Ten years have passed since the Syrian crisis; a whole decade whose effects will not be over in one more decade even if the war has ended and the losses have stopped from today! Economic losses continue, and social losses, despite being difficult to be measured, some of their indicators say that the greatest losses are in the wide social effects that will continue to appear in the future. While the situation of the youth and children today is difficult and dim, their future burdens will be greater, as they will pay twice the price!

Two main issues occupied the first quarter of this year Syria-wise. The first is the collapse of the standard of living of Syrians in all regions of Syria, at an unprecedented level and speed over the past ten years. The second is the attempts to generalize the state of despair with the end of the fifth round of the Constitutional Committee without achieving any progress, and with complete clarity of the intentions of not wanting to make any progress.

Today, Wednesday, April 7, a meeting was held between Dr. Kadri Jamil, Secretary of People’s Will Party and Mr. Mikhail Bogdanov, to discuss the latest developments. Kassioun publishes below the translation of the official news published by the Russian Foreign Ministry website about this meeting:

The Minister of Economy appeared in an interview on the Syrian Satellite Channel on March 24, 2021 talking about the economic situation, and his speech is said to ignore the (elephant in the room) or perhaps more precisely the (whale floating in the pond) because it describes our situation better! He spoke at length about the government’s endeavors and efforts, and ignored the fact that the government’s actions are practically without effect! However, this article is considered (in defense of the government) being an apparatus with limited capabilities that has to carry the burdens of others.

The astronomically fast collapse that Syrians have been experiencing since the beginning of this year constitutes an ideal environment for the Syrian people’s historical enemies -- those within the regime and within the opposition, and most importantly the Zionist enemy -- to work on breaking down all sorts of values, concepts, and even facts that lie deep within the roots of the Syrian identity. It is what they are actually working on.

The exchange rate of the dollar in the “black” market, that is, on the actual market and in the stores, rose from about 3700 Syrian pounds to the dollar at the end of last month to about 4700 on the 17th of this month, and then went back down to 3700 again, and the fluctuation continues.

Some reduce the destructive role played by the Zionist entity in Syria to the air attacks, which have increased in frequency since the crisis broke out in 2011 and have drastically increased in intensity since around 2018.

Ten years have passed since the popular movement took off in Syria, with all the hopes and bitterness that those years held within their folds, not to mention the suppression, violence, killings, arrests, displacement, cold, hunger, terrorism, and foreign interventions.

Four years have passed since the Astana track started, and three years since Sochi, and the two tracks have played a crucial role that can be summarized in the following main points:
First: The two tracks, particularly after the dead end the Geneva track kept on hitting for several years, were able to prevent the political process from being buried as the West had sought, and as the extremist Syrian sides wanted.

The crux of the political proposition promoted by the extremists is that the ongoing conflict is merely a “struggle for power”. In this manner, they are trying to undermine the right of the Syrian people to self-determination, which constitutes the essence of UNSC Resolution 2254, and turn it into the “right” of the political sides to share power over the Syrian people, or the “right of the victor” among them to monopolize that power.