In one devastated Syrian suburb, the only sign of life is the gravedigger

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. JOBAR, Syria—Only one patch of this Damascus suburb remains mostly intact and operational again: the cemetery. Majid Ajouz and his uncle went back to washing bodies and burying them here after the regime of Bashar al-Assad collapsed in December and former residents started visiting this ancient neighborhood.

On a recent sunny afternoon, Ajouz dug a fresh grave, and mourners laid a 65-year-old man to rest amid shattered gravestones and craters left by the fighting. Little else remains of the former rebel stronghold, where more than a quarter million people lived before the civil war began in 2011. The scale of destruction in Jobar ranks among the heaviest across Syria, an enormous challenge for a new government that needs to rebuild the shattered country to ensure stability and bring refugees back.

Estimates of the nationwide cost have run to at least $400 billion for an impoverished country mostly cut off from the world by a crippling patchwork of U.S. and European sanctions. Still, it is a crucial task.

The fighting displaced about half of Syria’s prewar population of about 22 million, either abroad or to other parts of the country. Many are economically stressed and eager to return but have nothing to come back to. Jobar and other eastern suburbs were strategically significant as gateways to the capital.

The regime contested them with full force, raining down barrel bombs and even chemical weapons in fighting from 2013 until a surrender deal emptied the area in 2018. Thousands of homes and shops, several mosques and Syria’s most revered synagogue have all been severely damaged, turned into piles of rubble and stripped of iron rods, electrical wires and ceramic tiles. Not far from the