The agreement signed by Mohammad Hamsho last Wednesday, 7 January 2026, with the “National Committee for Combating Illicit Enrichment” sparked widespread—and justified—anger among the Syrian public. The agreement appeared to justify and legitimize “illicit enrichment”, rather than combat it.
On the surface, what happened in Venezuela appears to be a victory for the US—the strong, dominant power that strikes wherever and whenever it wishes and imposes its will by various means, including iron and fire, military coups, and criminality. At a deeper level, however, the real picture is exactly the opposite, and it can be discerned by considering the following coordinates:
On February 17, 2011, in Damascus’s al-Hariqa market—before any foreign interventions, before any influx of money or weapons, and as a natural, spontaneous result of the accumulated oppression, injustice, and anger—crowds of Syrians chanted in the face of the authorities and their representatives: “Thieves! Thieves!” They also chanted: “The Syrian people will not be humiliated”.
Last Thursday, December 19, while celebrating “Hanukkah” at the White House, Trump made a number of statements regarding the occupied Syrian Golan, boasting that he had “given it to Israel”, describing it as land rich enough to be worth trillions of dollars. In doing so, he reminded everyone of the decision he took during his first term—specifically on March 25, 2019—when he signed a US presidential decree recognizing “full Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights”.
Despite the great efforts to create a festive atmosphere around the current Syrian situation, it seems – according to the popular saying – like “sprinkling sugar on death”. The facts are clear and stark about the depth of the accumulated and worsening tragedy. Starting with the general political situation, in which Syria is still a set of regions governed by different authorities and in which multiple economic spaces prevail, and the catastrophic economic conditions and liberal measures and orientations hostile to the interests of more than 90% of Syrians and are consistent with the IMF and the World Bank formulas, and not ending with the security situation, which is becoming more dangerous day after day, due to destructive foreign interventions, especially “Israeli”, and due to the rise in the level of sectarian incitement and the absence of real political participation, and even the clear attempts to contain the political movement of the people once again.
“Today, a dark page in the history of Syria and the Syrian people has been turned. It was a page in which an entire people were squeezed into its narrow margins, enduring every form of suffering, oppression, deprivation, pain, displacement, poverty, and imprisonment—while its entire center was occupied by tyranny, corruption, plundering, and encroachment on people’s rights and dignity.
The official statements made last July—chief among them the remarks of the Governor of the Central Bank of Syria, who affirmed that, in accordance with the directives of the Presidency of the Republic, the country would not resort to external debt nor borrow from the IMF or the World Bank—had reassured Syrians who know all too well the “formulas” of these two institutions and the heavy prices they entail. The policies previously tried in Syria under the banners of “reform” and “liberalization” produced nothing but the systematic destruction of the living standards of the poor, a rapid erosion of the role of the state, and a massive social explosion whose costs the country continues to pay today.
Last Thursday, November 6, 2025, the UN Security Council adopted a new resolution on Syria, numbered 2799 (2025), which removed the transitional president Ahmad al-Sharaa and Minister of Interior Anas Khattab from the terrorism lists, and — for the first time — explicitly placed Syria under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.
The recently announced decision to raise electricity prices by the Ministry of Energy was nothing less than an explicit declaration of moving in the exact opposite direction of the interests of Syrians. It is a continuation of a methodology that facts have repeatedly proven leads only to ruin: raising prices before genuinely raising wages, and burdening the poor with the cost of what has been destroyed by flawed policies accumulated over decades, which continue today.
The Syrian people are a single, integrated political unit and cannot be defined as merely a sum of ethnicities, religions, sects, and tribes. This integrated unity contains a contradiction between the plunderers and the plundered: the plunderers, who do not exceed 10% of the population and belong to all ethnicities, religions, sects, and tribes; and the plundered, who are more than 90% of the population and likewise belong to all ethnicities, religions, sects, and tribes.
