Years before the fall of his regime in December, Syria's dictator Bashar Al Assad and his wife Asma embarked on victory tours of former rebel areas that had been captured by his forces.
None was as brazen as the visit in 2018 to the ruins of Jobar, a town on the edge of Damascus that was the scene of some of the worst destruction. During four years of siege by Assad's forces, almost every building in the now-abandoned town was struck by artillery, barrel bombs from helicopters, and Russian warplanes.
Weeks after Jobar surrendered, the regime brought in art students to carve sculptures into the walls of a tunnel that was dug by rebel defenders. The art was aimed at glorifying the same troops who levelled a city once home to 300,000 people.
In footage broadcast on state television, the couple beamed with smiles inside the tunnel. They praised the students for their creations, which they said symbolised “martyrdom and peace”.
“Assad not only erased Jobar, he celebrated it,” says Haitham Al Bakheet, a former construction worker who was made to wash the bodies of the dead during the siege. He was later taken, along with the last rebel fighters and civilians, to the northern governorate of Idlib under a surrender agreement.
The devastation in Jobar is emblematic of the magnitude of reconstruction needed in Syria and the obstacles to rebuilding, which go beyond the sheer scale of the task, including the need for international consensus on major investments.
Syria’s new Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) rulers lack funds, and the country is short of raw materials and energy. The exchange rate is volatile, and there is a shortage of Syrian pound liquidity, which hinders business activity.
Many of the country’s engineers and other skilled workers have left. The education system, long riddled with corruption and patronage, is in tatters, in kind with other public services. One in three houses was destroyed or damaged during the civil war, a UN report said.
For five decades under Assad family rule, arbitrariness was a hallmark of the legal system, contributing to an opaque real estate market with ill-defined property rights. This makes deciding who owned what difficult, especially in areas where dwellings and shops no longer exist, either because they were bombed or bulldozed to make way for new projects linked to the former ruling elite.
Last month, Mr Al Bakheet returned from Idlib, and is now living with relatives near Damascus. Like other people originally from Jobar, who are known as Al Jawabras, he visits the town regularly to look at the ruins. Shepherds tend to their sheep in the area, with the animals grazing on the undergrowth between abandoned buildings. Jobar is administratively separate from Damascus but for all practical purposes part of the capital, sitting on its eastern edge.
Mr Al Bakheet used to wash the bodies in a hospital, but the building was destroyed and the process was moved into an ancient synagogue, abandoned since Hafez Al Assad, father of Bashar and his predecessor as the country's dictator, allowed Syria’s Jews to leave the country in the 1990s. “The synagogue took a direct hit so we stopped the washing altogether,” he said.
In the Jobar tunnel, one sculpture depicts a soldier wearing a helmet and feeding a child, while another carries balloons, and a third splits stone. In reality, the security apparatus under the Assad family was often used to repress Syrians, and underpinned a system of cronyism and corruption. It was dissolved after HTS led the overthrow of Mr Al Assad on December 8.
New president Ahmad Al Shara has promised to build a new state and put Syria on the road to recovery. He was formerly a member of Al Qaeda, before breaking with the extremists and forming HTS. His group remains under UN, US and European sanctions.
Some sanctions imposed in the Assad era have been eased since Mr Al Shara took power. New aid pledges have been made, but nowhere close to the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to finance reconstruction and rebuild power generation, telecoms, health care and education.
A senior Western diplomat said Europe, in contrast to the US, appears more willing to extend funding to post-Assad Syria. But Mr Al Shara would still need to prove he can stay away from any confrontation with Israel and sideline the more extreme elements among his supporters to qualify for aid.
"If he does these things, the US might not be averse to arrangements that would also benefit it commercially," the diplomat said. Many Syrians are hoping the country will not relive its errors, and that Mr Al Shara will expand his current government, which is staffed by his proteges, and bring in more technically qualified personnel who would be more acceptable to donor countries.
His existing subordinates helped Mr Al Shara run Idlib while HTS was based there before it led an 11-day offensive that toppled the Assad regime. Now he is running a country in which the "economic wheels have stopped", and needs to move fast, said Samer Hamwi, a prominent Syrian financial technology executive who works in the Gulf.
