How the Assads plundered private property to cement powerhttps://en.majalla.com/node/325725/documents-memoirs/how-assads-plundered-private-property-cement-power
How the Assads plundered private property to cement power
An investigative report by Al Majalla details the manner and extent to which the former Syrian regime used legislation to seized citizens' property across the country
Al Majalla
How the Assads plundered private property to cement power
For over 60 years, Syria’s Baathist regime disguised the large-scale expropriation of private property as lawful governance. From sweeping nationalisation campaigns in the 1960s to sophisticated real estate legislation under Bashar al-Assad, hundreds of decrees have enabled the regime to expropriate land, freeze assets, and consolidate wealth.
This investigation by Al Majalla uncovers how these legal tools evolved into instruments of repression, exclusion, and state-sponsored theft. Law by law, Syria’s regime carved out a system where ownership depended on loyalty, not rights. From 1963 to 2024, authorities issued more than 600 presidential decrees, legislative laws, and executive orders, reshaping the country's property landscape—each one tightening the regime’s grip a little further.
In the Baath party’s early years, nationalisations and asset seizures dominated the legal agenda, accounting for more than 80% of property-related decrees. Under Hafez al-Assad, the focus shifted toward urban planning schemes that disguised expropriations behind claims of modernisation. Bashar al-Assad refined the system even further: after the 2011 uprising, the regime accelerated property legislation by 44%, with real estate laws and redevelopment projects making up 74% of all new decrees. What began as socialist rhetoric turned into a strategy of selective dispossession, targeting millions of displaced Syrians, opposition strongholds, and economically strategic zones.
First state-led expropriation
In 1958, Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser agreed to merge their nations into the United Arab Republic (UAR)—a political union that served as a bold step toward a pan-Arabist region. But for Syria, the union quickly devolved into political subjugation, economic disruption, and state-led expropriation. Real power shifted to Cairo, while Damascus was reduced to a provincial outpost.
Under the banner of socialist reform, Abdel Nasser issued a series of decrees that would have lasting consequences. First was Law No. 161 on Agricultural Reform, which limited private land ownership to 80 hectares of irrigated land or 300 hectares of rain-fed land. Simultaneously, Article 5 of the law granted the state unlimited rights to claim land for itself. This resulted in approximately 1.225 million hectares—nearly one-fifth of Syria’s arable land—being confiscated by the state.
Second, Law No. 134 on Agricultural Relations stripped trade unions of their independence, barring them from political activity and placing them under state control. These laws were promoted as revolutionary, but in practice, they served to consolidate power, not redistribute it. Land was not returned to the people but transferred from the old feudal elite to a new state-aligned bourgeois class, creating the illusion of reform while entrenching authoritarianism.
The UAR's decrees laid the foundation for decades of state-sanctioned expropriation, providing a template that the Assad regime would later refine and expand
The economic toll was severe. A telling example is the nationalisation of the Company for Textile Industries (Al-Khumasiyya) in Damascus. Founded in 1946 with capital of 1.25mn Syrian pounds, its value had grown to 15mn by 1948—nearly 14% of Syria's entire national budget at the time. Yet in 1961, under Law No. 117, the company was nationalised, effectively wiping out a major pillar of Syria's economic base overnight.
For many Syrians, the impact was deeply personal. Fawaz Haffar, a merchant in Damascus, recounted how his family's wheat mill in Al-Amara was seized during the union era: "We used to buy wheat from the countryside, grind it, and distribute it—until the mill and its warehouse were expropriated. We were never compensated a single pound. And to this day, we're still paying the 'soil tax' because the property is technically still in our name."
The union collapsed in 1961 following a military coup by Syrian officers who sought to reclaim the country's sovereignty. But the damage had already been done. The UAR's decrees laid the foundation for decades of state-sanctioned expropriation, providing a template that the Assad regime would later refine and expand. Rather than dismantling feudalism, the union merely replaced it with a more centralised and legally codified system of authoritarian control.
The Baathist feudal state
The Baath party seized power on 8 March 1963 through what it termed a revolution, toppling the rule of law and dismantling political pluralism. This marked the beginning of a military regime defined by a harsh temperament and punitive measures.
The regime accelerated the expropriation policies initiated under Nasserist rule, but with a clearer purpose: to consolidate control over wealth and economic life within the so-called "Baathist state." Through sweeping nationalisations, it seized private banks, businesses, and land, hollowing out the foundations of Syria's private sector.
