Whatever happened to Syria’s middle class?

Rauf Baker puts a spotlight on the plight of the Syrian middle class, five years and counting into the civil war

A view of the Kara Tepe camp for refugees on Lesbos island, Greece. Petros Giannakouris / AP Photo

Amid the Syrian crisis – a conflict that has displaced millions and has ripped families apart and killed hundreds of thousands more – you will find tragedy heaped upon tragedy. While it is unfair and, possibly, counterproductive to sift through the rubble to find the conflict’s biggest loser – that unfortunate bystander who has been cursed to suffer the most – it could be argued that the Syrian middle class has suffered more than most.

This group has been forced to endure, like many others, the combined misery of sectarian cleansing and systematic displacement after villages and neighbourhoods were burnt to the ground (destroying, in the process, civilian and property records, a small but crucial point that erodes the right of return after the conflict subsides).

Some countries have extended the hand of friendship to a few of the displaced. Turkey has expressed its willingness to grant citizenship to the “elite” among Syrian refugees. A United Nations report urged Lebanon to “integrate” them. Europe, in turn, tempted those who had jobs inside Syria to sell their properties and ride the sea in the hope of new opportunities.

Consequently, the middle class has disintegrated. Its representatives have become displaced to areas that do not form a unified mass. They no longer have access to a proper education or decent jobs – both of which have been pillars of the middle class for decades. In the best scenario, they are doomed to be refugees living on aid, with no hope of return after the conflict.

The regime has relentlessly targeted the major urban agglomerations of the middle class in Aleppo, Hama and Homs. Its agenda promoted two key strategies: implementing local truces in different areas after besieging, starving and bombarding them, and waging an all-out war against those opposing such truces. The end product of both tactics has been to bring the middle class to its knees.

The Zabadani swap deal can be seen as an example of the first method, in which entrenched civilians of the southwestern town and the northwestern villages would be evacuated and sent to the country’s north and south respectively.

Intriguingly, the fabric of the middle class in the capital itself was destroyed long before the uprising began. Damascus today is dotted with settlements inhabited by residents from the regime’s stronghold. More recently, Iran extended its activities, buying properties across the capital as some districts were demolished to give way to large construction projects.

Damascenes were pushed to the outskirts forming a ring around the capital, which the regime also tried to empty. The Ghouta chemical attack in 2013 was a brutal attempt to terrorise locals and force them to leave.

The second method was reflected in Aleppo. Hundreds of thousands have fled the city and are still leaving after years of an unwinnable deadly battle.

The regime and its allies want to reshape Syria beyond recognition. The absence of the middle class means that we are witnessing a “new Syria” in the making.

Rauf Baker is a journalist and researcher with expertise in the Middle East