For whom does the Government rule? Between Parasites, Producers, and Millions.

In the situation of Syria, where the de facto powers rule in all regions of the country, and try to collect as much wealth as they can, their governments will only be concerned with the affairs of specific caste and social segments: employers, investors, importers, exporters, smugglers, arms bearers and crossings’ guards. Those are the people in the perspective of the system.

As for the rest of the workers, producers, and the unemployed of Syria, there is no need to rule them. It is enough to leave them for the rule of poverty, and one’s daily bread. They can be temporarily fed by the system of charity which divides them into tribes, clans, sects, and followers, within a situation that will continue until the table turns for the country to be born or to perish.

So, about whom does the System and the Government really care? Import as an Activity for Parasites.

In the perspective of the system and its government, importers are a power that should be seriously dealt with: as import is practically an activity that approximates one-third of the Syrian GDP in the current circumstances, and about 5 billion dollars circulate in it within the regular imports only, and its profit may range between 30 -100%  and perhaps more. Those profits are distributed among the elites associated with this activity: the influential, who have the right to allow and prevent import, hence, they have a share from its activity - the foreign exchange market, whether the regular one through the system of offices and banks or the irregular - the system of import services: such as: banks, insurance, and shipping – in addition to the system of customs, crossings, transportation, and others from the loops that can benefit from imported goods, and which have become the backbone of life. Without import, there will be no bread, milk, or eggs. Moreover, 70% of local cultivation are associated with import through its imported requirements. Practically, the bounties of agricultural production are being absorbed through import, the production whose continuation has become harnessed to the profits of importers and the exporters of raw agricultural goods at the expense of the abundance of local food. According to that, import is a priority to the system, hence, to the government, and it is the way to obtain a share from all the basics. It will only be reduced or managed in a way that increases the concentration of its profit among the higher-ups.

Industry has Little Space for Producers

The system and the government are also concerned with the system of private local industries at a lower level, as it constitutes a proportion of about 10% of the GDP according to the latest official figures in 2019. Based on this lower (final – financial) significance of the industrial system, the level of listening to its voice and meeting its demands is lower than meeting the demands of import. According to the latest statement of the chairman of the chambers of industry in Syria, the profit rate in Syrian industrial facilities is no more than 9%, and is decreasing to 7%. Although they produced a surplus value by 36% according to the estimates of 2019, i.e. a significance increase in their non-productive costs in the first place, as industrialists are paying part of the profit of the basic product on other loops: corruption, trade, banks, insurance, royalties, finances, etc. This explains the level of private industrial congestion, and explains the decline in the number of productive facilities in private industrial cities in 2020 by 16%, as the number of facilities have decreased by one-third, and this decline occurred in one year only.

Awaited Lands and Spoils

Of course, the system and the government have great interest in the real estate sector, as it besets important wealth represented in land and the need for residence, and it has a chance represented in widespread destruction! This interest is represented in real estate investment projects and facilities, and their close relationship with the state apparatus' ownership of the land, and its ownership of the right to own private land. Based on this, concessions and exemptions are offered to the real estate investment sector, pending the moment of reconstruction, which in their narrow perspective may only be real estate partnerships like those in the phase between 2005 – 2010, when Gulf money flowed in the form of foreign investments to partner with major influential powers in constructing luxurious residential compounds, from which some partners were enriched and which was consumed by the elite. So, while the system and the government are awaiting foreign money, dealing with real estate sector today will not go beyond seeking to increase the government’s finances from the private properties of Syrian families from real estate, and from their need for shelter, in order to impose a higher tax on the Syrians' trading of real estate, selling or renting, according to the real estate sales law.

Millions of the Employed and the Unemployed

These people, are not an effective population in the perspective of the system and the government, rather they are affected, because they simply do not own anything. According to the elite, they are either patriotic followers, or followers of a rival party, i.e., traitors! The Syrian wage owner, wherever he was, whether in Damascus, Lattakia, Idlib, Hasakah, or Daraa, is not among the considerations of the elite and the de facto powers who share the rule across the country. According to the elite, an average wage that does not allow survival nor the minimum amount of the basics: bread, energy, and medicine, is sufficient for these people.

It is also (according to the elite) sufficient for them to live at a level that shortens life expectancy and causes diseases. These de facto authorities have no room in their crisis to turn to these people, and all their concentration lies upon the management of seizing the remaining wealth circulating between segments, powers, and even specific characters. On this basis, there will be no improvement in the situation of wages, which was publicly clarified, except for in "bids" from time to time. There also will not be any serious endeavor to lower prices to suit these incomes, because prices are based on international prices, while wages are based on the standard level of impoverishment, which the Syrians are experiencing. Based on this, all that is produced through the de facto powers and their governments will only revolve around the financial powers. So, if industrialists lost in the price of medicine and pushed towards this direction, the price of medicine will be increased by 30%. Even if the cost of this will deprive millions from this medicine, the logic of the system and the government says: "it is okay, it can be exported"!

This does not mean that the system, its governments, and the de facto powers across Syria do not take the fact that we are millions of people engulfed in injustice into consideration, but they only have two ways to deal with this. The first: intimidation, repression, and associating large segments of the marginalized with militias. The second: dividing us according to the system of local, regional, and international aid. Hence, Syrians will live in Idlib, A'zaz, Damascus, and Lattakia on the intermittent bids of warlords, their associations, the faces of "charity", and their local and regional extensions all the way to the mercy of international aid, run by the networks of "international organizations". A clear policy to deal with millions: starving them, intimidating them, and giving charity to them. It is a policy, which all underdeveloped systems across the world have tried and its end is dire: either anger that swallows and washes away these elites, so that we can move forward, or chaos that makes the country written off from the pages of history, even if temporarily.

(Arabic version)