At the beginning of Ramadan 2022, the average cost of living for a Syrian family of 5 has exceeded 2.8 million Syrian pounds according to Kassioun index. It is an unprecedented increase within a record period of time that threatens millions of Syrians who are witnessing a catastrophic gap between the costs of living and the minimum wage of Syrian workers, which remains at the threshold of 92,970 Syrian pounds (i.e., less than half of the cost of the minimum amount of food per working individual alone)! 

US and Western sanctions are nothing new, they go back to more than 70 years, though their harshness varies from one place to another and from time to another.

 Not dealing with the electricity crisis as a priority rises to the level of national irresponsibility, as it contributes effectively to emptying the country of its people, perpetuating division, additional deterioration of living standards, and the Zionist plans for the country and its people.

Like other Syrian fields of activity, the sector of education with its two sides – education and higher education – has deteriorated rapidly throughout the years of the crisis. Apart from occasions’ slogans about the importance of the education sector in the country, figures reveal a disastrous decline at all levels in this sector, including government spending on it, which kept rapidly shrinking and reducing until we reached a point where the government (discretionary) spending on the education sector in 2021 has not even reached a quarter of what it used to be in 2010. 

Eleven years after the crisis erupted in the country, its disastrous impacts have affected the entire society, and of course, children were the most vulnerable and fragile segment. The crisis and its repercussions have left millions of children in need, who are obliged to coercively engage in labor market to fill part of the huge gap between wages and the minimum of food and living costs. Meanwhile, the vast majority of these children live in unsuitable environments and consequences that threaten them with negative social impacts that may expand to a minimum of two generations.

Eleven years after the outbreak of the crisis in the country, humanitarian needs are still aggravating in Syria, given the long-term consequences of the wide spread destruction of infrastructure across the country. In addition to the acceleration of the economic downturn that began before the crisis erupted, and grew in frequency during it, causing Syria to become the country with the most internally displaced people in the world.

Since the 2008 crisis erupted, at the time being called the “financial crisis”, it became clear to the “People’s Will Party” that the crisis would not stop and will continue to deepen reaching the main nerve of the capitalist system in its modern form. That is, towards production, then towards the dollar.

Since events in Ukraine started, the extremists from both Syrian sides rushed to look within these events for something that supports their previous slogans of “resolving militarily” and “toppling”. This behavior – apart from being detached from reality – represents turning a blind eye to three catastrophic coordinates of the Syrian reality, which continues on growing deeper and more painful.

The Syrian healthcare sector is facing crises and chronic problems that are reflecting in the lack of the availability and quality of healthcare services across the country. Alongside the inability to determine the real effects of the spread of Coronavirus in the country, in absence of reliable government figures on cases and deaths, disruption in healthcare services and systems continues. This is not only because of the spread of the virus and the conditions of the Syrian crisis, but mainly because of the decline in government expenditure on healthcare sector, which continues to reduce constantly and rapidly.

The last Kassioun editorial was titled: “The End of the Petrodollar Era?”, and the subsequent events quickly confirmed what was written therein. Specifically, last Wednesday, Russia
announced that it would sell its gas exclusively in rubles to “unfriendly countries”, and not in dollars or euros.