Aleppo: Questions to be asked

Aleppo proves to be at the centre of this conflict. Much like Warsaw, it is a symbol for the country and having been vital to Syrian culture for thousands of years, the rebuilding of its heritage could revitalise the country. However, to rebuild a world heritage site is not a simple task, even to begin with. As Seth Kaplan mentioned back in 2013, and is, according to recent articles still the most probable case, the war is likely to end in a form of stalemate, with the city fragmented between the Government, Rebel, Kurdish and, possibly, other forces (Kaplan, 2013). The pragmatic and simple conclusion to the inevitable tensions of this stalemate would see a nation fragmented with large buffer zones running through the city. The more preferable option is rebuilding the city in such a way that it draws the two, maybe more, sides together. In doing so, those working on the future of Aleppo will have innumerous considerations –some of which are discussed in this chapter- that will inevitably decide who returns to the city and whether Aleppo can recapture its former glory.

WHERE DO THE CURRENT DIVISIONS LIE?

Prior to the current conflict there existed divisions within the city of Aleppo. Unusually for a Syrian city, however, this was not the traditional Sunni/Shia divide born of religious belief, but one of class and clan lines.5 This has now, inevitably, evolved with the introduction of other forces into the city, most notably ISIS, which has seen further divides along religious lines. Class divisions, however, have been forcibly emphasised by the Regime as eyewitnesses state that “Syrian military has taken positions in the high-rent districts, where rebel fighters are blamed for bringing the violence from the countryside into the city” (Resneck, 2012). The wealthy support of government forces is rooted in the stability of the Regime, compared to the chaos of the Rebels and the Free Syrian Army, documented in Littles’ ‘Syrian Notebooks’.

However, at a first glance, class based divisions appear easier to reconcile than religious ones. The regime, itself, has been focusing its destructive efforts on the infrastructure of Eastern Aleppo in ‘order to advance the case that life is better in government-controlled parts of the country.’ (Mackinnon, 2015). How then, as with Mostar, do international organisations

26 provide more funding for the worse hit Eastern Aleppo, controlled by the Rebels, without seeming to neglect the Western communities? This issue was seemingly ignored in Mostar with UNESCO’s policy of unbiased support remaining strong. However, ignorance suggest an acceptance of these class divisions as an inevitable aspect of urban life, and if so, focus should be given on the repairing the relationship between these parties. How to do this on an urban scale is a trickier question, but one that needs an answer prior to drafting any plans.

IS THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CITY THE BEST OPTION?

Innumerous articles and reports produced over the past few years talk about the reconstruction of Aleppo, and with over half the city’s heritage either badly damaged or destroyed it’s easy to see how such action is deemed so important. (Connolly & Bloch, 2015) After all, the reconstruction of Warsaw proved a monument of defiance for the country, the reappearance of the historic old town allowed the memories of its residents, although disjointed, to interact again with the built environment. Of course, it’s important to remember that the Varsovian community, although weakened by the uprooting of millions of people and the destruction of traditional patterns of life (Kersten, 1991), had seen the end of the conflict, something unlikely to happen anytime soon in Aleppo.

Monuments can be divisive as well as unifying, and the continuing presence of these tensions leaves little room to misjudge these relationships. Indeed, surveys conducted by the Aleppo Project over the past year and a half demonstrate that a significant number do not wish to see the re-emergence of any regime related buildings (The Aleppo Project, 2015). These results depict, a small proportion of the population with the majority of respondents registering as Sunni Muslims. Nevertheless it demonstrates the contested state in which such large reconstruction projects lie.

The other issue is the proximity of the conflict to the ending of the 1999 works by the Aga Kahn Trust for Culture, which finished in 2007, on restoring the citadel and large parts of the city (Aga Kahn Trust For Culture, 2008). Can the results of this intense work justify the further expense of a predicted ‘$100 billion’ (Cambanis, 2015) to complete the exact same task? Further to this, Mackic’s point rings about Mostar rings relevant that “You should never rebuild the way it was”, echoing the citizens of Beirut’s point that “the war changes us. You should show that in rebuilding.”

