From the Legacy of Mandate to the Crisis of Governance: How the Margin Was Born from the Heart of the State#5

Opening Article of Chapter Two – Series: Urban Transformation in Post-Colonial States – Damascus as a Model

1946–1958 | From Independence to the Union

 National Bloc members celebrating Independence Day

❖ The Inherited Bureaucracy: When the State Was Born Without a Spine

The nationalist elite who led Syria to independence inherited a state without a backbone. At the departure of the French, the Syrian bureaucracy was fragmented, lacking a central structure or accumulated expertise. State institutions had emerged atop the ruins of three overlapping layers: Ottoman customs, semi-traditional local structures, and a nascent Francophone bureaucracy originally designed to serve the needs of the Mandate—not to build national institutions.

When Damascus achieved independence, orders no longer came from Paris, but the bureaucracy had not undergone reform or structured reorganization. Provincial departments, agricultural offices, and water agencies fell silent in the face of the new republic’s questions. They lacked a vision for land management, suburban planning, or even tax collection. Decision-making relied on improvisation, shaped by elite rivalries. The state was not built on negotiation among cities—it inherited a capital imposed by the French, and institutions designed for control, not development.

This structural deficiency manifested in several ways, as we shall see in this chapter: poor service distribution, weak links between center and periphery, lack of effective municipal institutions, and a repeated rupture in the relationship between local communities and the administrative apparatus. Urban formation in Damascus thus began on a fractured foundation: a city without a unified administrative body, and a periphery without representation or local authority.

❖ Regional Vacuums and the Imbalance of Power

Following the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, French influence in the Levant began to erode. A sovereignty vacuum emerged—not filled by a stable national structure but exploited by neighboring powers to impose new realities on the ground. The clearest example was Turkey’s 1939 annexation of the Sanjak of Alexandretta, carried out under the gaze of retreating French authorities and with no Syrian capacity to respond or negotiate.

The deeper impact appeared in urban transformation: in 1941, Turkey diverted the flow of the Quwayq River, which had supplied Aleppo, leaving the city without a regular water source. Syria at the time lacked the political or legal tools to resist, and no regional negotiation frameworks protected its vital interests. Rather than treat the issue as one of water sovereignty, the state resorted to an expensive technical fix: attempting to transfer Euphrates water to Aleppo across more than 90 kilometers. This offered a temporary solution but cemented a chronic pattern—fleeing forward with technical fixes instead of negotiation, and paying costs instead of engaging in participatory planning.

Thus, a distorted logic underpinned part of the modern Syrian state: subjugation to regional power imbalances and dealing with their consequences as internal technical problems rather than structural weaknesses. This generated a growing disconnect between services and infrastructure, sovereignty and development—a gap Syrian cities and countryside still pay for today.

 King Saud, President Shukri al-Quwatli, and Prince Fawaz bin Nawwaf al-Shaalan in Adra – 1956

 National Bloc members celebrating Independence Day

❖ Projects Without Planning: When Development Descended from Above

Although Syria’s bureaucratic structure followed the French model, independence was secured with British support and the backing of urban elites aligned with the Anglo-Saxon world. The British supported the rise of the National Bloc, whose merchants established early ties with British and American companies. As the Cold War began and a global polarization between Washington and Moscow took shape, Syria was not merely emerging from colonialism—it became an early arena for this new geopolitical contest.

Within this context, Gulf states—especially the newly established Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—began funding Syrian infrastructure projects, with political conditions: avoid conflict with Israel and steer clear of rising Arab nationalism. The aid secured by President Shukri al-Quwatli from Riyadh laid the foundation for a new economic pattern: urban development funded by political capital rather than local productive vision. Syria grew accustomed to plugging developmental gaps with political gestures—deeply affecting its urban and economic transformation.

This pattern not only opened the door to dependence on external actors but also severed infrastructure from governance and sustainable development. Projects were not tied to regional plans or municipal authorities capable of maintaining them. Instead, they became symbols of political alliances—granted or revoked at will by the state. The bond between the state and physical space was broken. Residents ceased to be partners in shaping their environment and became mere recipients of favors derived from higher-level alliances.

This laid the groundwork for a new political legacy inherited by the following republic: that satisfying foreign actors grants the right to build internally—not because local needs demand it, but because funding is available.

❖ Administrative Divisions as a Tool of Power: From Representation to Control

In the early 1950s, Damascus’ administrative divisions began gradually shifting—reflecting early tension between the city center and its outskirts. While Damascus and its surrounding countryside remained a single province until 1962, local governance began to undergo deeper transformations. Based on regulatory decrees grounded in Law No. 221 of 1926—adopted by the French Mandate to organize municipalities in smaller towns—newly established municipalities were granted limited administrative and financial powers, along with mechanisms for elections and division of responsibilities between center and periphery. This contributed to local governance development during the Mandate era.

In this context, on March 3, 1941, a municipality was created in the village of Qaboun, then merely an agricultural cluster on the fringe of Damascus. This move coincided with the vision of urban planner Ecochard and improved tax collection in Qaboun, thanks to emerging factories nearby. It was hailed as a step toward integrating the urban periphery into the new state structure and distributing governance functions in a growing city.

Yet this trajectory soon reversed. In 1952, less than a decade after independence, Qaboun’s municipality was abolished and merged into the Damascus province. This was not due to administrative failure or economic decline—on the contrary, it was because Qaboun had succeeded financially. The move reflected a centralizing drive among elites to concentrate financial and administrative power. Tax revenues from Qaboun were redirected to elite neighborhoods like Qasaa and Abu Rummaneh, while Qaboun’s residents were left without a municipal council, representation, or any avenue to negotiate with the state during a critical phase of urban transition.

