LUGARIT

25/08/2026

How cities are governed is inseparable from how land, resources, political authority and economic value are distributed. In Syria’s transition, the future of urban governance will depend not only on institutional reform, but on whether local communities can meaningfully participate in shaping their cities—and whether reconstruction generates productive public value rather than reinforcing patterns of centralisation and rent-seeking. To learn more, listen to LUGARIT’s expert Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj in Episode 2 of the podcast Urban Liwan.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/7tHvDxi

📺 Podcast: Urban Liwan | ليوان عمراني

🌍 Episode 02 Title: السلطة والأرض والاقتصاد السياسي: حوكمة المدن السورية وإعادة تشكيلها

📅 Episode Date: 25 August 2026

🎤 Speaker: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

👩🏻‍⚖️ Moderator: العمرانية Massa Al Moselly

©️ Credits: Copyrights © 2026 العمرانية Massa Al Moselly and LUGARIT. Technical support by ASAS أساس

EN | ع This Podcast Episode is in Arabic. An English summary is available.
المقابلة باللغة العربية

💡 Key insights:

- Centralisation and decentralisation are not merely administrative choices; they reflect a longstanding tension between territorial control and communities’ ability to shape the places in which they live.

- Reforming Syria’s municipalities requires moving beyond territorial administration towards institutions with meaningful authority, adequate resources and local legitimacy.

- Elections alone cannot restore local legitimacy amid displacement, incomplete civil registries and weakened municipal institutions. Transitional arrangements need to provide a credible pathway towards genuine representation and accountability.

- Reconstruction is also a redistribution of power and wealth. Decisions about land development determine who captures value, influences urban transformation and retains rights to the city.

- Land should generate productive and sustainable value rather than primarily speculative gains, if reconstruction is to avoid reproducing rent-based and patrimonial economic structures.

- Multilevel governance offers a framework for combining capable local institutions with a coordinating central state that protects rights, environmental assets and cultural heritage while enabling communities to shape their cities.

📺 📖 Watch the Podcast Episode on our website and read the summary to explore how governance, land and political economy intersect in shaping the future of Syria’s cities.

📷 Photo: Panoramic view over Damascus, Syria. 17 October 2007. Photo © Wurzelgnohm - via picryl via wikimedia Commons.

11/08/2026

Rebuilding Syria’s cities is not only a question of housing, infrastructure or masterplans. It is also a question of who shapes urban priorities, whose knowledge informs decisions, and whether participation gives communities genuine influence over the places in which they live. To learn more, listen to LUGARIT’s expert Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj in Episode 1 of the podcast Urban Liwan | ليوان عمراني.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/7cE0Id1

📺 Podcast: Urban Liwan | ليوان عمراني

🌍 Podcast Episode Title: أنسنة الإعمار: مين بيقرر شكل مدينتك من غيرك؟ التشاركية... حقيقة ولا غطاء؟

🎤 Speaker: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

👩🏻‍⚖️ Moderator: Massa al-Moselly

📅 Podcast Episode Date: 02 August 2026

EN | ع This podcast episode is in Arabic. An English summary is available.
المقابلة باللغة العربية

💡 Key insights:

- Cities are living systems shaped by communities, livelihoods, relationships, institutions, identities and memories—not merely collections of buildings and infrastructure.

- Reconstruction should build on the knowledge, finance, labour, relationships and local institutions that communities already mobilise to address their needs.

- Spatial justice depends not only on technical standards, but also on who participates, whose priorities are recognised, and how resources, risks and opportunities are governed.

- Meaningful participation requires communities to influence priorities, resources and decisions—not simply choose among predetermined options.

- Housing and property embody livelihoods, access, social relationships, memory and belonging, all of which must inform Syria’s recovery.

📺 📖 Watch the podcast episode on our website and read the summary to explore how community agency, spatial justice and more responsive planning can shape Syria’s urban reconstruction.

📷 Photo: Street market in Damascus, Syria. 18 April 2023. Photo © hanohiki - via ShutterStock.

04/08/2026

Transitional justice is not a single process with one starting date or timetable. In Syria, documentation, international mechanisms and foreign prosecutions began well before the political transition, while the legal, reparative and institutional architecture needed to connect these gains remains incomplete. LUGARIT’s article examines whether transitional justice in Syria has been delayed—and why legitimacy, participation and national ownership matter more than speed alone.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/1lEYOPf

🌍 Title: Accountability and Reparation in Syria: Transitional Justice Between Progress and Delay

📅 Date: 04 August 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT + The New Arab

✍️ Authors: Zaidoun Zoabi (AR) + Nihad Alamiri (EN)

EN | ع The article is available in both English and Arabic.
المقالة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Transitional justice comprises interconnected tracks that begin at different times and advance at different speeds.

