This file tracks a series of thefts targeting the main telecommunications cables in Suwayda governorate over 72 hours, following the areas hit and the scale of the outage left behind in the city and its countryside. It draws on the available technical data about the routes of the damaged cables and the numbers of affected subscribers, and on what the Syrian Telecommunications Company confirmed to Kashaf regarding the difficulties of repair.
A Series of Thefts Across 72 Hours
Suwayda governorate saw, over the past 72 hours, a series of thefts of the main telecommunications cables, cutting services to thousands of subscribers in the city and its countryside. These incidents were neither isolated nor spread out in time; they came consecutively and within a limited geographic range, which distinguishes them from the occasional thefts that hit infrastructure from time to time and makes reading them as a single series the closer fit to the data.
Four Areas Targeted in Three Days
The thefts were distributed across four areas over three days: Masakin al-Khadr, Tariq al-Thala, al-Dbeisi and al-Kum, and in each of them it was the main cables rather than the branch lines that were taken. Targeting the main cables specifically means the effect of each incident is not confined to its immediate surroundings but extends to every subscriber and centre connected to it, which explains the breadth of the outage relative to the number of incidents.
The Scale of the Impact on Subscribers
This was reflected directly in the numbers affected, according to the available technical data:
- Around 7,000 homes and institutions affected by the outages.
- Cables with capacities of 1,800 and 1,200 lines stolen in the al-Kum area.
- Roughly 1,800 subscribers taken out of service in the most recent incident.
The Widening Range of the Outage
The effect did not stop at the boundaries of Suwayda city: the theft reached the optical cable running between Suwayda and Shahba, cutting service to stations and centres connected to the main network. The city of Shahba went out of service and a number of villages and centres belonging to it were affected, turning what began as a localised theft into an outage covering an area far wider than the incident sites themselves.
Repair Challenges and What Remains Open
The Syrian Telecommunications Company confirmed to Kashaf that there are technical difficulties in the repair work, and that the outages will continue until the necessary replacements are secured and the faults repaired, explaining that the stolen cables are not currently available inside Syria. That last point is the core of the problem: the cost of replacement is not only financial but a matter of availability. The question this series raises, and which the available data does not answer, is whether these are organised thefts or a breakdown of security.