“The government does not have money to even pay for the modest salaries," said Mr Hamwi, pointing to shortages of liquidity and deficiencies in the electronic payment system, which are also dragging on the private sector. "There are difficult structural issues that are affecting the psychological state of the people."
Mr Hamwi took part in a conference in Damascus last month that brought Syrians working in Silicon Valley together with IT specialists who remained in the country through the war.
"If things do not get moving soon there will be a popular backlash," he said. In Jobar and other parts of Damascus, signs of improvements are scant.
One day last month, a car with Lebanese licence plates stopped at a damaged flyover in Jobar. Its two occupants, who are brothers, surveyed the damaged houses. One of them identified himself as belonging to Mr Al Shara's HTS. His brother said he was a businessman who lived in Beirut interested in buying property.
He asked Mr Al Bakheet if he knew of any properties for sale and enquired about the owners of certain buildings. Mr Al Bakheet replied with a blank stare and they drove off. “If the profiteers take over, it means that we will never go back to Jobar,” Mr Al Bakheet said. The ownership of most properties was clear, unlike the rest of the capital, he added.
In 2010, the year before a revolt against Mr Al Assad that sparked Syria's civil war, an estimated 50 per cent of urban dwellings in the country were "ashwaiyat", the Syrian term for illegal built. Cases of property expropriation without compensation have scared off investors.
Over the last several weeks, The National twice saw HTS fighters evict occupants in Damascus after people who said they were the rightful owners complained that former regime operatives had unjustly taken their homes.
One incident was in the central Muhafaza area and the other in the nearby Shaalan. In both cases there was no legal procedure or recourse. HTS personnel told the evicted people that an emir would call if there was an error.
An Arab banker who was recently in Damascus said a parallel HTS control system that appears to have been installed in every major government department was bad for business. He described a meeting with Syrian central bank officials about resuming his bank's operations in Damascus that was attended by a mysterious HTS operative called Abu Abdul Rahman.
“He didn't give his real name, but it was clear that he was running the show,” the banker said in Amman. He added that he later met another shadowy man at the bank who appeared to oversee financial settlements. "From his accent, he didn't even sound Syrian,” the banker said.
A senior manager at an energy and water multinational said that although the scope for projects in Syria was substantial, there is little interest at his company. He cited security risks, and the time needed to build reliable state institutions.
"Rebuilding in Syria will be taking the Lebanese route for now," he said, referring to the diffculties Beirut has had in attracting foreign investment. “Whoever can afford it will build their own house, install their own power-generation, and find a way to dispose of sewage. I cannot see large-scale projects in Syria soon.”
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MATCH INFO
Quarter-finals
Saturday (all times UAE)
England v Australia, 11.15am
New Zealand v Ireland, 2.15pm
Sunday
Wales v France, 11.15am
Japan v South Africa, 2.15pm
The bio
Date of Birth: April 25, 1993
Place of Birth: Dubai, UAE
Marital Status: Single
School: Al Sufouh in Jumeirah, Dubai
University: Emirates Airline National Cadet Programme and Hamdan University
Job Title: Pilot, First Officer
Number of hours flying in a Boeing 777: 1,200
Number of flights: Approximately 300
Hobbies: Exercising
Nicest destination: Milan, New Zealand, Seattle for shopping
Least nice destination: Kabul, but someone has to do it. It’s not scary but at least you can tick the box that you’ve been
Favourite place to visit: Dubai, there’s no place like home
The specs
Price, base / as tested Dh135,000
Engine 1.6L turbo
Gearbox Six speed automatic with manual and sports mode
Power 165hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque 240Nm @ 1,400rpm 0-100kph: 9.2 seconds
Top speed 420 kph (governed)
Fuel economy, combined 35.2L / 100km (est)
Superliminal%20
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The years Ramadan fell in May
The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins
Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Analysis
Maros Sefcovic is juggling multiple international trade agreement files, but his message was clear when he spoke to The National on Wednesday.