- Syria did not begin its transition from zero. Documentation started in 2011, international mechanisms were established during the conflict, and European courts delivered accountability judgments before the fall of the Assad regime.

- National institutions were created relatively quickly, but institutions alone do not constitute a functioning process. They still require capacity, procedures, coordination, safeguards, public legitimacy and accessible mechanisms for victims.

- The consequential delays concern the wider national architecture: a comprehensive legal framework, a publicly owned reparations policy, institutional reform, meaningful victim participation and a transparent public roadmap.

- An inclusive process must recognise all victims without creating false equivalence. It must acknowledge the Assad apparatus’s systematic responsibility while providing lawful routes to justice for serious violations committed by other actors.

- Evidence is not justice by itself. Syria’s extensive archive must be transformed into verified truth, public acknowledgement, reparation and institutional change, while preserving space for plural memories.

- The ultimate measure of progress is legitimacy, not speed. The central challenge is to integrate dispersed achievements into a victim-centred national process capable of preventing recurrence.

📖 🎧 Read/listen to the article and examine which transitional justice tracks began early, where delays remain, and what is required to build a legitimate, inclusive and victim-centred national process.

📷 Photo: A Syrian mother from Ghouta, holds the picture of her missing son and his family, as she sits near scores of pictures of missing people during a ceremony by Amnesty International. 30 August 2023. Photo © Marwan Naamani / dpa picture alliance - via Alamy.

28/07/2026

Post-conflict recovery is not only a matter of rebuilding infrastructure. It also requires rebuilding institutions capable of governing land, water, and shared resources in ways that are legitimate, inclusive, and sustainable.

LUGARIT’s latest policy paper examines how archaeology and historical landscapes can inform contemporary statecraft. Drawing on the hydraulic system developed around ancient Nineveh and the transformation of Syria’s al-Ghab Valley, it explores how accumulated knowledge about resource management, territorial organisation, and community mediation can contribute to institutional reform and recovery.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/58ulNcv

🌍 Title: From Heritage to Statecraft: Archaeology, Water, and Resource Governance in Post-Conflict Contexts

📅 Date: 28 July 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Eva Ziedan and Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The policy paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Archaeology preserves more than monuments; it documents how societies have governed land, water, and shared resources over time.

- Historical landscapes can provide valuable evidence for contemporary resource management, territorial planning, and institutional reform.

- State legitimacy depends not only on political authority and national narratives, but also on the effective and equitable stewardship of natural resources.

- Local communities are custodians of living knowledge and should be recognised as partners in recovery, rather than treated as obstacles to heritage protection or passive recipients of assistance.

- Sustainable recovery requires stronger collaboration among heritage institutions, public authorities, development actors, researchers, and local communities.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the policy paper on our website to explore how knowledge embedded in historical landscapes and local practices can support more resilient institutions, sustainable resource governance, and renewed relations between states and communities.

📷 Photo: A sculptured gypsum wall panel relief excavated from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC) at Nineveh in northern Iraq, shows a luxurious hillside landscape, watered by an aqueduct that was probably built by the king’s grandfather, Sennacherib (704–681 BC). Photo courtesy of the British Museum.

21/07/2026

As Syria enters a post-sanctions phase, financial inflows and market reopening may outpace the rebuilding of productive capacity, risking inflation without corresponding job creation. LUGARIT’s paper examines how microfinance can function not merely as a poverty-reduction tool, but as a macroeconomic stabilizer that protects employment, sustains small enterprises, and reconnects liquidity with real production during economic transition.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/sndw

🌍 Title: Microfinance and Economic Recovery: Employment Generation and Inflation Stabilization in Post-Sanctions Syria

📅 Date: 03 March 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Muhammad Albaha, Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj, Hassan Masri

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:
- Post-sanctions capital inflows may generate inflation if liquidity expands faster than productive capacity.

- Small and micro-enterprises form the backbone of employment and economic resilience.

- Stabilizing working capital in the base economy is essential to protect incomes and prevent contraction.

- Microfinance can act as a macroeconomic stabilizer when structured as disciplined, repetitive, repayment-based lending.

- Wartime lending experiences demonstrate that structured microfinance can operate effectively in high-risk environments.

- Tailored regulation and shared credit data systems are necessary to ensure sustainability and prevent over-indebtedness.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to explore how microfinance can support inflation management, employment protection, and balanced economic recovery in transitional contexts.

