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In terms of sheer devastation, Syria today is worse off than Germany at the end of World War II

ven as the fighting continues, a movement is brewing among planners, activists and bureaucrats—some still in Aleppo, others in Damascus, Turkey, and Lebanon—to prepare, right now, for the reconstruction effort that will come whenever peace finally arrives.

In a glass tower belonging to the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, a project called the National Agenda for the Future of Syria has brought together teams of engineers, architects, water experts, conservationists, and development experts to grapple with seemingly impossible technical problems

It is good to do the planning now, because on day one we will be ready,”

The team planning the country’s future is a diverse one. Some are employed by the government of Syria, others by the rebels’ rival provisional government. Still others work for the UN, private construction companies, or nongovernmental organizations involved in conservation, like the World Monuments Fund

As the group’s members outline a path toward renewal, they’re considering everything from corruption and constitutional reform to power grids, antiquities, and health care systems.

Aleppo is split between a regime side with vestiges of basic services, and a mostly depopulated rebel-controlled zone, into which the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have made inroads over the last year

The population exodus has claimed most of the city’s craftsmen, medical personnel, academics, and industrialists

It took decades to clear the moonscapes of rubble and to rebuild, in famous targets like Dresden and Hiroshima but in countless other places as well, from Coventry to Nanking. Some places never recovered their vitality.

Of course, Syrian planners cannot help but pay attention to the model closest to home: Beirut, a city almost synonymous with civil war and flawed reconstructio

We don’t want to end up like Beirut,” one of the Syrian planners says, referring to the physical problems but also to a postwar process in which militia leaders turned to corrupt reconstruction ventures as a new source of funds and power

Syria’s national recovery will depend in large part on whether its industrial powerhouse Aleppo can bounce back

The city’s workshops, famed above all for their fine textiles, export millions of dollars’ worth of goods every week even now, and the economy has expanded to include modern industry as well.

Today, however, the city’s water and power supply are under the control of the Islamic State

Across Syria, more than one-third of the population is displaced.

A river of rubble marks the no-man’s land separating the two sides. The only way to cross is to leave the city, follow a wide arc, and reenter from the far side.

Parts of the old city won’t be inhabitable for years, he told me by Skype, because the ground has literally shifted as a result of bombing and shelling

The first and more obvious is creating realistic options to fix the country after the war—in some cases literal plans for building infrastructure systems and positioning construction equipment, in other cases guidelines for shaping governanc

They’re familiar with global “best practices,” but also with how things work in Syria, so they’re not going to propose pie-in-the-sky idea

If some version of the current regime remains in charge, it will probably direct massive contracts toward patrons in Russia, China, or Iran. The opposition, by contrast, would lean toward firms from the West, Turkey, and the Gulf.

At the current level of destruction, the project planners estimate the reconstruction will cost at least $100 billion

Recently a panel of architects and heritage experts from Sweden, Bosnia, Syria, and Lebanon convened in Beirut to discuss lessons for Syria’s reconstruction—one of the many distinct initiatives parallel to the Future of Syria project.

“You should never rebuild the way it was,” said Arna Mackic, an architect from Mostar. That Bosnian city was divided during the 1990s civil war into Muslim and Catholic sides, destroying the city center and the famous Stari Most bridge over the Neretva River. “The war changes us. You should show that in rebuilding.”

Instead, Mackik says, the sectarian communities keep to their own enclaves. Bereft of any common symbols, the city took a poll to figure out what kind of statue to erect in the city center. All the local figures were too polarizing. In the end they settled on a gold-colored statue of the martial arts star Bruce Lee

“It belongs to no one,” Mackic says. “What does Bruce Lee mean to me?

is that it could offer the city’s people a form of participatory democracy that has so far eluded the Syrian regime and sadly, the opposition as well.

“You are being democratic without the consequences of all the hullabaloo of formal democratization

A great deal of money has been invested in Syria’s destruction— by the regime, the local parties to the conflict, and many foreign powers. A great deal of money will be made in the aftermath, in a reconstruction project that stands to dwarf anything seen since after World War II.

 The war has split and scattered all of their families around the world. Bekandy's father is still back in Syria, her fiancé and mother are in London.

He hopes his good deeds might somehow help reunite him with his family, which is now split into three parts, spread across Europe.

