Under the pretext of regulating housing in Al-Fu’ah town | “Salvation Government” informs Syrian residents to check with its real estate office, exempting foreigners

Idlib Province- Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:

The “Salvation Government” in Idlib informed residents of the town of Al-Fu’ah, which are displaced from the Syrian provinces, to check with the office of the Directorate General of Real Estate, to learn about the new decisions made by the “Salvation Government” for the purpose of regulating housing and real estate in the town.

The “Salvation Government” is seeking to evict all displaced families who lived in al-Fu’ah after the displacement of its population in accordance with the agreement of the four cities at the time, and put houses and property at its disposal and hand them over to its members and their families, according to the residents of the town.

Over the last weeks and months, the Syrian Observatory monitored security tensions and raids by factions in order to seize houses to use them as military headquarters or security offices. The factions have seize some houses while their attempts to seize more have failed, as all the residents of the town stood together to expel the factions’ members.

Residents of the town accuse the “Salvation Government” of violating the rights of displaced people from the Syrian provinces, unlike foreigners who live in the towns of Kefraya and al-Fu’ah near Idlib city, where the “Salvation Government” provides them with facilities, and does not include them by its unjust decisions against the displaced people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has monitored several attempts to seize the homes of displaced people in the last months.

SOHR activists had said that a dispute took place between displaced civilians and members of the Turkistan Islamic Party in the town of Al-Foua near the city of Idlib in last August. 

According to Observatory sources, an armed group of Turkestans attacked a displaced man from al-Ghouta in rural Damascus, who lives in one of the houses of the Shiite community abandoned by its owners under the “four cities agreement”, with the aim of expelling him from the house and housing jihadist members in it. However, the civilian brandished his weapon at them and expelled them, after threatening to kill them if they tried to expel him from the house.

It is worth nothing that the man lives with his family in the house and managed earlier to face several attempts by the factions to take over the house.

In June, SOHR eyewitnesses said that a demonstration took place in the square of the village of Kfraya, north of Idlib, demanding that foreign fighters leave the village, and protesting the notices issued by the Uzbek faction against some families living in the village, demanding the families evacuate their houses.

Meanwhile, the Uzbek faction has brought in military reinforcement, deploying on the outskirts of the village to prevent any attack by the locals.

Tension still prevails in the village as residents stand together against Uzbek members.

The village of Kfarya is inhabited by displaced families from governorates of Homs, Damascus and countryside and other areas, who were transferred to the village after the four cities agreement in 2017.

The regime had been carrying out sectarian displacements from the towns of Al-Foua and Kefraya in the Idlib countryside, in which the Shiites are the majority, in exchange for the displacement of families and fighters of the towns of Zabadani and Madaya in the western Damascus countryside.

The agreement was brokered by Qatar between Iran, Shiite militias and a number of opposition and jihadist factions, most notably HTS, Ahrar al-Sham and Jaish al-Islam.