هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
Deir Ezzor province, in Syria’s far east, can barely catch its breath from one tragedy before waking to another. Only a few days had passed since the river ferry accident that claimed the lives of eight civilians, preceded by flooding, when a new tragedy struck on the Deir Ezzor-Damascus road on the morning of Saturday, July 25.
A collision between two passenger buses near the Al-Sukhnah area, between Palmyra and Deir Ezzor, killed 35 people and injured 30 others. The disaster has once again cast a spotlight on the province’s deteriorating services.
Traffic accidents on this crumbling road are no longer an exception; since liberation, they have become an almost constant occurrence. Local sources say that more than 300 people have been killed or injured on this road over the past year and a half, to the point that residents now call it the “road of death.”
The accident was followed by angry protest vigils in Deir Ezzor, the largest of them near Al-Dalla roundabout in the city center, along with another vigil in the eastern city of Al-Mayadeen. Protesters held the government responsible for the road’s dire condition, saying they had been demanding for months that traffic patrols be deployed and communications towers installed along its length, given that it is a long road lacking services and oversight. They also called for improving living and service conditions in the province, which they believe are worsening the scale of the tragedy.
The road of death
This road is the only land artery linking Deir Ezzor residents to Syria’s interior. It is also heavily used by fuel and oil tankers, cargo trucks and passenger buses, and forms part of the route connecting Baghdad and Damascus.
Patients in Deir Ezzor, including emergency cases, are forced to take it daily to hospitals in the capital on a journey that can last up to seven hours, because the province’s hospitals are unable to handle a number of medical conditions, especially cancer patients.
The tragedy has reopened the file of neglect surrounding the roughly 425-kilometer road. Its most serious dangers lie in the narrowness of some sections, where the width does not exceed 6 meters in parts and may be even less, with no median separating the two directions of traffic.
Potholes are widespread and large stretches are extremely rough, while other sections require comprehensive maintenance. When vehicles meet, drivers are forced to edge toward unpaved shoulders in an area where land mines are scattered along both sides of the road. The risks multiply at night because of the lack of lighting and traffic patrols, in addition to the absence of medical facilities and weak communications coverage.
Tadmur National Hospital is the nearest hospital to the accident site along the road, but it lacks a number of basic services. Its limited capacity contributed to the deaths of several of the injured who were taken there after the crash, prompting the transfer of most cases to hospitals in Homs.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the relevant authorities mobilized to deal with its repercussions. The Defense Ministry dispatched helicopters to urgently transport the injured to Homs Military Hospital, while Deir Ezzor’s Health Directorate declared a state of emergency and civil defense teams were mobilized to extinguish the fire and secure the accident site.
President Ahmad al-Sharaa and a number of officials offered condolences to the victims’ families. Syrian authorities also announced a package of urgent and strategic measures to reduce the road’s dangers, outlined by Interior Minister Anas Khattab. They included activating highway security patrols, deploying fixed and mobile security points along the road to monitor traffic, coordinating with the Ministry of Communications to provide network coverage in remote desert areas, and holding meetings to establish a unified operations center to ensure rapid response and coordination among the relevant ministries.
According to sources who spoke to Noonpost, highway security patrols began work on the morning of Monday, July 27. Transport Minister Yarub Badr and the director of the General Establishment for Road Transport, Muath Najjar, had also confirmed that the road had been placed among the priorities of strategic maintenance projects as part of a $500 million work plan, with projects in the eastern region given priority.
Tenders have also been launched to rehabilitate and widen the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor road and create a second lane to improve traffic safety, with implementation expected to take about two years from the start date.
The absence of services deepens public anger
In temperatures approaching 113 degrees Fahrenheit, dozens of residents of the city of Al-Mayadeen, east of Deir Ezzor, stand in a long line in front of a vehicle selling blocks of ice, or “bouz” as it is known colloquially, after the price of a single block rose above 40,000 old Syrian pounds.
