While the human
and financial means were limited, civilian institutions have nevertheless
emerged in a few months in the zones conquered by the insurrection movement in
Northern Syria. This experience of reconstructing an administrative system
through the bottom-up has enabled to restart the public service system and
constitutes the basis for an alternative to the Damascus regime. The management
of Eastern Aleppo by the armed opposition thus constitutes both a strategic and
a political challenge.
The areas controlled by the insurgency in the country’s second
city account for probably – the figure is uncertain – over a million
inhabitants, and their management represents a test for the sustainability of
the opposition in the long run. Despite daily bombings and limited external aid
($400 000 since its creation in March, to which can be added one-off aid
donations which generally add up to a few tens of thousands of dollars),
Aleppo’s new municipality has managed to reestablish the vital public services.
City agents pick up the trash, electricity and water are available several
hours a day. Shops, schools and hospitals have reopened. The police force is
progressively re-forming throughout the city, though it still numbers only a
few hundreds men. In the short term, the city’s access to food seems more or
less secure, and a limited return of refugees from Turkey could even be
observed this summer.
Yet, this nascent administration lacks the essential resources
and qualified personnel required by a city of this size. Indeed, while it
is de facto providing
for most of the city’s public services, the municipality is regularly
confronted to competition with certain armed groups attempting to create
alternative authorities, and is now working under the threat of the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL – ad-dawla al-islâmîyya fî-l-‘irâq
wa-sh-shâm), affiliated with Al Qaeda.
The two-fold process of administrative reconstruction
The development of an autonomous administration began with
seizing of the Eastern part of the city after the departure of the regime
forces in August 2012. The civilian activists that had participated in the
organization of daily protests started then to take part in the city’s
management. Already in 2011, numerous informal networks of solidarity had
formed to support the peaceful protests. These groups, while lacking clear
structure, tried to coordinate the demonstrations and to provide some services
forbidden by the repression, such as medical care. Also, while fighting erupted
in other cities, especially in Homs or Hama, some of these networks took charge
of, fed and housed the displaced refugees in Aleppo. However the efficiency of
these first initiatives was limited by the violence of the security forces
which were arresting activists and forcing them to go underground.
With the fall of Eastern Aleppo, these local initiatives had to
face a particularly precarious context. Part of the population fled the combats,
but a number of inhabitants stayed or returned several weeks later once their
neighborhoods were liberated. The city’s access to water and electricity had
been cut by the fighting, while the schools and hospitals – systematically
targeted by the regime’s bombings – were forced to close. Winter 2012-2013 was
particularly harsh for the city’s inhabitants who lacked food and heating. The
absence of running water as well as the accumulation of trash, explain the
frequency of skin diseases and infections to which children are particularly
vulnerable. At this time, the activist networks were the only groups available
to coordinate aid and try to maintain minimal public services. In each neighborhood,
a structure, sometimes two or three, under the title of neighborhood council or
local council (majlis al-hay or majlis mahâli), emerged from the initiative of
local activists.
Side by side with this bottom-up reconstruction, the Syrian
National Coalition (al-itilâf al-watanî as-sûrî) regrouping the different components
of the Syrian opposition, was trying to rebuild a civil coordination structure
at the governorate and municipalities level. In particular, a Governorate
Revolutionary Transitory Council (al-majlis an-intiqâlî ath-thawrî
lil-muhâfaza) was charged with organizing an administration at the governorate
and city levels. Its headquarters, based in the industrial neighborhood of
Sheikh Najjar, became an administrative centre around which other institutions,
such as the Military Council of Aleppo, latched on. The latter coordinates the
different armed groups in the governorate, the new civilian police force, as
well as a radio and a television channel. However, during the winter 2013, the
Transition Council met with strong resistance by the Local Councils, which were
questioning its legitimacy, thus reflecting greater tensions at the heart of
the opposition between the activists inside and outside of Syria.
In March 2013, the integration of the two processes – the
bottom-up reconstruction of local institutions and the attempt to coordinate
them from the top-down – led to the organization of elections in the city of
Gaziantep in Turkey. Taking inspiration from the experience of the neighboring
province of Idlib, consensual personalities were charged by the Coalition to
select hundreds of delegates in the parts of the governorate controlled by the
insurrection. This electoral body was then assembled from March 1 to March 5
2013, and elected the Governorate Council (majlis al-muhâfaza) and the
Municipal Council (majlis al-madîna). Mohammed Yaha Nana, a former public
servant of the city, and Ahmed Azuz, a first hour activist, were elected
respectively Governor of the province and Mayor of the city. Each one leads a
team of over a hundred workers, selected both for their professional abilities
and for their roles in activist groups. Since the spring of 2013, this effort
to form a hierarchical and centralized administration has been pursued through
the progressive holding of local elections in the 65 neighborhoods controlled
by the insurrection.
