By Mia Shouha

Foreword: Since this article was written, the war reignited in Syria. The stalemate in the northeast of the country ended, and Aleppo City fell to opposition militants backed by Turkey on the 29th of November, 2024. The rest of the country has since also changed hands as of the 8th of December, 2024.

In Aleppo, crumbling historical sites and broken buildings tell an identical story to the populace—each fractured yet enduring. Since 2011, Syria’s economic, social, and cultural structures have been ravaged by the war between the country’s government forces and different coalitions of opposition militias, with all sides backed by numerous international parties and conflicting interests. As a result, the country that existed in 2011 is barely recognizable[1].

The Battle of Aleppo (2012–2016) was particularly destructive, turning vast areas of the city into battlegrounds for some of the most brutal urban warfare of the twenty-first century[2]. The aftermath is visible in the ruined streets, damaged infrastructure, and decimated World Heritage sites, as well as in the collective psyche and memory of its people. By 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimated that 60 percent of Aleppo’s Old City had been severely damaged, with 30 percent completely destroyed[3]. The Battle for Aleppo ended in 2016 in the Syrian Government’s favour. However, since then, conditions have been eroded by severe international sanctions and domestic mismanagement, leading to economic crisis and impediments to reconstruction.

I visited Aleppo in 2022 and bore witness to the remnants of this city. Shattered walls mirrored the fractured lives of those who remain. Yet the ruins of the city were intertwined with the resilience of its people, each shaping the other's survival. The Old City, a labyrinth of serpentine streets, now carries masses of broken stone at each corner—a marker of historical richness and recent trauma. Its social fabric, much like the homes that line these streets, is torn. What remains is a patchwork of community and place, frayed at the edges but still holding—just barely. These trends speak to the phenomenon of “ruination”, which conceptualizes the physical remnants left by destruction and violation. This concept helps articulate the lingering social proximity to and subjective experiences of these remnants that persist, like an aftereffect, in the wake of war or violence[4].

Walking through the grey-splattered remnants of once vibrant Aleppan life, one can feel history pressing down on every shattered stone. The city is filled with contradictions between scarcity and excess, which clash and coexist. In apartment buildings, only a single balcony might be lit at night—a faint glow in a sea of darkness. The installation of a generator switch in a building sometimes signals that only one family remains, or that they are the only ones who can afford to light their home beyond the electricity available to the public. Many social gatherings occur in shadows, punctuated by the hum of generators and sudden outages. At midnight, all available energy runs out, and Aleppo is suffocated by a thick blanket of darkness.

Community ties, once strong, now feel transient and fragile. Conversations often turn to stories of migration; nearly every Syrian has family overseas. Fragmented ties and the cracks in familial foundations mirror the broken buildings that shelter them. Aleppo, one of the world's oldest cities, has been inhabited since as far back as the sixth millennium BC[5]. It is shocking how this ancient existence feels so fleeting today. Life continues but is fragmented and difficult. The social presence—or absence of it—is reflected in the brutalized brick-and-mortar of the city. Every cracked wall, every collapsed building, symbolizes the fractured social ties that once formed Aleppo.

Amid the ruins lies the weight of Syria's history and trauma, now standing as a battleground of pride and lamentation. The broken buildings are more than structures; they are physical embodiments of the people's struggle. The actions of individuals and communities are enmeshed in these physical spaces, and together, they represent one another. In Aleppo, ruins lie in the built environment and the fractured bonds of community.

About the author

Mia Shouha is an emerging writer, academic educator, and PhD researcher in political economy and anthropology at the University of Sydney. She holds an Honours degree in Political, Economic, and Social Sciences. Her current research explores uneven development and crisis in Lebanon and Syria, focusing on themes of war economies and financialization, sanctions, and the weaponization of agriculture and the environment in times of conflict. Mia completed the 2024 StoryCasters writing mentorship and has been published in the Journal of Australian Political Economy, Afikra’s Daftar Journal, and Al Rawiya magazine.

Endnotes

1. Francesco Bandarin, "The Destruction of Aleppo: The Impact of the Syrian War on a World Heritage City," in Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, ed. James Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022).

2. Ibid.

3. Benjamin Isakhan and Lynn Meskell, "Local Perspectives on Heritage Reconstruction After Conflict: A Public Opinion Survey of Aleppo," International Journal of Heritage Studies 30, no. 7 (2024): 821–39.

4. Lori Khatchadourian, "Life Extempore: Trials of Ruination in the Twilight Zone of Soviet Industry," Cultural Anthropology 37 (2022): 2317–48; Yael Navaro‐Yashin, "Affective Spaces, Melancholic Objects: Ruination and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15, no. 1 (2009): 1–18.

5. Sawsan Ibrahim, "Decision-Making Methodology Between Revitalisation and Rehabilitation of World Heritage City Centers: Case Study: The Ancient City of Aleppo (Syria)," The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences 44 (2020): 255–62.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of the editors or the journal.