The Ghost Zone of Damascus: “The Only Sign of Life is a Gravedigger”
Syria is trying to heal the wounds of the civil war that started in 2011 and lasted for 13 years. Meanwhile, even in the capital Damascus, some areas have turned into ghost towns. The Cobar neighborhood is one of the areas that bear the most painful scars of the war. Images of destroyed, partially collapsed facades, and now ghost town neighborhoods resemble scenes from apocalyptic movies. The American Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that there is only movement in the cemetery of Cobar.
The American Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a news article titled “The Only Sign of Life in the Devastated Suburb of Syria is a Gravedigger.” The news article examined the Cobar district in the east of the capital.
The current state of this district, which stood out as a stronghold for the rebels during the civil war, symbolizes the difficulty of rebuilding the country. The Middle East correspondent of the newspaper, Stephen Kalin, reported that there is only movement in the cemetery of Cobar.
In this suburb of Damascus, only one section has largely remained intact and operational: the cemetery. After Bashar Assad’s regime collapsed in December, former residents started to return to the area, prompting gravedigger Mecid Ayuz and his uncle to return to bury their deceased.
On a sunny afternoon, Ayuz dug a new grave and buried a 65-year-old man among the fragmented gravestones and craters left from the war. While the residents of the district began to come to Cobar to bury their dead and reminisce about the past, they cannot return to their homes as most of them are in ruins.
The scale of destruction in Cobar is one of the most severe in all of Syria. Not too far from the mostly undamaged center of Damascus, Cobar, like many devastated suburbs, towns, and cities in Syria, faces the challenge of rebuilding almost from scratch. The use of chemical weapons after 2013 turned the region into a ghost town.
In late January, the Syrian Red Crescent sent a team to Cobar to detect explosives in the area. It is estimated that at least $400 billion would need to be spent on rebuilding Syria, which is under U.S. and EU sanctions.