📷 Photo: A street vendor navigates a quiet side street near the Umayyad Mosque and Souq al-Hamidiyeh, where shuttered storefronts and sparse foot traffic reflect the fragile rhythms of local commerce. Damascus, Syria. 5 December 2025. Photo © John Wreford – via Shutterstock.

14/07/2026

Urban land value is rarely created by land developers alone. It is shaped by public investment, infrastructure, linkages to wider urban amenities, planning decisions, services, markets, and the collective life of cities. The central question is whether this value is captured for narrow private gain only, or partially reinvested to support the public realm, affordable housing, infrastructure, and more equitable urban development.

In a new LUGARIT paper, we examine Land Value Capture as a set of financing and governance instruments in the MENA region, with particular attention to Syria’s reconstruction. The paper argues that LVC is neither inherently progressive nor inherently harmful. Its outcomes depend on transparency, participation, accountable institutions, and the protection of housing, land, and property rights.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/4xnjgHD

🌍 Title: Land Value Capture: Financing Instruments for Equitable Urban Development in the MENA Region and Syria

📅 Date: 07 July 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Dr. Myriam Ababsa, Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Publicly generated increases in land value should return to society, rather than benefiting only a small number of landowners or developers.

- Land is not only a physical asset; it is a source of collectively produced value that shapes the future of cities.

- LVC can finance infrastructure, affordable housing, public services, heritage preservation, and environmental protection when governed transparently.

- Across the MENA region, weak land management systems, speculation, and opaque public-private arrangements have often limited the ability of cities to use land value for public benefit.

- In Syria, reconstruction should not reproduce approaches that use land-based development to exclude affected communities or weaken housing, land, and property rights.

- Reconstruction of cities is not only about buildings. It is also about restoring trust, protecting rights, and ensuring that urban transformation produces shared public benefit.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to explore how Land Value Capture can be reoriented from a tool of speculative development into an instrument for equitable reconstruction, public finance, and spatial justice.

📷 Photo: Aerial view of Latakia, Syria. 07 May 2025. Photo © Mohammad Bash - via ShutterStock.

24/02/2026

Political representation in Syria has long been treated as a procedural question of elections by acclamation. LUGARIT's latest paper argues instead that representation under the Assad regime functioned as a deeply engineered system—designed to manage loyalties, distribute power, and manufacture legitimacy through a mix of formal elections and informal networks. By unpacking how this system operated, the paper sheds light on why rebuilding fair representation today is as much a political and social challenge as it is a technical one.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/sIia

🌍 Title: Political and Societal Representation in Syria: A Historical Review and Future Challenges

📅 Date: 24 February 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Authors: Zaidoun Zoabi + Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Representation under the Assad regime was not about reflecting societal interests, but about engineering loyalty and control.

- Electoral systems, districting, and quotas were designed to favour regime-aligned actors and weaken genuine competition.

- Unannounced quotas and non-electoral mechanisms played a central role in managing sectarian, familial, tribal, and economic balances and pitting social factions against each other to undermine the aggregation of oppositional forces.

- Business elites, religious figures, and state-controlled civil society acted as parallel channels of representation.

- Future reforms will face entrenched interests, deep mistrust, demographic gaps, and the challenge of integrating fragmented governance realities.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to better understand how past representational systems shape today’s transition debates—and what it will take to build inclusive, credible representation in Syria.

📷 Photo: The assembly hall of the parliament building. Damascus, Syria. October 2025. Photo © Unknown Photographer. Photo editing by LUGARIT.

Paper

17/02/2026

Local administration is rapidly reshaping Syria’s governance landscape, yet the system is becoming increasingly difficult to interpret, monitor, and coordinate. As administrative decisions begin to influence territorial order, accountability, recovery efforts, and institutional legitimacy depend on clearer governance structures. LUGARIT’s recent paper, prepared for SALAR International, examines how improving the legibility of local administration can support coherent governance, strengthen state–society relations, and enable more credible and inclusive recovery pathways.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/p4V1

🌍 Title: Making Syrian Local Administration Legible: Towards an Evidence-Based Approach to Reforming Local Governance

📅 Date: 17 February 2026

📚 Publishers: LUGARIT + SALAR International

✍️ Author: Jadd Hallaj

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:
- Syria’s evolving local administration is increasingly difficult to track, weakening accountability and recovery coordination.

- Administrative decisions on appointments, service delivery, and fundraising are actively shaping Syria’s emerging territorial order.

- Legibility of governance—understanding who governs which territory, under what rules, and with which resources—is a critical public good.

