Southern Idlib towns find stopgap solutions for absent state services

IDLIB — In early April, Muhammad Abdulkarim Tannari’s half-decade of displacement finally ended when he returned with his family of five to Maarat al-Numan, a city in the south of Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. 

Tannari found his hometown destroyed, its buildings and infrastructure in ruins. Of his own house of four rooms and a garden, only one room remained. After returning, he repaired that room, using blankets in the place of doors, and built a fence for the garden outside. That, along with a small electricity system for lighting, cost him $800. To fully restore his home would cost him around 10 times as much, he said. 

“You could say we are living in ruins now, but it’s better than having no shelter,” Tannari said. His family’s needs, and those of other returnees, are “significant, and daily—from drinking water to bread and electricity,” he added. But the biggest challenge is “the scale of destruction and high repair costs,” which “prevent many of my displaced relatives and friends from returning.” 

Over 14 years of war, the infrastructure in cities and towns in southern Idlib was systematically destroyed. Public utilities, homes, water and sewage networks were shattered by bombardment and military clashes in the area, which was close to the frontlines between Assad regime forces and the opposition at the time. Many displaced people’s homes were also methodically stripped and looted by regime-affiliated groups. 

Read more: ‘Locusts’: Organized looting, destruction of displaced Syrians’ homes by ‘demolition forces’ and regime-affiliated groups

After the Assad regime fell on December 8, 2024, many displaced people returning to their homes were confronted by the scale of destruction in their communities, including in southern Idlib. To fill the need for immediate solutions, local civil initiatives were launched to support civilians, stepping into some of the roles that are the responsibility of Syria’s new administration.

In March, traders in Maarat al-Numan launched the Maarat al-Numan Service Fund, an initiative to collect money from the city’s people to put towards improving services. Projects covered by the fund are decided based on consultation between donors and the Syrian government’s regional administration.

In a similar move, though less organized and well-funded, residents of the southern Idlib town of Kafr Aweed launched a volunteer campaign they called Sahem, or “contribute,” on May 6. Unpaid volunteers and vehicles work to clear garbage from the town’s streets and entrances, participants told Syria Direct. 

Alongside volunteer services, the Sahem campaign hopes to increase environmental awareness among residents and clean neighborhoods. Organizers are putting together educational activities and entertainment for children, alongside motivational competitions, on top weekly cleaning campaigns, Sahem coordinator Faraj Mighlaj told Syria Direct. 

While such projects are important in a destroyed country with an emerging administration, they are no replacement for large-scale reconstruction projects with backing from the government and international actors. Rebuilding Syria could cost between $250 billion and $923 billion, as the European Parliament estimated in a March 2025 report. 

This explains, in part, the government’s delay in acting to return internally displaced people to their communities. Of the estimated 7.4 million displaced people before the regime fell—a number that includes 700,000 displaced after November 2024—only around 1.2 million have returned so far.

Temporary solutions

Since launching on March 10, the Maarat al-Numan Service Fund has financed several service projects in the city, which had a population of around 140,000 people before the war. Initiatives include repairing sewage networks and replacing stolen maintenance hole covers, said Bilal Makhzoum, a spokesperson for the regional administration who also oversees the fund. The fund also paid to repair a section of the Damascus-Aleppo highway that runs east of Maarat al-Numan, between Bseida and Maar Shurin. 

Work is underway to install streetlights and surveillance cameras for security, while a project to repair road medians, plant trees and decorate entrances to Maarat al-Numan is nearly complete, he added. 

Since Assad fell, more than 3,015 families have returned to Maarat al-Numan, which had been virtually deserted. The number of returns is expected to rise significantly at the end of the current school year, Makhzoum added. He estimated that around 150 families are returning every day. 

Meeting the needs of this many people is “a difficult task,” Makhzoum said. Only “one well serves the city, with another that will be put into service, not to mention that water is brought in by tanker trucks because the water networks need maintenance and repairs.” Waste management is another challenge. “There are no mechanisms for transporting garbage, which leaves it piling up in neighborhoods at the entrances of cities,” he added. 

