DAMASCUS — For over three decades, Bahij Khazal sold Syrian national lottery tickets and cigarettes from a small table near the Havana Café, a landmark close to Damascus’ Governorate Square. The 70-year-old, who is deaf and mute, paid the equivalent of $600 in Syrian pounds to a lottery distributor just days before the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The payment was for tickets in the December 10 draw — a draw that never took place. Two days earlier, the regime had fallen, abruptly halting the lottery and leaving Bahij, along with hundreds of other vendors, uncertain about the future of their livelihoods.
Shortly after, a video emerged showing lottery tickets being printed inside the General Intelligence Directorate’s building in Damascus, further fueling public suspicion. As weeks passed, it became clear that the new authorities had indefinitely suspended both weekly and annual lottery draws, creating a dual loss for vendors: not only did they lose the money invested in tickets, but their entire source of income had vanished.
But the fate of the lottery may also hold a clue about bigger questions about the new government’s plans, on both economic and religious questions.
A long tradition
The Damascus International Fair Lottery dates back to 1954. In 2020, the prize value reached 100 million SYP ($5 million). In 2021, the price of a ticket rose to 5,000 SYP ($2). The website “Syria Report” indicated that if all the tickets were sold in 2020, it would generate profits of 11 billion SYP, compared to 3.9 billion in 2018. In 2022, the prize value reached 2.4 billion SYP and in 2023, the total prizes for the New Year lottery issues reached 2.862 billion SYP.
We mention all these numbers about the lottery, its prize values and prices because we are looking at a profitable sector that brought millions into the state treasury. But after the fall of the regime, confusion quickly spread around the institution — especially among the most affected group: lottery vendors.
One such vendor in Damascus told Daraj that he used to buy tickets at his own expense and sell them for a modest profit. “But the draws have stopped since the fall of the regime,” he said. “All we want now is to recover the price of the tickets we paid for out of our own pockets.”
The vendor said he and his fellow sellers have been trying to make sense out of reports that the lottery may never come back. “We were told that the lottery had been canceled because it violates Islamic law and is considered forbidden.”
“The closure of the institution in Syria has nothing to do with its financial status.”
According to Bahij, rumors circulated among vendors that a group of distributors arranged a meeting with the Minister of Economy in the interim government, Basel Abdul Hanan, in January, to understand the reasons for halting the lottery.
An employee in the registry network at the post office, where lottery tickets are distributed, said that the suspension of the lottery is primarily linked to ongoing investigations involving the Director-General of the Lottery Institution, which appear to relate to a financial corruption case.
On the other hand, the employee didn’t express much optimism about the lottery resuming and mentioned that at best, it might return “within a legitimate framework” with smaller prizes and proceeds directed toward charitable organizations — similar to the charity lottery in Jordan. He believes that, in the worst case, the lottery will not resume and the reason will be “religious and legal,” given the ideological background of the current authority in Damascus.
All we want now is to recover the price of the tickets we paid for out of our own pockets.
A once-lucrative industry
Before the civil war and inflation decimated Syria’s economy, the lottery was a state success story. In 2010, the grand New Year’s prize — broadcast live on national television during a glitzy concert — totaled 60 million SYP (around $1.2 million). This was a life-changing sum for ordinary Syrians.
Importantly, the lottery law capped prize payouts at 45% of total ticket sales, making it a reliable profit center for the state. But despite its profitability, the institution is now in limbo
A profitable but problematic institution
The decision to suspend the lottery mirrors the governance style of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the Idlib region, where no formal lottery exists — only small-scale promotional giveaways from local businesses.
The editor of the “Syria Report” newsletter, Jihad Yazigi, told Daraj that the lottery — even if we don’t have published numbers from the state — had always clearly been profitable.
“The lottery institution differs from other government institutions, which are usually loss-making because they provide essential services, like public medical institutions, police and the army,” Yazigi explained. “The closure of the institution in Syria has nothing to do with its financial status. There is no economic logic in closing this institution, especially in the current situation where the Syrian state needs every source of money. Most likely, the closure stems from a religious-ideological reasoning, rooted in the ideology of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, which now forms a fundamental part of Syria’s new administration.”
Yazigi said that as a game of chance, lotteries are forbidden by a strict reading of Islamic law. Still, he speculates that if the national lottery had been a bigger boon, it might have been saved.
“Had its profits been comparable to the oil sector, they would have found a justification for its continuation,” Yazigi explained. “But because of its small profit and the religious questions surrounding it, no internal struggle emerged within the new administration to justify its continuation.”