Foreign trade was monopolised, and a new economic hierarchy was built—not to serve the public good, but to reward loyalists and punish dissenters. What was framed as reform was actually systematic dispossession veiled by decrees and slogans.
Syrian President Hafez al-Assad drinks a cup of coffee 27 October 1973 after a prayer in the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus.
President Hafez al-Assad soon formalised this system into a personalist dictatorship. As president, commander-in-chief, and head of the executive, he wielded absolute power. He appointed and dismissed officials at will, and the People's Assembly was merely ornamental. One of al-Assad's earliest moves was to reverse the liberalising policies of Prime Minister Khalid al-Azm, shutting down any attempt to undo prior nationalisations. Economic centralisation became a political weapon.
Perhaps the most striking example of property-based repression was the Arab Belt Project—a state-driven campaign of land confiscation in the Kurdish-majority al-Jazira region. Launched in the early 1970s, it resulted in the expropriation of over 5,000 square kilometres of farmland along the Syrian-Turkish border. Framed as a matter of national security, the project was codified at the Baath party's Third Qatari Conference, which called for the land to be reclassified as state property. In reality, it was a policy of demographic engineering, using law to displace and dispossess.
The legal mechanisms for such confiscations were formalised in Law No. 20 of 1974. Article 35 stipulated that if land expropriated for public use was no longer needed, it would not be returned to its original owners—it would become permanent state property. Owners were allowed to buy back the land only under restrictive terms: at prices set by the government, not the market. Syrians summed up the bitter irony in a common saying: "What's ours became a handout back to us."
The constitutional order was restructured to reflect this system of control. Al-Assad reshaped Syria's legal architecture to enshrine his authority—a model later mirrored by his son Bashar. Their vision of Syria was not a republic, but rather an inheritance to be passed down—to them, state and family were indistinguishable. Were it not for the uprising in December, the regime's slogan might still be: "Our Leader Forever... Assad."
Bashar al-Assad waves to supporters as he marches behind the coffin of his father, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, during his funeral in Damascus 13 June 2000. Hafez died 10 June at the age of 69.
Religious endowments seized
Bashar al-Assad, who inherited the presidency from his father, Hafez, continued this oppressive rule by targeting religious institutions to acquire more land. In 2018, Law No. 31—which supposedly regulates the management of religious endowments (waqf, in Arabic)—was enacted to strip waqf properties of their protections.
Article 52 authorised the sale, mortgage, or exchange of endowment properties, in direct violation of the traditional waqf principle that prohibits diverting such properties from their charitable purposes—namely orphans, the poor, students of knowledge, travellers, and other vulnerable groups.
Article 58 of the same law stated that ownership of all waqf assets be transferred to the Ministry of Religious Endowments and registered under its local branches. This provision included mosques, Sufi lodges, religious schools, and other charitable endowments. The legislation followed a series of public auction announcements and waqf concessions made by the Ministry of Religious Endowments in favour of the Assad government.
Estimating the wealth of the Syrian people—or even the personal fortune of Bashar al-Assad and his inner circle—is far simpler than calculating the assets and property held by the Baath party itself. Al Majalla obtained a detailed record of properties registered under the Baath party as private holdings in the provinces of Damascus and its surrounding countryside. While countless Syrians lost their homes and land during the Syrian revolution, the number of properties registered in the name of the Baath party reached 45 in Damascus and 97 in various areas of Rural Damascus near the capital.
Although the Baath regime once championed socialist ideals, it ushered in a new era of extreme feudalism and widespread land appropriation
A critical decree in this process was Legislative Decree No. 308 of 1969, which authorised municipalities to grant land free of charge to the Baath party's leadership, its branches, and affiliated popular organisations for the construction of facilities. The Assad regime institutionalised an exclusionary system disguised by legal formalities, designed not to uphold justice, but to legitimise confiscation and state-sanctioned property seizures.
Systematic dispossession
While the rule of law is internationally recognised as a cornerstone of peace, political stability, human rights protection, anti-corruption efforts, and a check on the abuse of power, al-Assad's legal system functioned more as a technical apparatus of repression and systematic dispossession. It enabled the regime to implement a property policy that stripped citizens of ownership under the guise of urban development and housing reform, all while amassing wealth through corruption.
Although the Baath regime once championed socialist ideals—claiming to dismantle the monopolies of the old feudal order—it ultimately committed injustices far worse than those it decried, ushering in a new era of extreme feudalism and widespread land appropriation.
