As US and EU move towards relief, remaining UK sanctions still stand in the way of post-Assad Syria’s reconstruction

In Jobar, a once-thriving district on the edge of Damascus, not even the dead were spared former dictator Bashar al-Assad’s ruthless bombardment.

The cemetery is a jumble of shattered tombs. Fragments of headstones lie on the ground, Arabic inscriptions mismatched, as grieving relatives attempt the bleakest kind of jigsaw puzzle. Bomb craters swallow graves, and at their rims, fragments of bone. Abo Ali points to a child’s femur. It is the knowledge of a doctor, though many here now share it.

Between 2013 and 2018, Jobar was pummeled into silence. Airstrikes levelled mosques, barrel bombs turned schools into husks, and chemical weapons left behind craters and corpses unburied. When regime forces reclaimed control, nearly every family had fled, and 93 percent of buildings lay in ruins.

Now, nearly six months after Assad’s fall and the rise of former al-Qaeda member Ahmed al-Sharaa as Syria’s new leader, the country stands at a crossroads. The revolution’s euphoria has faded, replaced by the slow, painful work of recovery.

When The New Arab visited Jobar in April, no NGOs were operating. No diggers were clearing rubble. Not out of neglect, but because the scale of destruction defies repair, and resources have to be prioritised and triaged.

On the road north from Damascus, buildings stand hollowed out. Whole streets lie flattened. A record, a cooking pot, a shred of clothing — small traces of lives once lived amid the rubble.

On the third floor of a crumbling building, a woman appears in a pink-walled room — its ceiling rose miraculously intact, visible from the road below through blasted-out windows and walls.

“Why did you return?” she is asked. “To see if there’s anything left,” she replies. Has she found anything? “No,” she shrugs and sighs. “There is nothing.”

Looters came before her — pipes, tiles, wiring — stripped. One former regime worker, speaking anonymously, said he was ordered to steal a tonne of iron a week.

“If you didn’t have money, you had to pay in labour. That meant looting,” he explained. 

In February, the UN called the devastation “systematic” and described “industrial-scale pillaging” orchestrated by regime forces.

They likened it to “swarming locusts,” leaving farmland and forests stripped of “all edible greenery, leaving nothing but bare earth and branches.”

'Capital of barrel bombs' 

A few miles southwest, in Darayya, the scene is different to Jobar. Another suburb, another site of suffering, but here, life stirs. A roundabout once strewn with tank carcasses now hosts crates of bananas and tomatoes. The smell of fresh bread hangs in the air where, ten years ago, families chewed grass to stay alive. The skeletal buildings remain, but furniture shops hum, garages brim with bags of cement, and barbers have queues.

This was the testing ground for the regime’s green bus campaign. The lime-coloured vehicles once ferried students and workers; then they returned after sieges to remove rebels and civilians alike.

State media called it mercy; the opposition called it forced displacement. Tens of thousands were uprooted, scattered to Idlib in the north and beyond.

In one Darayya home, behind a high concrete wall, a secret garden grows — almond, olive, and orange trees swaying.

But the Al Farakh family of ten living here didn’t choose this paradise; it was their only option after Assad’s bombs reduced their homes to dust.

They fled to Idlib on the green buses, then moved five more times. In one escape, a rocket struck Muhammad Al Farakh as he carried his disabled daughter to safety.

“She couldn’t move; she was so confused,” he says, grimacing, sitting on a floral-coloured mattress, lifting his shirt to reveal a scar running from neck to shoulder.

Shrapnel still lodges near his spine; two surgeries failed, and he cannot afford more.

Once known as the city of carpenters, Darayya boasted 2,500 workshops, famed for ornate beds and Arabian doors.

“It was like Ikea, but better,” jokes a translator.

The siege scorched it all. Malik, a carpenter, limps between mirrored wardrobes — his gait a legacy of torture.

“That’s what life was like,” he says, miming strangulation.

Before liberation, secret police raided the shop, “a different man turning up every day,” extorting money. Now, that extra money can be reinvested.

The uprising began here, not with guns, but with roses. Protesters marched with flowers, demanding dignity. The regime responded with bombs.

Darayya’s location — near rebel strongholds and a key military airport — made it both a threat and a prize. Russian airstrikes sealed its fate.

Cut off from aid, residents starved. Barrel bombs rained down, earning Darayya the grim nickname of the “capital of barrel bombs.”

'A chance at greatness' 

Local official Husam Allaham, now working with Syria’s new leadership, says the damage runs deeper than infrastructure.

Speaking from an office with shiny floors and an armed guard, he says: “The regime killed people from the inside.”

Once wealthy from grapes and woodwork, Darayya now seeks not aid, but “work and opportunities.”

Sanctions, aimed to choke the former regime, have instead throttled the lifeblood of reconstruction, turning aid into a labyrinthine struggle.