His wife and six-year-old son are on the line from Athens. Their eldest daughter — just 15 — is in Germany.

Lezieh says ISIS drew that X on his house in Aleppo, marking it to show his was a Christian home. He says militants tried to recruit him, threatened to kidnap his children and bombed his new business

Now Lezieh gets by with donations from parishioners and hopes to see his family all in one place soon. He tries to smile through the tears. He has to. His daughter is calling.

The total duration in school remains intact, 12 years. The primary cycle of general education has been increased by one year, and is divided into two modules of three years each, while the intermediary cycle was reduced to three years instead of four. The first year of general education's secondary cycle must be considered common for all four different series of instruction, and the second year is common to only two out of four series. Lebanese students are not allowed to enter formal technical education before age 12, which is the age limit of obligatory education. The scholastic year was changed to 36 weeks, and 4 supplementary hours per week were added at the intermediary and secondary cycles.

The new school curricula was launched in September 1998, and the Educational Center for Research and Development had trained 16,000 teachers in public schools and 6,000 teachers in private schools on the new uses and principles of the new program. The new system took into account economic, social, and national perspectives. The principle characteristics of this new system consist of the following:

The Lebanese educational system has usually relied heavily on private schooling to accommodate the evergrowing demand for learning in the country

As to special education concerning handicapped students, there were about 10,000 handicapped people in 1975 (prior to the Lebanese civil war). During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, this number reached 13,000; it is more than 15,000 in 2001. About 2,500 handicapped people were being educated and made ready to enter the work market.

There are 1508 public and private intermediary and secondary schools for the general instruction program in Lebanon, while there are only 262 schools for the technical and professional instruction program divided between the public sector (29 schools) and the private sector (233 schools).

Education is compulsory until the end of the intermediate cycle, is available to all Lebanese students, and is attended by nearly 95 percent of school-age children

The school year starts in early October and ends in late June. The school day consists of six hours starting at 8:00 a.m. with two hour lunch break and ends at 4:00 p.m. The length of class periods ranges from 50 to 55 minutes. Both public and private schools are supposed to observe official holidays, which are decided by the government; however, Christian-administered, religious private schools take Saturday and Sunday off every week, while Moslem-run religious private schools take Friday and Sunday, and Jewish-run private schools take off all of Saturday and Sunday afternoon only.

In short, the new formal educational system of Lebanon, like in many other countries, divides the years of instruction as follows: 6-3-3 (six years for the primary cycle, three years for the intermediate cycle, and three years for the secondary cycle), followed by the higher education cycle. Primary school education is followed either by a six-year intermediary and secondary program, leading to the official Lebanese baccalaureate certificate, which was originally based on the equivalent French school diploma, or by a three- to six-year technical or vocational training program.

In addition, females appeared to have a slightly higher percentage than males with regard to attending schools and universities. After age 25 male attendance becomes almost double that of female attendance.

the literacy rate was 88.4 percent in 1997

ue to the Lebanese people's negative attitude toward manual work, especially in industry and agriculture, students of lower socioeconomic status enroll mostly in vocational and technical schools. Therefore, there is a big difference between the two major types of instruction, as well as the relative numbers of schools and students enrolled in each of these types

The brevet certificate is only required by public schools, vocational schools, and teacher training institutes. The baccalaureate part I exam has two main tracks: literary and scientific. The baccalaureate part II has four main tracks: literature and humanities, which includes language, literature, history, philosophy, education, arts, and religion; sociology and economy, which includes economic sciences, politics, business and management, law, and sociology; general sciences, which includes mathematics, physics, chemistry, and their applications at the level of engineering; and life sciences, which includes biology and life sciences, chemistry and their applications in the area of medicine, health, agriculture, and other related subjects.

Most institutions of higher education require entrance examinations besides the baccalaureate part II, which is required by law.

The grading system is generally based on scales of 0 to 20 or 0 to 100, with 10 or 60, respectively, as passing grades

he curriculum in Lebanese schools is somewhat rigid, for all students must pursue the same programs in all three cycles

rivate schools can choose textbooks that meet their syllabi, except in the civics area where the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport requires them to use the center's textbooks.

rabic and either French or English are the languages of instruction in the Lebanese schools.

The United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides funds supporting a private nonsectarian school system for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East. This type of private schooling has been very effective in offering education and social services for children of Palestinian Refugees residing in Lebanon