Maarat al-Numan still has no operating bread ovens, so the staple food item is brought from other Idlib areas on a daily basis. When it runs out, residents have to travel 25 or 40 kilometers to buy it from Ariha or Idlib city, Tannari said. “Two ovens will be opened soon, with private investment,” Makhzoum added. 

In Kafr Aweed, 26 kilometers east of Maarat al-Numan, there are no government services or humanitarian projects, as is the case of most villages and towns in southern Idlib and northern Hama. After 700 families returned to the town—originally home to 3,775 families—the Sahem volunteer campaign was launched as an urgent, temporary solution, coordinator Mighlaj said. 

Unlike the Maarat al-Numan fund, the Sahem initiative cannot take the place of the government, even at the level of garbage removal. While it can launch a three-day campaign to clear garbage, waste removal requires sustained daily effort. Its initiatives are like “painkillers that soon wear off,” Hassan al-Gharibi, one of the volunteers, told Syria Direct. 

Without any real services in Kafr Aweed, displaced resident Ayham Khattab, 33, does not plan to return yet. “Returning depends on basic services, like water and a sewage network, being available, and the rehabilitation of schools and health centers,” he told Syria Direct from his current residence, in northern Idlib’s Killi displacement camps. 

Khattab longs for his hometown, but for now the northern camps offer a more “suitable environment for my family and my children’s education,” he said. “Kafr Aweed still has no real signs of improvement in the living, education and medical situation.” 

“Where I live now, there are several hospitals and health centers. If I needed to see a doctor [in Kafr Aweed], the closest specialized health center would be in Ariha, 30 kilometers away,” he added. 

Elsewhere in northern Syria, locals are trying to address a lack of medical services themselves. In Tal Hadya, a town in the southern Aleppo countryside, work got underway to restore its medical center in mid-May, with donations from residents. 

Other local initiatives have focused on transporting displaced people from camps to their areas of origin. One brought residents back to the northern Hama city of Kafr Zita. Another brought all displaced residents of the Hama village of Treimsa back from their displacement camp in the Idlib countryside. Rather than focusing on services, these efforts aimed to lessen the financial burden of return.

‘No substitute for a government’

“No matter what we offer, we are no substitute for a government capable of funding huge projects,” Hussam al-Nahhas, who owns a remittances and exchange office and is one of the donors to the Maarat al-Numan Service Fund, said. At the same time, he acknowledged “the extent of pressure on the government, its many priorities and its budget deficit.” 

After 14 years of war and displacement, “we must all stand together to use our available capabilities to improve services and infrastructure,” al-Nahhas said—“poor and rich, healthy and infirm.”

Idlib Governor Muhammad Abdul Rahman said volunteer initiatives are important to respond to the complete destruction of service infrastructure and buildings, after “the   deposed regime left the state without capabilities and budgets.”

Idlib’s resources pale in comparison to what is needed, he said, from repairing schools and health centers to water facilities, roads and sewage networks. “The governorate is working with the available resources, which were previously under the Salvation Government, to help residents return,” he told Syria Direct. 

Faced with enormous need, “we, as the governorate, encourage these initiatives, support them and join hands with people to build a new Syria,” he said. “We help people return from the camps, providing our resources in partnership with those of the community.”

While the impact of civil initiatives is small compared to the scale of what is needed, what they have managed to accomplish is nevertheless significant. The Maarat al-Numan Service Fund has so far spent around $150,000 on service projects in the city, after receiving $230,000 in donations, Makhzoum said. The fund is managed by a five-member committee, elected by donors. 

Al-Nahhas, one of the fund’s contributors, sees such initiatives as links in a chain of support. While returnees individually might only be able to pay for repairing their own homes—or a single room, like Tannari—community initiatives can help them get back on their feet by providing services and repairing infrastructure, he said. 

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