After 48 hours of electricity and water outages in Deir Ezzor, the province also lost its ADSL land internet service on Thursday, July 23. These outages recur regularly, every week or two, to the point that residents have become accustomed to this daily suffering.
Mohammad, who works in a mobile phone repair shop, told Noonpost: “Conditions here in Deir Ezzor are bad, and nothing is functioning properly. There are no hospitals and no services, and we are asking for nothing more than basic services. I would not blame anyone who emigrates from this place.”
Most service institutions in Deir Ezzor depend on electricity, so outages lead to near-total paralysis across the province, including water stations that draw water from the Euphrates River and distribute it to residents’ homes. These stations do not operate continuously, but rather on a rotation system, with water pumped to each area at a specified time, prompting residents to rush to fill their tanks, while those who receive no water are forced to buy it from tankers.
Many towns in Deir Ezzor, despite lying along the Euphrates River, are still deprived of drinking water because of the absence of stations or their yearslong breakdown. Recently, Oxfam, in cooperation with Deir Ezzor’s Water Directorate, restarted a number of these stations after a shutdown of about 14 years. The recent flooding of the Euphrates in May also put most drinking water stations out of service, worsening residents’ suffering.
As for electricity, it is completely cut off from about half the province, specifically the Jazira areas east of the Euphrates, because of destroyed infrastructure and its absence since 2012, in addition to the neglect the region experienced during the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. In areas west of the Euphrates, including the city of Deir Ezzor, electricity usually arrives for just one hour every four or five hours.
Alongside the weak supply, the Deir Ezzor Electricity Company has begun collecting bills under the new tariff, which residents see as high compared with their living conditions. That has pushed growing numbers of them to install solar energy systems as an alternative to government electricity, considering them less costly and more stable.
Destroyed infrastructure and poor management
The war left Deir Ezzor with a heavy toll of destruction, preceded by long years of marginalization under Assad regime rule. Today, the province lacks coherent infrastructure after its facilities deteriorated or were completely destroyed. Its streets are still old, while its two banks are connected by rudimentary earthen bridges or temporary military bridges after the international coalition destroyed most bridges during the war against the Islamic State group, or ISIS.
To move between the two banks of the Euphrates, residents rely on river ferries, rudimentary means of transport that carry people and vehicles between the river’s two sides. On July 12, Deir Ezzor witnessed another tragedy when a river ferry sank after colliding with a temporary military bridge inside the city, causing its passengers to fall into the Euphrates and killing eight people, including six children.
The incident sparked a wave of anger among residents, who blamed provincial officials for negligence, while the tragedy once again highlighted the fragility of service infrastructure and the absence of safety measures.
Activist Mohammad al-Shami said: “Things in the province are managed with the logic of waiting for disaster and then dealing with its consequences, instead of working to prevent it from happening. We know the scale of destruction is enormous, and that reconstruction capacities are limited, but that does not justify poor management. The policy being followed is limited to inspecting the damage after it occurs.”
He added: “Despite repeated talk by provincial officials about the scale of the challenges, they cannot be absolved of responsibility for the ferry disaster. After the earthen bridges were damaged and disappeared following the recent flooding of the Euphrates, ferries began operating between the city and the opposite bank because residents had no alternative. Even so, they were left to operate without oversight or any serious verification of safety conditions.”
Al-Shami continued: “After this tragedy, public anger toward Deir Ezzor officials escalated, and then the traffic accident on the Damascus road occurred, adding to a series of manifestations of negligence and administrative confusion that have weighed heavily on the province.”
After the river ferry sank, Deir Ezzor province began restoring the destroyed Al-Siyasiya Bridge on the instructions of President Ahmad al-Sharaa, with the work expected to take about 12 months. Work also began on July 27 to rehabilitate the bridge in the city of Al-Mayadeen, east of the province.
Cancer patients face double suffering
It can be said that the health situation tops the demands of Deir Ezzor residents, as patients’ suffering is compounded by weak medical facilities. Cancer patients in the province face three main challenges: the absence of specialized centers, a lack of modern diagnostic technologies and the absence of specialist oncologists.