Figure 16: Allepians opinions on what the priorities for rebuilding should be. (2016)

Figure 17: Allepians opinions on who should be involved in rebuilding Aleppo. (2016)

“Aleppians should be the ones in charge of this process, as they are the ones who created the city in the first place. This would also create job opportunities for the local youth.” (Marsi, 2015)

Ultimately, whoever has more control over the city when the fighting subsides, controls its future. (Cook, 2015) However, both the case studies and the survey demonstrate the importance of community involvement in rebuilding Aleppo.(Fig.17) The case of Mostar analyses the influence that international investors can have over local officials in directing investment towards certain causes. This may suggests issues with both top-down planning procedures, and the general motives of international organisations within such a process. For example, the further reconstruction of the citadel, at the heart of Aleppo, could be seen by many organisations, both national and international, as a high priority project, receiving funding before the city sees its infrastructure and homes rebuilt. At this point in particular, the project becomes a source of resentment for the millions blighted by the conflict. The monument has become divisive rather than unifying.

It is also the worry of more than two-thirds of those interviewed, including 85% of those in lower economic classes, that upon returning to the city they will not be able to reclaim their homes despite still retaining ownership documents. This has led to an increasing number of Syrians selling “their property & assets to get the funds they need to make the journey to Europe” (BBC, 2015). The issue, for UNESCO at least, in trying to piece together a recovery plan becomes who is buying these properties. Reports from 2012 also noted that militia across Syria, were “raiding houses, ransacking and then fraudulently selling or leasing them” (Hassan, 2012) leading to both displaced residents and an uncontrolled housing market. Although those in power when the conflict subsides, control the city, its future somewhat lies in who owns it’s property, defining both who returns and what they return to. (Fig.19)

Figure 18: Tilel Street, Aleppo, prior to the start of the conflict. An area of boutique shopping, and high density residential a few streets from the citadel. (2009)

Figure 19: Tilel Street, Aleppo, during the conflict, with many of the residents fleeing the area and the shops boarded up or abandoned. (2012)

This writing has currently solely critiqued the notion that ‘Culture must wait’, but the other extreme that ‘Culture has priority’ is equally flawed. Culture is inevitably tied in with the everyday environment. You cannot appreciate the Architecture, the designed monument of a city without its architecture, the everyday built environment of the people. Nevertheless, as Mostar and, to some extent, Beirut demonstrate, the national and international organisations that participate with the local community, far too often channel funding into the big projects. Whether the rebuilding of ‘Stari Most’ in Mostar was a public relations stunt, or whether there existed a genuine belief that it could help bridge the divided community, is still an unanswered question, and whilst the project kick-started the tourism industry within the region, it certainly did not help to solve any

tensions.

Projects have to be built in parallel to each other. Homes cannot function without the infrastructure to make them liveable, electricity, water etc. And at the same time, families cannot return to these homes when there are no schools for their children or no jobs to provide income. But, most importantly, why would families want to return if everything that made their city home no longer existed. Aleppo was a beautiful city, and the draw of family and friends can only do so much in bringing people back to the city (The Aleppo Project, 2015). It has to speak for itself, the role of the local mosques, churches and community centres have proven in Mostar to be useful for, at least part of, the community, and without the history and the memories of the urban place, returning residents have little to connect to, as seen in Beirut.

WHAT AIM SHOULD THE REBUILDING HAVE CONSIDERING THE POLITICAL OUTCOME OF THE NATION?

The ultimate aim of any work in Aleppo should be to ease the tensions still residing between the conflicting sides. However, in inter-state conflicts the lack of an offending party in the post conflict period made the unanimous decision to reconstruct Warsaw much easier compared to intra-state conflicts, where two or more opposing communities are asked to live beside each other again. Thus, while peace, however unlikely, is the ultimate aim, in the early stages such an unachievable target can deplete the resources of aid organisations (Bevan, 2006). As these case studies demonstrate, peace is rarely achieved through the construction or reconstruction of a monument or single motif. In Mostar it took the privately funded Pavarotti Music Centre, rejuvenating the old high-school, rather than the Stari Most Bridge, to even begin to rekindle a connection between the opposing sides. (Nickalls, 1997) This is not to say that the bridge hasn’t revived the tourism industry, but that these high publicity, low impact projects should not be the first thought of potential funders. Whatever the outcome, people will still be displaced, and the current focus should be to consider what the priorities are for the demographic that will return to the city first. Designing and building for the vulnerable will create an Aleppo far different than what it

was.

