A fruit stand is lit by a battery-powered lamp on a blackened street in Damascus, the capital of Syria.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
DAMASCUS, Syria — At night, Damascus remains raucous as roadside vendors, motorbikes and traffic surge. Take just a few steps off the side of a highway bisecting the Syrian capital, however, and the night envelopes you. Most neighborhoods go dark at night because there is no electricity.
The darkness is emblematic of the myriad challenges facing Syria’s new authorities, who last December toppled a regime controlled by the Assad family for 50 years. The new interim government needs to rebuild a country where large swaths of basic infrastructure and homes have been destroyed by war and neglect, and one of its most pressing challenges is also one of the most basic: keeping the lights on.
“The new boys are entering over a country that is at below zero and had nothing,” says Samer Zaghloul, a resident of Damascus buying bread in the dark. He is referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the fighting group that is part of a coalition now governing parts of Syria. “Whatever work they do, they are not going to be able to manage everything.”
Most Syrians still live in dimness. Syria’s heavily damaged electrical grid and gas refineries cannot meet domestic demand, so the state rations power to just two hours of electricity a day.
Omar Shaqrouq, Syria’s new electricity minister, faces major challenges in providing power services to his war-ravaged country.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Now, Syria’s new coalition of leaders is trying to prove to Syria’s estimated 23 million citizens that it can provide services, like collect the trash and fix the electricity.
“We only generate 1,500 megawatts, which is not enough for the consumption for the people, so we are rationing and providing only two hours a day,” said Omar Shaqrouq, Syria’s new electricity minister, in an interview in Damascus. In the next five years, he said, Syria is aiming to increase power capacity to 12,000 megawatts.
Neglect and destruction
Much of Syria’s power infrastructure, including its electrical grid and gas refineries, were destroyed during years of civil war. Although Syria once produced enough petroleum to be a fuel-exporting powerhouse, tough international sanctions have prevented its export since 2011. (In January, the United States temporarily lifted sanctions on Syrian energy sales for six months.)
Shaqrouq also explained that the Assad regime struggled to maintain the electricity sector due to sanctions blocking access to spare parts. While these sanctions have been lifted, financial sanctions remain, hindering the foreign investment required to rehabilitate the electricity sector.
Ibrahim Alhudhud (right) runs a bakery in Damascus. He says Syria’s former leaders intentionally left his neighborhood without power in order to push residents to buy government-imported solar panels. He still runs the lights in his shop with a diesel-powered generator.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
As its own fuel production dwindled, with most of the country’s oil wealth under the control of the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-dominatedautonomous region in the northeast, Syria relied on Iran, which used to provide the old Syrian regime crude oil. But Iran has refused to give the new leaders resources.
Low-level corruption further hampered management of Syria’s aging power infrastructure. Shaqrouq says bureaucrats in the Assad regime failed to take basic precautions, like taking inventory of equipment, to prevent embezzlement, and they diverted some funds intended for power projects.
“Fifty years of theft is something very scary,” says Ibrahim Alhudhud, a baker in Damascus, who says Syria’s former leaders intentionally left his neighborhood without power in order to push residents to buy government-imported solar panels. He still runs the lights in his shop with a diesel-powered generator.
Small, battery-powered lights are popular in Damascus, Syria’s capital, because buying fuel for generators can be expensive and because the generator fumes are smelly and are linked to cancer risks. As a result, most residents simply accept the darkness.
The face of Kholoud Ayoub, 62, is illuminated by the light of her cellphone in her dim Damascus apartment. She gets power only once every seven to eight hours.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Kholoud Ayoub, 62, is one such resident. She welcomes NPR into her dim apartment one night, smartphone light in hand. She gets power only once every seven to eight hours.
When the electricity comes on, she crams all her chores — the washing, cooking and ironing — into that one hour.
When asked what life would be like with reliable power, Ayoub sighs. “Life would be more beautiful,” she says. “Electricity is life.”
Smuggling to fill the gap
With most electricity generation plants down, many restaurants and businesses in Damascus rely on noisy diesel-powered generators. The fuel to run them is also in short supply in Syria.
Shaqrouq, the electricity minister, said Syria’s crude oil production capacity within HTS control has plummeted from 360,000 barrels a day to just 10,000 barrels a day.
A family is silhouetted in headlights on a darkened street in Damascus. Most neighborhoods in Damascus go dark at night because there is no electricity.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
Enterprising intermediaries fill up on fuel for generators just across the country’s western border, in neighboring Lebanon.
From there, smugglers told NPR, the fuel is transported through private roads into Syria. This kind of cross-border commerce is a lifeline for Syria because of the sanctions.
“The items that are desperately needed — which is diesel, natural gas and gasoline — for the Syrian people are being transported from Lebanon to Syria,” says Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sheikh, the mayor of a border village in Lebanon where many of the smugglers operate. “They are just taking a truck full of diesel and driving into Syria normally with no one asking them any questions.”
Much of the fuel ends up on the sides of highways in Damascus, still in the same green plastic jerry cans — a cheaper fuel than the stuff sold at Syria’s gas stations currently.
“This gas you see is from Lebanon,” says Abdo Saadeldine, 23, one of the ubiquitous fuel resellers who have popped up all over Damascus since the fall of the old regime, pointing to dozens of green plastic jerry cans at his feet.
Abdo Saadeldine sells Lebanese gasoline on the streets of Damascus. Syrians buy fuel brought in from Lebanon because they say it is higher quality and gentler on car engines than Syria’s low-octane gasoline.
Ayman Oghanna for NPR
He says he sells Lebanese gasoline because it is higher quality and gentler on car engines than Syria’s low-octane gasoline. Every day, Saadeldine says, he sells about 20 to 25 gallons. Not a bad living, but this is just a side hustle, he says. His real passion is cutting hair.
“Love what you do to do what you love,” he shrugs.
For now, a whole network of people like him is helping Syria’s patchwork energy system run.
But if Syria’s new leaders want to turn a page, they will need to move past relying on hairdressers-turned-gas sellers hawking smuggled fuel. They will need to rebuild — refineries, the power grid, indeed an entire country.