The EU-UAE bilateral trade deal will be finalised soon, he said. It is in everyone’s interests to do so. Both sides want to move quickly and are in alignment. He said the UAE is a very important partner for the EU. It’s full speed ahead - and with some lofty ambitions - on the road to a free trade agreement.
We also talked about US-EU tariffs. He answered that both sides need to talk more and more often, but he is prepared to defend Europe's position and said diplomacy should be a guiding principle through the current moment.
In-demand jobs and monthly salaries
- Technology expert in robotics and automation: Dh20,000 to Dh40,000
- Energy engineer: Dh25,000 to Dh30,000
- Production engineer: Dh30,000 to Dh40,000
- Data-driven supply chain management professional: Dh30,000 to Dh50,000
- HR leader: Dh40,000 to Dh60,000
- Engineering leader: Dh30,000 to Dh55,000
- Project manager: Dh55,000 to Dh65,000
- Senior reservoir engineer: Dh40,000 to Dh55,000
- Senior drilling engineer: Dh38,000 to Dh46,000
- Senior process engineer: Dh28,000 to Dh38,000
- Senior maintenance engineer: Dh22,000 to Dh34,000
- Field engineer: Dh6,500 to Dh7,500
- Field supervisor: Dh9,000 to Dh12,000
- Field operator: Dh5,000 to Dh7,000
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info-box
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Happy Tenant
Started: January 2019
Co-founders: Joe Moufarrej and Umar Rana
Based: Dubai
Sector: Technology, real-estate
Initial investment: Dh2.5 million
Investors: Self-funded
Total customers: 4,000
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1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
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MATCH INFO
Bayern Munich 2 Borussia Monchengladbach 1
Bayern: Zirkzee (26'), Goretzka (86')
Gladbach: Pavard (37' og)
Man of the Match: Breel Embolo (Borussia Monchengladbach)
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Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
FFP EXPLAINED
What is Financial Fair Play?
Introduced in 2011 by Uefa, European football’s governing body, it demands that clubs live within their means. Chiefly, spend within their income and not make substantial losses.
What the rules dictate?
The second phase of its implementation limits losses to €30 million (Dh136m) over three seasons. Extra expenditure is permitted for investment in sustainable areas (youth academies, stadium development, etc). Money provided by owners is not viewed as income. Revenue from “related parties” to those owners is assessed by Uefa's “financial control body” to be sure it is a fair value, or in line with market prices.
What are the penalties?
There are a number of punishments, including fines, a loss of prize money or having to reduce squad size for European competition – as happened to PSG in 2014. There is even the threat of a competition ban, which could in theory lead to PSG’s suspension from the Uefa Champions League.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Mamo Year it started: 2019 Founders: Imad Gharazeddine, Asim Janjua Based: Dubai, UAE Number of employees: 28 Sector: Financial services Investment: $9.5m Funding stage: Pre-Series A Investors: Global Ventures, GFC, 4DX Ventures, AlRajhi Partners, Olive Tree Capital, and prominent Silicon Valley investors. LILO & STITCH
Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Rating: 4.5/5
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Six large-scale objects on show
- Concrete wall and windows from the now demolished Robin Hood Gardens housing estate in Poplar
- The 17th Century Agra Colonnade, from the bathhouse of the fort of Agra in India
- A stagecloth for The Ballet Russes that is 10m high – the largest Picasso in the world
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1930s Kaufmann Office
- A full-scale Frankfurt Kitchen designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which transformed kitchen design in the 20th century
- Torrijos Palace dome
THE BIO: Martin Van Almsick
Hometown: Cologne, Germany
Family: Wife Hanan Ahmed and their three children, Marrah (23), Tibijan (19), Amon (13)
Favourite dessert: Umm Ali with dark camel milk chocolate flakes
Favourite hobby: Football
Breakfast routine: a tall glass of camel milk
The biog
Favourite films: Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia
Favourite books: Start with Why by Simon Sinek and Good to be Great by Jim Collins
Favourite dish: Grilled fish
Inspiration: Sheikh Zayed's visionary leadership taught me to embrace new challenges.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
If you go
The flights
There are direct flights from Dubai to Sofia with FlyDubai (www.flydubai.com) and Wizz Air (www.wizzair.com), from Dh1,164 and Dh822 return including taxes, respectively.