Thus, municipalities shifted from being tools of representation and development to instruments of control and centralization. They no longer served to integrate peripheral areas but to subjugate them—marking an early departure from the promise of participatory governance toward a model of selective resource allocation based on political loyalty and geographic proximity.

❖ The Khammasiyeh, Jobar, and Qaboun: How Patronage Became a Formula for Governance

In the late 1940s, the Khammasiyeh Company was established at the intersection of Jobar and Qaboun—strategically placed by the Tura River, a vital water source for Ghouta agriculture for centuries. The factory, branded as a symbol of “national industry,” did not hesitate to pollute the river with dyes and generator fumes. This led to crop damage and sparked protests in Jobar and Qaboun. These were not symbolic outbursts—by 1952, the movement escalated to serious threats of burning the factory.

At this pivotal juncture in Syrian statehood, the events served as an early test of the republic’s governing logic: Would the state treat its peripheries as partners in representation—or as margins to be pacified? Despite improved tax revenue and industrial growth, Qaboun’s municipality was dissolved, stripping residents of formal representation and leaving them without a legitimate intermediary with either the state or the companies.

As protests against the Khammasiyeh intensified, no local authority intervened. The municipality had been undermined in anticipation of its dissolution. Instead, it was the company’s board—not the state—that took action. Its chairman, Rashad Jabri, a politically connected administrator and American University of Beirut/University of Manchester graduate, had overseen the factory’s construction and would later become Damascus Governor. Yet rather than resort to government channels, Jabri turned to community intermediaries. He asked his board to reach out to a local figure capable of mediating: the proposed name was Othman al-Baghdadi, a Qaboun native and merchant in the Hamidiyyeh Market. Not a traditional tribal leader, but someone who “understood urban logic” and, as one company report noted, “wore trousers”—a phrase then implying someone suitable to engage with cities and factories, not just with peasants.

Thus, through a soft deal, surplus stock was distributed to the poor, and neighborhood youth were hired—not by municipal order, but via reciprocal patronage. Community interests fused with corporate ones. Anger turned into allegiance. The crisis was resolved not through institutions, but through relational deals, rooted in personal ties rather than legal frameworks.

More importantly, this pattern didn’t stop at the factory. It followed Rashad Jabri through his career in the nascent state and its enterprises. He became MP for the Ghoutas, a minister, and head of the Engineers’ Syndicate, playing key roles in the People's Party and urban policy-making. His political success was built on intricate patronage networks that operated as shadow states—offering services through intermediaries who later became community notables, and allocating resources selectively in exchange for electoral support. Qaboun had no phone network—but the clientelist system secured a “telephone room” via al-Baghdadi’s agency, which also became the de facto post office due to the state’s failure to number streets. Water and electricity followed similar patterns. Ecochard’s vision of modern industrial suburbs gave way to semi-urban spaces governed by intermediaries and personal relationships.

This was the birth of a “parallel state space,” where representative institutions were replaced by top-down networks, decisions made through deals, and representation turned into dependency. What happened in this moment was no local anomaly—it laid the foundation for a broader pattern. The emerging Syrian elite, representing those who benefited from the 1885 land reallocations and aspired to become a liberal bourgeoisie, failed to organize the urban sphere—leaving a void that would later be filled by the security state as nationalization swallowed the exhausted bourgeoisie.

Thus, the post-union nationalizations and land reallocations were not just economic decisions. They marked the end of a trajectory—the collapse of hopes to organize space outside state control, and the failure of a nascent bourgeoisie that tried to blend personal ties, national ambitions, and international relations without building institutions or sustainable social contracts.

A textile worker at the United Khumasiyah Company

❖ From Representation Crisis to the Informal Space: The Emergence of the Margin from the Heart of the State

The story of Qaboun and Jobar is not just local history—it exposes the foundational logic behind the failure of post-independence urban transformation in Syria. The new bourgeois elite, blending Western education with real estate interests, emerged at a moment of national promises for modern state-building. Yet this elite, despite its international ties and political aspirations, reproduced a model of “urbanized notability”—where municipalities became agencies, services became rewards, and belonging became subordination.

In the absence of balanced urban planning and effective local authority, the informal space emerged not as a violation, but as a logical extension of non-representative governance. Informal settlements were not merely the product of poverty—but of political silence imposed on the periphery, and the monopolization of decisions, services, and licenses by the city center.

This logic of spatial governance—where suburbs are managed through unofficial networks subordinate to the center without being represented in it—is what we will dissect in the coming articles. We will trace how the informal space became an alternative system, not just an exception, and how its absence from official planning did not negate its presence as a de facto force—eventually laying the ground for ruptures between the city and its belt.

Were informal settlements merely planning errors? Or were they political necessities for a structure allergic to representation?

In the next articles in this series, we shift from state structures to societal dynamics. We will focus on the social, economic, and urban transformations of the post-independence era—particularly in the emerging transitional spaces on Damascus’s periphery, between village and city. How did the dream of early industrialization inspire a new generation? How did it push youth toward vocational and technical education—sometimes in Beirut, sometimes in the country’s fledgling national schools? How did these areas develop a new form of incomplete urbanization—where houses were built before streets, and workshops opened before neighborhood borders were drawn? All of which gradually paved the way for the rise of informal space—not as rebellion, but as the natural outcome of a structure that could not accommodate everyone.