Life of Syrian refugees is not going over roses. After being forced to flee after their cities or neighbourhoods were destroyed by either Assad’s army or equally ruthless rebel forces, they now may lose their homes, or what is left of it, due to a new law, known as “law article 10”. The law, passed in early April, requires all property owners to prove ownership of a house or land by presenting ownership deeds to local authorities. This needs to be done this month (by May 11th), otherwise the state can seize the property and sell it at auctions.

Room with a view…

Although there could be legitimate reasons to re-register property and land, given the total devastation of most of Syria (the law supposedly focuses on war-damaged areas only, but this seems not to be very distinctive in the Syrian context), the regime’s motives most likely are not very noble. Many Syrian refugees (more than 5 million) will not be able or willing, given security issues (which is why they left in the first place), to return to their home country to claim their property rights. Equally, for internally displaced people (about 6 million) it often is simply too dangerous to travel around. The law provides for a possibility to instruct a lawyer or family member on a claimant’s behalf, but the claimant still would be required to present the right documents, which probably is only possible by digging them up in Syria itself. Anyway, in many cases there are no formal property deeds as in this part of the world transfer of ownership quite often is verbally agreed and a family matter (e.g. inherited).

We suspect that the real aim of the law is to ensure that unwanted civilians (mostly Sunnis) are driven from the country or discouraged to return. The absurdly short timeframe to proof ownership is testament to that. From Assad’s perspective, most refugees have been disloyal to his regime so he wants to keep these “traitors” out of the country indefinitely. The law also offers an opportunity to erase slums and other informal settlements around the bigger cities of the country, where rebels have recruited most of their fighters. Economics, of course, also plays a role. Auctions offer a good opportunity for Assad’s business friends and other loyalists to buy property on the cheap to enrich themselves.

It is not entirely uncommon in the Middle East and elsewhere that a state seizes private property (for example, after an earthquake). The law resembles the one Israel adopted in 1950 (the so-called absentees law) to seize homes and land from Palestinians that were driven from their property. Indeed, Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements policy, silently put up with by the West, is kind of similar.

Both the EU and U.S. do not have much leverage on Assad’s regime as they decided to keep out of the conflict whereas influencing policy through Assad’s allies, Iran and Russia, has become a near impossibility given the, in our view, aggressive and rather unreasonable stance of the U.S. White House against those two countries. Many refugees live in Syria’s neighbouring countries, where they are not very welcome and create problem of their own (especially in Jordan and Lebanon) given the sheer number of people involved. So, be prepared for more refugees flowing into Europe over the summer (and a bungled response by the EU bureaucracy). You can’t blame them, they now don’t even have a place called home anymore…