6 min read

With Assad’s fall, Douma comes back to life

With the Assad regime gone, Douma is coming back to life. Markets are bustling in the East Ghouta city, as construction workers repair damaged buildings and displaced residents return to visit or settle down. 


17 January 2025

DOUMA — Douma, in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, came back to life when the Assad regime fell six weeks ago. Today, the city’s markets are bustling, construction workers are busy repairing damaged buildings as never before and displaced residents are returning to visit or settle down. 

“People’s features changed, life returned to the streets of East Ghouta,” Reem al-Deiri, 35, a Douma resident who works at Syria’s Ministry of Electricity, told Syria Direct. Young men in particular are more active, no longer afraid of “the regime’s practices against them,” she said.

Syrians feel “love and connection to this country, which now belongs to everyone,” al-Deiri said. “Everyone can help change it, if only in some small way.” 

Ziyad al-Khair, 47, a merchant from Douma, still finds himself feeling the events of recent weeks were “just a dream.” Many like him are still processing the seismic changes in their country. “After living in a prison, in every sense of the word, suddenly they were all released,” he told Syria Direct

The speed with which nearly 50 years of the Assad family’s rule of Syria came to an end “gave back the hope for a better future after years of disappointment,” al-Khair said. The impacts of this shift are not only psychological, but felt in the local economy, cost of living and security. “People’s smiles changed—they became sincere,” he added. “We used to be afraid of each other.” 

“When I went out the day the regime fell, everyone was smiling in a way I had never seen before,” al-Deiri echoed. “I came across [some] people in the street for the first time,” she added, as displaced people returned and residents emerged from hiding, no longer afraid of being detained at the ousted regime’s checkpoints. 

Before the Syrian revolution began in 2011, 585,000 people lived in Douma. Over years of siege that followed, the population fell to just 150,000 by the time the regime retook the city in 2018, Khaled al-Mukbatal, head of the Douma City Council, told Syria Direct. The city’s current population is around 450,000, he estimated, with “a notable increase” since the regime fell and displaced people began to return. 

The caretaker government, which began its work on December 10, has announced a number of measures aimed at improving living conditions for Syrians, including raising public sector salaries by 400 percent. The pay hike was supposed to take effect in January, but since “the number of workers registered in public agencies is much higher than the actual number,” it has been postponed until February, Minister of Finance Muhammad Abazid announced. Currently, Syrian public sector workers like al-Deiri earn an average of $25 a month. 

While concrete moves to improve living conditions for government workers are still only promises, the sense that a positive change is coming has already helped stimulate the local economy since the first hours after Assad fell, Douma residents said. 

Economic revival

“There is a big improvement in living conditions,” al-Khair said. “There are some fruits, like bananas, that were once the preserve of a small number of people and only sold at some shops. Before the regime fell, a kilogram cost 35,000 Syrian pounds [around $2.30]. Today, you see them on roadside stands, and you can buy three or four kilograms for the same price,” he added. 

A grocery store in Douma, a city in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, 9/1/2025 (Hamza Hijazi/Syria Direct)

A grocery store in Douma, a city in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, 9/1/2025 (Hamza Hijazi/Syria Direct)

Economic promises by the caretaker government, notably, “haven’t come with economic burdens like under Assad,” al-Khair said. In recent years, ousted President Bashar al-Assad issued several decrees raising public sector salaries, but “they were a bad omen,” he added. “We used to say, may God spare us from these raises, because they meant prices would go up more than salaries.” 

In the past, when salaries increased “from SYP 100,000 to 200,000, expenses would rise by between SYP 200,000 and SYP 1 million,” he said sarcastically. With the latest promised increase, “we notice just the opposite. Prices in the market fell and the value of the pound improved.” 

Days before Assad fell on December 8, 2024, the unofficial exchange rate of the Syrian pound fell against the dollar to SYP 16,000. Today, it stands at around SYP 11,400.  

While there is a general mood that “Assad’s fall will positively impact Syria’s economic situation, whether in terms of improved financial returns and purchasing power or the new government’s economic policy,” it is too soon to say that “living conditions have truly improved, especially for government employees,” al-Deiri said. 

Rebuilding

“Wherever you walk around Douma today, you find construction workers repairing demolished buildings, and others moving cinder blocks to construction sites,” al-Khair said. “It is something Ghouta has not seen” since the Assad regime took control of the bombed and besieged area in 2018, he added. 

A construction worker carries cinder blocks at a building site in Douma, a city in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, 8/1/2025 (Hamza Hijazi/Syria Direct)

A construction worker carries cinder blocks at a building site in Douma, a city in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, 8/1/2025 (Hamza Hijazi/Syria Direct)

Over the past six years, East Ghouta’s cities and towns saw little reconstruction, compared to the massive destruction they suffered from late 2012 to 2018. “The regime severely restricted reconstruction efforts in Ghouta,” Khaled al-Nisreen, who owns a contracting company in Douma, explained.

The East Ghouta suburbs contain 34,136 damaged or destroyed buildings, according to a 2019 assessment by the United Nations Institute for Research and Training (UNITAR). Of these, 9,353 are completely destroyed, 13,661 severely damaged and 11,122 partially damaged. 

After the regime fell, “the situation changed, and [Douma] saw an unprecedented opening of reconstruction and rebuilding,” al-Nisreen said. Before, “regime checkpoints would demand money to allow construction materials, such as cement, gravel and sand, into Douma.”

Restoration efforts were “complicated” in recent years, requiring “security and engineering approval from the municipality, while building materials were monopolized and cement couldn’t be bought without connections,” al-Khair added. “Syrians dealt in the deteriorating local currency, while building materials were priced in dollars,” causing “prices to fluctuate on a daily basis.” 

Before Assad fell, one ton of iron cost SYP 14 million (around $1,000), while it currently costs SYP 800 million ($725). The same amount of cement currently costs SYP 1.7 million ($154), down from SYP 2.4 million ($165). “The price continues to fall,” contractor al-Nisreen said. New types of cement are also now available: Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese. 

Construction workers work in Douma, a city in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, 8/1/2025 (Hamza Hijazi/Syria Direct)

Construction workers work in Douma, a city in the East Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, 8/1/2025 (Hamza Hijazi/Syria Direct)

Security crackdowns on young men, who make up the majority of construction workers, also impacted the sector when Assad was in power, al-Nisreen said. At the time, he worked on a project repairing four kilometers of sidewalk, but constantly dealt with “workers being pursued by security patrols or stopped at checkpoints,” he added. 

As the work of rebuilding gets underway, local authorities face the challenge of monitoring new construction projects. Douma’s city council provides “the licenses needed to restore demolished buildings and tracks construction,” council head al-Muktabal said. “The procedures flipped 180 degrees compared to what they were” under Assad, with permits issued so long as “the construction is organized and meets the conditions,” he added. 

Those who want to begin repairs “submit an application to the municipality, and we study it with the Engineers Association to verify whether the building is fit for restoration or not,” al-Muktabal added. If not, “we reject the request because the building has to be rebuilt under a new permit.” 

The council will work with residents who wish to restore their destroyed buildings, al-Muktabal emphasized, so long as they adhere to regulations and professional standards. He warned of “random construction” given the “absence of a police station to monitor violations.” In such cases, the municipality can only issue an “internal violation report,” he said. 

Al-Deiri is happy to see reconstruction begin and life return to her city. Still, she worries about the sudden surge in activity leading to “many things being exploited in an uncontrolled way, including a rise in random and unregulated construction.” 

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

Share this article