The reconstruction of this administrative apparatus results in
the rise of individuals from the middle classes, rather young men from these
residential neighborhoods of the periphery (Salaheddin, Sakhur, Hanano).
Several women from the same background have also accessed functions that they
would never have been entitled to considering their social origin: hospital
coordinator, district mayor, members of the Education Department. As a result
of their early engagement in the opposition and their precious technical
abilities (degrees, experience in administrations) – in a context of exile of
the more educated part of the population – these men and women have become the
engine of the institutionalization process taking place in the territories
controlled by the insurgency, with Aleppo representing the most advanced
example. As a result of their social background, the members of the Aleppo
municipality are rather close to a part of the Free Syrian Army brigades, also
composed of urban middle class. The similarity of trajectories between those
two groups in the Syrian revolution explains their proximity in daily
sociability and the presence of city employees in combating units outside of
working hours. A certain gap nevertheless exists with the insurrection brigades
who hold members from the rural areas and which are accused of lacking
discipline and of imposing conservative social norms.
This social gap is more obvious when it comes to Syrian
activists acting from the outside, notably in Turkey or Europe. The latter
often belong to richer families, or even to these big families that dominated
Aleppo’s social life, as in the other Syrian cities. Their social networks have
enabled them to leave the country more easily, with means such as the ownership
of a Syrian passport, a rarity that the Mayor of the rebel part of Aleppo does
not possess. Also, degrees and good abilities for Western languages have
enabled these Syrians already connected to the Western world to integrate the
institutions of the Syrian National Coalition and numerous Western governmental
and non-governmental organizations. These external activists often demonstrate
of a certain social disdain for the members of the Governorate and Municipal
Councils, accusing them of incompetence and conservatism. Definitively, a large
gap has appeared between those on the inside, who benefit from the social
change to occupy positions of authority, and those on the outside, who scarcely
interact with institutions held by activists with whom they share little from a
social perspective. A clear consequence is the strong hostility between
institutions from the inside and from the outside, which in turn partly
explains why the aid only rarely reaches the local councils. Another
consequence is the often false perception of the situation in Syria by
Westerners who are in contact almost exclusively with these Syrians living
abroad.
The reestablishment of public services
In a few months, the incumbent city administration has
reorganized the public services despite the constant bombings and the lack of
qualified employees. Garbage pick-up and rubble clearing are taken care of by
former regime employees in rented private trucks. The waste, after being
collected and assembled in one area of each street by the inhabitants
themselves, is then sent outside of the city to a former marble carriage work
now used as a dump. A sanitary team also passes through each neighborhood to
spray the streets with insecticide, thus preventing the malaria epidemic that was
threatening the city last summer.
The municipality also intervenes at the infrastructure level. It
organizes technical teams to maintain electrical and hydraulic networks. As the
engineers are outside of the Eastern part of the city, the municipality has not
been able to repair the transformers that had been damaged by bombings. The
electricity thus runs irregularly only a few hours a day. As the network is
integrated in both sides of the city, the two municipal services are forced to
negotiate in order to insure the provision of electricity in their respective
zones. Another example of an indivisible good is the hydraulic network. It
poses the same problem, but with a different solution. Certain water towers are
located on the front line, and their access is essential to insure running
water in both sides of the city. However the army, unlike the regime’s
municipal services, generally refuses to negotiate with the insurgents. As a
consequence, the water debit is weak and fluctuating, even though the repaired
pipes and water towers of the East side have allowed access to running water a
few hours a day. On the other hand, as funds are low, the municipality is not
maintaining the road network which is deteriorating because of regime strikes.
The Aleppo municipality has aimed at reestablishing the medical
and educational services. Hospitals and schools are organized in locations held
secret to avoid bombings. Specialized services, notably pediatrics and
dermatology, have been reestablished. On the school side, the regime’s books,
or photocopied versions, are used as pedagogic support and enabled the
baccalaureate exam to take place during the summer.
Despite the absence of stable resources, the municipality is
able to provide for these services thanks to a largely unpaid engagement of
thousands of employees. Indeed, the salaries of teachers are fixed at 25
dollars a month but are rarely paid. The aid given by the Coalition is
irregular, despite the funds allocated by Western and Gulf countries. Since its
creation in March, the municipality has had to regularly call upon donations
from Syrians abroad. For the months of September and October, the Aleppo
municipality no longer disposes of funds to run the city’s public services.
