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Assad's New Housing Law Is a Veiled Attempt to Displace Tens of Thousands of Syrians
(Independent - UK) Robert Fisk - Even before it's won back all of Syria, the Assad regime is doing a little redrawing. Not of its national frontiers. But within its cities. For the new Law No 10 calls for what looks like mass property expulsion in those areas of the country which rebelled against the Syrian government after 2011. Even inside their borders, many Syrians claim that it will strip tens of thousands of citizens of their homes - especially in those pulverized districts of the country's big cities. Destroyed areas of Syria are to be reorganized, developed, and reconstructed. To prove your claim to property - damaged or destroyed - you must appear in person with your real estate documents within 30 days. Clearly, nobody outside Syria who opposes the government can do this - nor can those tens of thousands who live outside Syria's frontiers to evade the military draft who, in theory and probably in practice, face arrest warrants if they go home. Assad's opponents say the regime is trying to dispossess its largely Sunni Muslim opponents, rebuild the devastated areas in which they lived and then sell them off at vast profit. This, they say, is a form of sectarian ethnic cleansing since the government will inevitably allow its Shia Muslim allies, including the Alawite minority, to live in the newly reconstructed areas.