However, primarily, the aim of those looking in from the outside should be to be involved, as Assad ‘reportedly told a Jordanian delegation visiting Damascus that he would not permit investors and companies hailing from the West or the Persian Gulf to have any role in reviving his country’s economy’. (Heffez & Raydan, 2014). This is especially pertinent as claims arise that he is deliberately causing ‘further damage to the city in order to maximise the redevelopment potential of the plots of land which will no longer be identifiable by their owners’ (Bloch, 2015). This, to some extent, is outside the remit of international agencies but whilst local and national politics are out of bounds, the lives of those on the ground can be transformed by carefully planned and hard fought for projects that in many cases may need to be internationally led in order to be constructed.

32 HOW CAN THE CITY BE BUILT IN ORDER TO HELP STIFLE ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS TENSIONS?

“What emerged is the adamant opposition to the reconstruction of some buildings. Aleppians know what they don’t want, before knowing what they want”

Al-Hakam Shaar, Aleppian Researcher, CCNR (Marsi, 2015)

Whilst there has been tensions between the Shia and Sunni populations of the city ever since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1971, this conflict saw these religious sects falling on both sides of the conflict. This is between the people and the government, a class war which requires an awareness of a whole other typology of building, including that of the military and regime, to be avoided in order to ease tensions in the region. The survey responses also rejected the rebuilding of the Municipality palace and other structures commissioned by the Ba’ath party, which were closely connected to Hafez al Assad, and the election of his son Bashar. (The Aleppo Project, 2015)

There is a decision to be made as to whether the projects and investments are geographically evenly distributed in order to avoid further tensions among the inhabitants or that East Aleppo -underdeveloped and neglected even before the war– receives greater attention than the western side. According to Templer and Mostegel, reconnecting these sides is going to be one of the most important goals of reconstruction. (Templer, 2015)

Syria’s national recovery will depend in large part on whether its industrial powerhouse Aleppo can bounce back. (Cambanis, 2015)

The next priority after peace is self-sufficiency. (M.K.Bacchus, 1987) Up until the conflict, Aleppo was one of the main tourist attractions in Syria, with the continuation of vast amounts of the commerce that had been making the city famous for centuries. In fact, the ‘Aleppian traders plied their wares in Turkey, Iraq, the Levant, and all the way south to the Arabian peninsula’, with the city’s workshops exporting ‘millions of dollars’ worth of textiles and other goods every week.

By 2013, however, the city’s water and power supply were under the control of ISIS, ‘with [the] vestiges of basic services’ currently remaining in Regime controlled areas whilst the Rebel-held territories are mostly depopulated. Over the past five years, frontiers and boundaries have changed leaving ‘river[s] of rubble’ running through the city.’ And whilst Figure 16 demonstrates the desires of the refugees to rebuild hospitals, housing and schools, it shows a significant lack of other essential infrastructure. It is hard to imagine that many will remain long in a city with little job prospects and whilst it may not be in the remit of ‘reconstruction’, the industry of the city is important to its heritage and, perhaps, vital in returning the economy and even the culture to some remnant of what existed previously. Al-Hakam Shaar perfectly describes the achievable expectations for Aleppo;

‘The city would have changed even without the war in the span of five years, so we cannot expect it to be exactly the same. What we want, though, is for it to give off the same feeling.” (Marsi, 2015).

Shaar talks of recreating the Aleppian Souq, whose reconstruction could have a direct comparison to that of Beirut, which, for many residents, was certainly not successful, confirmed by Makarem’s comment on ‘the emptiness and soullessness of the area’ (Makarem, 2013)