Assad regime bombed Aleppo for years — then profited from its scrap metal

Business was run by elite army unit, say locals, amid concerns over new government tackling corruption

Displaced Syrians working in a junkyard in the town of Batabo, between Idlib and Aleppo provinces in north-west Syria, in 2021. Reuters

Every day as he arrived at work at a smelting plant in north-eastern Aleppo’s industrial area, Ammar’s work clothes would be searched by soldiers from the 4th Division, the elite Syrian army unit controlled by Maher Al Assad, brother of the former president Bashar.

While nominally tasked with securing the former regime from major threats, the 4th Division – also known as the 4th Armoured Division – became an industrial power broker, controlling and profiting from big business in Syria.

Closely tied to Iran, the unit’s men and local intermediaries lined their pockets on the back of the widespread destruction of the country.

One source of revenue for the unit was scrap. Over nearly 14 years of war, tens of thousands of buildings have been bombed, leaving ripe pickings for scrap metal collectors, according to residents of Aleppo, researchers and media reports.

Scrap metal is everywhere in Aleppo, Syria’s second city and industrial heartland. It pokes out from the twisted remains of destroyed buildings. It lies in heaps at the side of roads, corroded cars and buses piled high between rusting rebar – the reinforcing steel in structures.

The 4th Division’s dominance of the metal trade was one element of the crony networks that developed under Bashar Al Assad’s rule, allowing military officials and businessmen close to the regime to grow rich, while the majority of the population plunged deeper into poverty.

Bashar Al Assad and his brother Maher, left, attend the funeral of their father, Hafez, in Damascus in June 2003. AFP

The group “monopolised the trade of scrap metal, iron, and copper across Syria, including Aleppo, through a network of local intermediaries and warlord businessmen,” Ayman Al Dassouki, a researcher at the Turkey-based Omran Centre for Strategic Studies think tank, who has studied the 4th Division in detail, told The National.

Following the fall of the Assad regime last month, residents of Aleppo are now able to talk more freely about the extortion practised by the 4th Division in the scrap metal trade.

The searches at Aleppo’s smelting plants were to ensure that the military unit and its network of associates maintained a monopoly over the scrap metal trade.

“In every metal plant, there was a room for about three to four members of the 4th Division, they would search everyone’s work clothes,” said Ammar, who earns 700,000 Syrian pounds (about $53) a week working at a smelting plant. “So, you couldn’t take even a kilo of metal with you. Everything had to go through them,” he added, speaking outside his family home in eastern Aleppo.

The plant’s owner was forced to buy metal from dealers affiliated to the 4th Division, Ammar said. The dealers would buy the metal from anyone who had it for sale, paying 750 to 1,000 Syrian pounds a kilogram and selling it on to around 30 smelting plants in the city for 4,500 Syrian pounds a kilogram.

Smelting plant owners had to buy their feedstock “exclusively” through the 4th Division, Ammar said. “Even me, for example, if I had some metal, I could not sell it to the plant owner.”

Members of the unit – which replaced the Defence Companies paramilitary force that brutalised Syria in the 1980s, under the rule of Bashar’s father Hafez – were not pleasant to deal with, he added. They and intermediaries “would bring metal that the plant owner did not want to buy because it was not good quality. But he would have to buy it. They would bring stuff that would not produce anything; he still had to take it.”

The quantity of scrap metal processed in Aleppo is unclear, but Ammar estimated that the 4th Division made billions of Syrian pounds from the trade every month.

Stacks of compacted scrap metal at a junkyard in the town of Batabu, in north-west Syria. AFP

If the smelting plant owners rejected the dealers’ wares, they would be denied other supplies and their factories forced to shut, Ammar said.

“If he refused and said, 'I don’t want this metal', they would blacklist that plant and no metal would enter that plant. So, the plant would close down for a week or two, until the plant owner paid them to start bringing metal again, so it could work again. The plant has around 30 to 40 people, so there were around 30 to 40 families relying on that work.”

One of the main figures involved in the trade was a businessman called Mohammad Hamsho.

“Hamsho has dominated the scrap metal trade, with the support of Gen Maher Al Assad, utilising his companies active in the metallurgy sector,” Mr Al Dassouki said.

Mr Hamsho, who was ejected from Syria’s parliament in October, is under sanctions from the US and British governments and the EU for his support to the Assad regime. The founder of a conglomerate spanning the engineering, construction, media and healthcare sectors, he was chairman of the Syrian Metal and Steel Council, an industry regulator, and the general secretary of the Damascus Chamber of Commerce.

“Mohammed Hamsho benefits from and provides support to the Syrian regime through his business interests, and is associated with persons benefiting from and providing support to this regime,” reads a description of the businessman in a December 2023 British government list of targets for asset freezes.

Mr Hamsho was unreachable for comment.

Businessman Mohamed Hamsho is said to have had close ties to the 4th Division. Photo: People's Assembly of Syria

Ammar’s account tallies with practices observed by Mr Al Dassouki in his research. Local intermediaries would collect the scrap and transport it under the protection of groups affiliated with the 4th Division to large warehouses owned by prominent businessmen.

“The 4th Division has mandated that scrap traders and intermediaries work exclusively with specific individuals, including Hamsho. Those who defied the 4th Division’s directives were removed from the scrap metal market by being denied permits for scrap extraction, transportation, and sales,” Mr Al Dassouki said.

Another resident of eastern Aleppo described how low-level thieves scoured the city for scrap metal, gathering what they could for sale.

The practice continues, although the 4th Division officials who once controlled it appear to have melted away, and at least some of the smelting plants are currently closed to repair damage from battles between rebels and pro-regime forces.

“There are people who sell metal here,” said Hassan, a former resident of the bombed-out and largely-abandoned Hanono district of eastern Aleppo.

A man carries his belongings past bombed-out buildings in Hanono district, eastern Aleppo, in 2016. Reuters

“What they do is this: they spread out in a network of thieves. Anything they see – metal, gas canisters, in an abandoned house with no one in it – they take out. All this was controlled by the 4th Division,” said Hassan.

He described the operation as a “small mafia,” involving 20 or 30 thieves and metal collectors. Hassan pointed to a heap of rusting metal about 200 metres away from where he stood. “They take the metal and sell it. They used to sell it to people who were working with the regime.”

Syria’s new authorities, led by former rebel group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, will likely struggle to regulate the scrap metal trade, Mr Al Dassouki said. Although the trade was controlled by the 4th Division, the network was so wide and murky that it also involved figures more sympathetic with the opposition. The risk is that new monopoly structures form, taking on the same model as the former 4th Division networks, but with new faces running them.

Measures the new authorities could take to curb malpractice include re-establishing the Syrian Metals and Steel Council to ensure operating standards for recycling materials. Licensing of scrap collection could also be centralised, allowing only the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment to issue permits and reissue licences for smelting plants, to prevent any one group from controlling whether they can operate or not.

“These measures could help HTS establish greater oversight and fairness in the scrap metal trade, addressing some of the current challenges while supporting local economies and rebuilding efforts,” said Mr Al Dassouki.

He cited the limited power of security and military personnel, local communities who rely on the scrap trade for income, and the involvement of individuals close to factions that opposed the former regime, as factors complicating the issue.

“Figures affiliated with opposition military factions are deeply involved in the scrap trade,” said Mr Al Dassouki. “They are unlikely to relinquish their privileges easily, and will defend them vigorously.”