Over thirteen years of conflict since 2011, Syria’s infrastructure and social fabric have been profoundly damaged. More than 5 million Syrians have been registered as refugees outside the country, while nearly 7 million have been internally displaced.1 This has fundamentally altered the country’s urban geography and placed enormous pressure on relatively safer cities, particularly Damascus. By 2018, an estimated 3 million homes had been completely or partially destroyed. While both regime and opposition forces contributed to the destruction of the built environment, the scale of damage caused by regime forces was significantly greater due to their access to heavy weaponry, air power, and territorial advantage. Seventy percent of destroyed homes can be directly attributed to aerial bombardment by the Syrian regime and Russian forces.2