The trip
Plovdiv is 150km from Sofia, with an hourly bus service taking around 2 hours and costing $16 (Dh58). The Rhodopes can be reached from Sofia in between 2-4hours.
The trip was organised by Bulguides (www.bulguides.com), which organises guided trips throughout Bulgaria. Guiding, accommodation, food and transfers from Plovdiv to the mountains and back costs around 170 USD for a four-day, three-night trip.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
RESULTS
Women:
55kg brown-black belt: Amal Amjahid (BEL) bt Amanda Monteiro (BRA) via choke
62kg brown-black belt: Bianca Basilio (BRA) bt Ffion Davies (GBR) via referee’s decision (0-0, 2-2 adv)
70kg brown-black belt: Ana Carolina Vieira (BRA) bt Jessica Swanson (USA), 9-0
90kg brown-black belt: Angelica Galvao (USA) bt Marta Szarecka (POL) 8-2
Men:
62kg black belt: Joao Miyao (BRA) bt Wan Ki-chae (KOR), 7-2
69kg black belt: Paulo Miyao (BRA) bt Gianni Grippo (USA), 2-2 (1-0 adv)
77kg black belt: Espen Mathiesen (NOR) bt Jake Mackenzie (CAN)
85kg black belt: Isaque Braz (BRA) bt Faisal Al Ketbi (UAE), 2-0
94kg black belt: Felipe Pena (BRA) bt Adam Wardzinski (POL), 4-0
110kg black belt final: Erberth Santos (BRA) bt Lucio Rodrigues (GBR) via rear naked choke
The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)
On sale: Now
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The bio
Studied up to grade 12 in Vatanappally, a village in India’s southern Thrissur district
Was a middle distance state athletics champion in school
Enjoys driving to Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah with family
His dream is to continue working as a social worker and help people
Has seven diaries in which he has jotted down notes about his work and money he earned
Keeps the diaries in his car to remember his journey in the Emirates
How to register as a donor
1) Organ donors can register on the Hayat app, run by the Ministry of Health and Prevention
2) There are about 11,000 patients in the country in need of organ transplants
3) People must be over 21. Emiratis and residents can register.
4) The campaign uses the hashtag #donate_hope
SERIES SCHEDULE
First Test, Galle International Stadium
July 26-30
Second Test, Sinhalese Sports Club Ground
August 3-7
Third Test, Pallekele International Stadium
August 12-16
First ODI, Rangiri Dambulla Stadium
August 20
Second ODI, Pallekele International Stadium
August 24
Third ODI, Pallekele International Stadium
August 27
Fourth ODI, R Premadasa Stadium
August 31
Fifth ODI, R Premadasa Stadium
September 3
T20, R Premadasa Stadium
September 6
Sheer grandeur
The Owo building is 14 storeys high, seven of which are below ground, with the 30,000 square feet of amenities located subterranean, including a 16-seat private cinema, seven lounges, a gym, games room, treatment suites and bicycle storage.
A clear distinction between the residences and the Raffles hotel with the amenities operated separately.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
ON%20TRACK
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Day 1, Abu Dhabi Test: At a glance
Moment of the day Dimuth Karunaratne had batted with plenty of pluck, and no little skill, in getting to within seven runs of a first-day century. Then, while he ran what he thought was a comfortable single to mid-on, his batting partner Dinesh Chandimal opted to stay at home. The opener was run out by the length of the pitch.
Stat of the day - 1 One six was hit on Day 1. The boundary was only breached 18 times in total over the course of the 90 overs. When it did arrive, the lone six was a thing of beauty, as Niroshan Dickwella effortlessly clipped Mohammed Amir over the square-leg boundary.
The verdict Three wickets down at lunch, on a featherbed wicket having won the toss, and Sri Lanka’s fragile confidence must have been waning. Then Karunaratne and Chandimal's alliance of precisely 100 gave them a foothold in the match. Dickwella’s free-spirited strokeplay meant the Sri Lankans were handily placed at 227 for four at the close.
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Director: Laxman Utekar
Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
Rating: 1/5
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
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