Power stations remain half-repaired, wells run dry, and schools stand scarred by shrapnel, their reopening delayed by bureaucratic hurdles and frozen funds.

A grain ship docked in Tartous last week, carrying 28,500 tonnes of wheat, symbolising Syria’s return to the global stage.

The catalyst: on 13 May, US President Donald Trump, speaking in Riyadh, announced the end of sanctions. “To give them a chance at greatness,” he said.

Within days, petroleum and infrastructure sanctions were lifted. The EU followed suit, reconnecting Syria’s central bank to European finance. In under two weeks, one of the world’s most sanctioned nations was back in business.

But in Britain, the stance is more guarded. Though some sanctions have eased, many remain.

“There is now a global consensus that sanctions are no longer necessary,” says Charles Lawley, director at Action for Humanity.

He adds: “The UK cannot give with one hand and take with the other. Sanctions relief must be backed by funding for Syria.”

No time for waiting 

Over 90 percent of Syrians now live below the poverty line. More than a decade of war has crippled the country, and half its water systems are destroyed. It ranks as the fourth most food-insecure nation on Earth.

In Parliament, Lib Dem MP James MacCleary said the UK has given no direct aid to the new government.

“Our support is through NGOs and UN bodies,” he said.

But with two-thirds of Syrians reliant on aid, and the UK cutting its foreign aid budget to 0.5% of GDP since 2020, that may not be enough.

With sanctions biting, locals in Darayya have raised $40,000 to restore five power stations and three wells, Husam says, because international aid is tangled in bureaucratic red tape.

He smiles and adds, “We don’t have time to wait for the world.”

At a school near Husam’s office, renovations inch forward. One wing gleams with turquoise paint; another remains charred, its desks mangled, a tank shell still lying on the floor.

About a foot and a half long, the bomb sits exactly where children once learned to read — a sobering reminder of the colossal tasks that lie ahead.

Muhammad Alian had long dreamt of returning to his home. “When I first stepped through the door, I cried,” he says — tears of hope, after years of exile in a tarpaulin tent.

But reality set in fast: bullet holes pockmark the walls, plastic sheeting acts as makeshift windows, and friends had to help him afford a door.

“Life is hard,” he says, “but better than a tent.”

It’s a bittersweet story echoed across the town. Hasan Murad, father of six, rents a flat on the third floor of a patched-up building for $100 a month — steep in post-war Darayya — after returning to find their home pancaked.

His tailoring shop was also destroyed. “My hopes, my dreams, my memories… all collapsed,” he says, a son smiling in his lap.

Still, he adds: “I cannot be sad. I am back in Darayya.”

To afford rent, he pulled his children out of school. “Once the debt is gone, they’ll go back. That’s the choice many of us face.”

In central Damascus, Yusuf Annan, director of planning at the education ministry, sips cardamom coffee beneath a chandelier.

He rattles off figures matter-of-factly: “Two and a half million children are out of school. Over 40 percent of schools damaged. We need 135,000 desks.”

The defaced portrait of Bashar al-Assad at the ministry’s entrance is a stark symbol of the broken past.

In January, Yusuf’s ministry faced backlash after revising textbooks. References to Bashar and Hafez al-Assad were removed, but so were pre-Islamic gods and critiques of the Ottoman Empire, prompting claims of ideological drift under the new interim government.

Yusuf insists the changes were “just wording,” with broader reforms not happening until after exams. Talks with Jordan and Germany on shaping the curriculum are pending, with UNICEF brokering.

Syria rebuilds 

Back in Darayya, the priority is function over ideology.

Action for Humanity, a British NGO, is transforming the town’s long-dead girls' secondary school. Only 15 schools operate in the area; eight are partially destroyed. After renovation, this one will serve 1,500 girls.

On the blackboards of its bombed-out classrooms, children once etched drawings of smiling girls and hearts, with messages in Arabic and English: “Our people are generous and brave.”

Names of pupils and the date of their last lesson: September 2014. Sunlight beams through a hole in the stairwell roof, marking the entry point of a barrel bomb. Beneath it, school reports coated in dust.

Back in Jobar, there are no gardens, no bread stalls, no children playing near reconstruction sites. There is only silence, with resources withheld behind the walls of sanctions. The ruins sit untouched, bleached by the sun.

And so, Syria rebuilds — not through diplomacy or doctrine, but through the hands of survivors: a father carrying his daughter through gunfire; a carpenter relearning his craft with a limp; a classroom reborn, one turquoise wall at a time.

[Cover photo: Photography by Muslem Sayed Issa]

Rachel Hagan is a freelance news reporter specialising in foreign affairs, with experience writing for major outlets such as BBC World Service, The Independent, and others. She previously worked as a World News Reporter for the Daily Mirror

Follow her on Instagram: @rachelaurahagan