- Parallel administrative frameworks and fragmented legal interpretations risk entrenching uneven governance realities.

- An evidence-based national framework can help clarify territorial unity, reconcile governance systems, and strengthen inclusive and accountable local institutions.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to explore how strengthening governance legibility can support recovery planning, institutional coherence, and long-term peacebuilding in Syria.

📷 Photo: The Municipality Tower in Aleppo rises above a fragmented urban landscape, reflecting the complex realities of governance, recovery, and everyday life in a city navigating a layered post-conflict transition. Aleppo, Syria. January 2026. Photo © Jadd Hallaj / LUGARIT.

Policy Paper

09/02/2026

Reconstruction in Syria has often been framed as a technical and forward-looking task. LUGARIT’s expert Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj reviews a book that challenges that assumption by examining how rebuilding functioned as a continuation of violence under the Assad regime—reshaping space, legitimizing dispossession, and consolidating power under the language of recovery. The book (and the review) critically engages with how “post-conflict” narratives can obscure ongoing forms of coercion embedded in law, planning, and the built environment.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/BOEN

About the Book
🌍 Title: Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria
✍️ Editors: Nasser Rabbat and Deen Sharp
📚 Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press)
📅 Date: 19 August 2025
🆔 ISBN: 9781649034137

About the Book Review
🌍 Title: Book Review: Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria
🔍 Review by: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj
📄 Journal: Review of Middle East Studies
📚 Publisher: Cambridge University Press & Assessment
📅 Date: 04 February 2026

EN | ع The book review is available in both English and Arabic.
مراجعة الكتاب متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- Reconstruction in Assad’s Syria operated less as recovery and more as an extension of war by spatial and legal means.

- Declaring a “post-conflict” moment is itself a political act, used to reorder social geographies and legitimize exclusion.

- Concepts such as urbicide, domicide, and civilian crisis architecture reveal space as a central arena of political struggle.

- Large cities emerge as a key laboratory for understanding how heritage, return, and displacement intersected under reconstruction policies.

- The book provides a simplified reading of the urban-rural divide and the complexity of the actors that shaped the urban environment, confounding at times formal legal and policy directives with their implementation on the ground.

- The book’s arguments remain highly relevant for Syria’s post-Assad phase, despite analytical limits rooted in external scholarship.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the book review on our website to explore how reconstruction can reproduce violence—and why this insight matters for Syria’s future policy and investment choices.

📷 Photo: The cover of the book “Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria”. Copyright © 2025 by The American University in Cairo Press.

Commentary

03/02/2026

One year after the Syrian National Dialogue Conference, critical questions remain about the fate of its economic track outputs and its relevance to ongoing policy decisions, especially after lifting the sanctions. LUGARIT’s latest paper revisits the substance of that Dialogue to bridge the widening gap between participatory debate and public economic policy, highlighting areas of convergence, unresolved trade-offs, and the conditions required for a credible, production-led economic transition grounded in governance reform and restored public trust.

🌐 Link: https://link.lugarit.com/nLXr

🌍 Title: After Sanctions: Revisiting the Economic Outputs of Syria’s National Dialogue

📅 Date: 3 February 2026

📚 Publisher: LUGARIT

✍️ Author: Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj + Editor: Hasan Masri

EN | ع The paper is available in both English and Arabic.
الورقة متاحة باللغتين الإنجليزية والعربية

💡 Key insights:

- The proceedings of the National Dialogue remain unpublished, widening the gap between public participation and economic policymaking.

- Syria’s economic crisis was diagnosed by participants in the National Dialogue as structural and governance-related, rooted in long-term policy incoherence, monopolization, and a deep crisis of trust.

- Participants converged on a gradual, regulated transition toward a competitive market economy, rejecting both shock therapy and a return to a dominant state.

- Recovery priorities were anchored in production—industry, agriculture, infrastructure, and human capital—rather than rent-based extraction.

- Unresolved disagreements on the role of the state, public assets, monetary tools, and market openness reflect the dialogue’s pluralistic strength rather than its weakness and highlight the need for continuous dialogue.

- Publishing the full minutes of the National Dialogue is essential to transform it into a transparent, accountable, and ongoing economic process.

📖 🎧 Read or listen to the paper on our website to gain a structured understanding of Syria’s economic transition debates, the logic behind competing reform paths, and why transparency and continued dialogue remain central to sustainable recovery.

📷 Photo: A snapshot from the opening of the Syrian National Dialogue Conference at the People's Palace in Damascus, Syria. 25 February 2025. Photo © SANA.

Paper