An administration in search of a monopoly
Since it is lacking funds, the municipality cannot cover the
entire needs of the city. This left a void for militarized groups to try to
impose their own administration. The determining question of the reconstruction
of a judiciary system set the problem. When the city was taken, in September
2012, the Free Syrian Army brigades on the one hand, and the religious and
juridical personnel on the other, agreed to put together a tribunal, the United
Court of the Judiciary Council (al-mahkama al-muwâhada lil-majlis al-qadhâ’i).
The later judge according to the Unified Arab Code (al-qânûn al-‘arabî al-muwahhad), a penal and
civilian body of law based on the Sharia, and established by the jurists of the
Arab League in Cairo in 1996. In addition, a police force, made of former
police officers having deserted and volunteers, has been created under the
control of the Governorate Council. The police’s mandate is to apply the
Council’s court decisions. However, in the absence of proper resources and,
until recently, of any external aid, the civilian police force has been
incapable of imposing their mandate to armed groups and of applying the
decisions of the United Court, who in turn lost a large part of its legitimacy.
While facing this judiciary system, armed groups – Jabhat
al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, Suqur al-Sham and al-Tawhid – have established their
own court in the early months of 2012, the Legal Committee (haî’at
ash-sharî‘a), thus avoiding to submit to the authority of a third instance. A
difference with the United Court is that the Legal Committee has its own police
force, limited to 200 men sent by the armed groups, and sets up check points in
the city. Until the summer of 2013, the tribunal refused the application of a written
code, as it considered that religious competence would insure a more precise
application of Islamic jurisprudence. It also imposes a religious control, such
as the headscarf for women and the strict following of fasting during the
Ramadan month. The Legal Committee is also implied in the city’s management by
creating competing services for electricity provision, education and medical
care. Finally, by taking over first the administration of Aleppo’s mosques,
which had been neglected by the municipality, the Legal Committee was able to
control most of the city’s mosques.
The competition between both institutions did not lead to armed
confrontation, but the tensions are obvious. The Legal Committee is accusing
the members of the civilian administration of being bad Muslims, a strong
argument in a time of Jihad, while the institutions attached to the Coalition
consider their rivals incompetent. Last August, the men from the Legal
Committee thus encircled the United Court for one day, until they were forced
to retreat by the Free Syrian Army combatants closely related to the civil
institutions. Even though, the members from both administrations have to
communicate regularly to manage the city and face the armed groups. An
agreement between the two competing projects would not be impossible if the
Legal Committee was to align its procedures on those of the United Court, and
if the municipality was to Islamize its discourse.
In the meantime, the civilian administration is facing the ISIL,
which is refusing this institutional game and is directly threatening its
existence. This group, affiliated to Al Qaeda, was formed in April 2013 from
the fusion of the Islamic State of Iraq (ad-dawla al-islâmîyya fî-l-‘irâq), the
Iraqi branch of the movement, and a section of Jabhat al-Nusra, notably the
foreign fighters engaged in Syria. In Syria, Al Qaeda is engaging in a process
of controlling directly territories. This is a relatively new strategy for the
movement, the premises of which were visible in its Yemeni branch – when it
occupied the South of the country – and Sahel branch in Northern Mali. Like in
most of Northern Syria, the ISIL is progressively taking over the control of
strategic places around Aleppo, and is more and more involved in the management
of populations. A part of the administrative services of the Legal Committee
joined the ISIL in April – at the same time as certain fighters from Jabhat
al-Nusra – under the title of Islamic Administration (idâra islâmîyya), but
this phenomenon remains rather embryonic.
The rocketing increase in power of the ISIL these last months
has profoundly transformed the political dynamics in Northern Syria. The
pragmatic collaboration between groups with sometimes opposed ideologies, but
united against the regime, has led to a direct confrontation that could hinder
the vulnerable and fragile civilian institutions. The way that, in Raqqa, Azaz,
Manbij or Tall Abiad, the ISIL eliminated the members of local administrations
and now rule over the cities of Al-Dana or Saluq, demonstrates the risk
weighing over Aleppo’s administration. Since last summer, the United States and
the European Union started providing support for Aleppo’s police force, but
many more resources are necessary to the survival of the functioning civilian
institutions in the rebel-held territories.
Source: NORIA, A network of researchers on International affairs
Translation from French to English: Alice JUDELL
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