength.” 

“The problem is that most of those working in collecting iron do not have the slightest knowledge of engineering standards or the risks they face—whether health [risks] during work or the structural safety of construction,” she said. 

Between chaos and organization

There are some attempts to organize iron removal and recycling, but they remain far from turning the trade into a safe and integrated system. 

“There is no regulating law yet,” but ruins are dealt with “in coordination with the property owner, whether a private or public entity,” Ibrahim al-Ismail, who manages the Idlib Governorate’s Project Management Unit, told Syria Direct. “Nobody is allowed to extract iron from the rubble unless they are the owner or have the owner’s consent.”

His unit relies on “building inspectors” to control the process, who verify property ownership before allowing any demolition or extraction. If it is proven that “a person is extracting iron from a property they do not own, they are detained until the truth of the matter is confirmed,” al-Ismail said. 

While many have been arrested for such violations, “the scale of the phenomenon is larger than the capacity for daily monitoring,” he added. “People find a relatively good source of livelihood in collecting iron, amid a devastated economy.” Some property owners have also lost their property documents, making regulation even more challenging. 

The project management unit works in coordination with humanitarian organizations to “remove and recycle rubble within structured projects, to ensure these works are carried out with safety and transparency,” he added. 

Post-war construction

In a low-income neighborhood of Idlib city, Abd al-Monim—known among his neighbors as Abu Marwan—makes his living collecting scrap metal and selling raw materials recycled from the rubble. 

Abu Marwan buys iron by the kilo from property owners and street vendors. He sorts it between iron that is ready to sell to consumers and “bent” iron, which he sells to straightening shops.

During the most intense periods of the war, business was booming. “People were looking to repair their houses for shelter, regardless of the quality,” Abu Marwan told Syria Direct. 

With the fall of the Assad regime, the market for used iron declined, he said, complaining of a “stagnant market.” The authorities “started to prohibit using this iron in construction out of concern for building safety,” he said, leaving it to be melted down, not used in buildings. 

Abu Marwan expects the used iron market to gradually decline. He hears talk from other traders that the demand in coming days “will be for new iron,” especially with Syria on the verge of large-scale reconstruction with regional and international support. 

In Darat Izza, a city in the western Aleppo countryside, trader Ahmad al-Sayyed avoids used iron. He only deals in rebar that is new or imported from Turkey and Iran, working with companies that are well known in the construction market. 

“Humanitarian organizations working in northwestern Syria take care to use new iron that meets safety standards in their projects. Regular citizens, especially owners of damaged houses, don’t mind buying used iron,” he said, warning that “not all types of iron are suitable” for construction. 

“Imported iron is blue, and has information indicating the quality and durability of the rod,” while local iron could be of used origin. “There are those who collect old tanker trucks and metal structures from the ruins, melt them down and pull rods no thicker than eight millimeters, which are sold at low prices,” he told Syria Direct. 

Al-Sayyed expected most local iron comes “from earthquake debris, and is recycled in small workshops like those in Atareb, without quality control.” 

“What pains me is that there are people risking their lives among the demolished buildings to earn an income of no more than a few dollars a day,” engineer Kashour concluded. Not to mention that the iron they recover is “used in construction without testing, and could lead to future disasters.” 

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