This shortfall means that a large proportion of cases are discovered at advanced stages that are difficult to treat, forcing families to head to Damascus and travel more than 425 kilometers for treatment. These trips impose enormous costs on patients and their families that can reach tens of millions of Syrian pounds, pushing some families to sell their possessions to cover treatment, accommodation and transportation expenses.
Meanwhile, doctors find themselves facing limited capabilities and an unprepared work environment, while the Health Ministry attributes the deterioration of the sector to destroyed infrastructure and a lack of resources, amid the inability of local authorities to provide real solutions.
Recently, the Al-Amal Center for Cancer Treatment in Deir Ezzor faced the risk of having its services halted, even though it is the only center in eastern Syria that diagnoses some cases of childhood cancer and provides treatment doses to a number of patients. The building had been included in an evacuation order and was to be handed over to the Directorate of Education, on the grounds that it belonged to it, raising fears that the center would shut down in the absence of any alternative.
As appeals intensified, the Directorate of Education temporarily suspended its demand for the building. Doctors continue to work at the center on a voluntary basis and without pay, while the incident has once again highlighted the suffering of cancer patients in the province. Activists from Deir Ezzor also launched a solidarity campaign with patients over the past week, calling on international organizations to support the health sector and establish specialized cancer treatment centers.
What solutions are on the table today to pull Deir Ezzor out of this reality?
The living and service crises in Deir Ezzor are not all that different from those in the rest of Syria’s provinces, but the scale of destruction inflicted on the province and the accumulated years of war have made their effects more severe. The needs exceed the central government’s capabilities, while the deterioration of services is directly reflected in residents’ lives, making human losses in many cases a direct result of this reality.
In a small survey conducted by Noonpost of the views of a number of residents, the same demands were repeated: improving basic services, rehabilitating infrastructure and providing the minimum necessities of life. At the same time, many believe that placing full responsibility on the current government does not reflect the scale of the heavy legacy left by the former regime, nor the years of depletion the province endured because of the succession of forces that controlled it and invested its resources without that being reflected in the lives of its residents.
Speaking to Noonpost, Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi said the government’s attention is currently focused on the capital and major centers, while outlying areas are not receiving the same level of attention, which is cause for concern. He added: “People’s demands today are simple and do not go beyond securing the minimum requirements for living and basic services. It is true that all Syrians are suffering, but the scale of the disaster in Deir Ezzor is greater.
In my view, the solution lies in strengthening administrative participation and involving residents in managing their own areas, because being a partner in managing your area is better than being merely a recipient of aid. That is why administrative decentralization appears to be an appropriate option.”
This view is in line with the philosophy of Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011, which established a framework for organizing the work of provinces and administrative units on the basis of administrative decentralization by transferring part of the central government’s powers to local administrations, expanding the powers of elected councils and granting administrative units a degree of financial and administrative independence that enhances residents’ participation in managing their local affairs.
Writer and journalist Firas Allawi told Noonpost that the roots of the crisis lie in the weakness of Deir Ezzor’s infrastructure, explaining that its last real modernization dates back to the mid-1970s, before years of war and destruction compounded the effects of that decline.
He added that most countries emerging from conflict witness a concentration on urban centers at the expense of the peripheries, and that this is also happening in Syria today, though it is not unique to it. He noted that Daraa suffers from similar problems, but the scale of destruction in Deir Ezzor makes it more in need of investment in infrastructure and the health, education and transport sectors.
Allawi believes that administrative decentralization is the most suitable option for reviving the province by enabling its people to manage its resources and invest its potential, especially in oil and agriculture. He proposes that if adopting this option proves impossible, a ministry specialized in developing peripheral areas such as Deir Ezzor, Hasakah, Raqqa, Quneitra and Daraa should be created to prepare the plans and studies needed to advance these provinces.