Displaying items by tag: Syrian Crisis

Energy and Bread; there is perhaps nothing that intensifies the material and economic essentials of any social structure more than these two components. Bread is enough for survival, and energy is necessary for moving forward and for work. The abundance of these two components is the necessary and inadequate limit to guarantee economic, political, and social security. When the economic and political structure is “lenient” with bread and energy crises, then it is practically not looking for the essentials for survival or moving forward, and is indifferent about falling into the abyss.   

Although ten years have passed, “violence” in its various forms is still the most prominent headline in describing what is happening against the Syrian people, though that violence has taken different forms during the past ten years, and it has been practiced by many sides. Violence has become one of the most important tools used and still being used by the various forces and sides to suppress the Syrian people and try to divide Syria geographically and humanly, and to reinforce and deepen that division with the aim of perpetuating and fixing it and thus deepening the crisis and striving to make it impossible to reach a comprehensive and implementable political solution.

As the forces, sides, and circumstances at all levels changed, the forms of violence also changed to ensure the ability of stakeholders to achieve their objectives and interests that contradict and go against the interests of the Syrian people.

On Friday, July 9, 2021, the UN Security Council adopted unanimously a resolution, UNSC Resolution 2585, on the delivery of humanitarian aid into Syria through border crossings and “to all parts of Syria without discrimination”.

We deal in this article with an aspect that we have not previously dealt with extensively within the discussion of US and Western sanctions on Syria. This aspect can be condensed by the question bearing the title of the article: When will the US lift its sanctions on Syria?

The government has raised the prices of bread and medicines, and raised the pricing of imports: oils, poultry feed, powdered milk, and sugar. This was something expected and it will continue, as the government is managing the affairs of the most powerful: importers; as a vital area for the powers of influence and intrusion, and industrialists at a lower level; as they still have some significance. However, there are 15 million helpless human beings left outside of the government’s considerations. After all, the government rules in favour of the system, and the system only sees society according to how much money and power it has.

The exchange rate and the levels of prices have been relatively stabilized for two months in a row. It is something worth monitoring in the situation of Syria, after the deteriorated pace of the Syrian pound has accelerated since the end of 2018, and reached its peak in the first three months of 2020 and of the current year. So, is this current stability permanent? And what do warlords have to do with it?

Despite the great differences among the Syrian sides, and among the non-Syrian sides interfering in Syrian affairs, they all agree in repeating the phrase: “Syria’s territorial integrity and unity of the Syrian people.”

The results of the Russian-American summit have not yet emerged, especially with regard to the Syria file. This is quite normal, as such a summit can only involve consensus in very general terms regarding the issues under discussion/negotiation.

It has been nearly five and a half years since the adoption of UNSC Resolution 2254 providing for a solution to the Syrian crisis. At that time, the resolution was adopted unanimously by the members of the UN Security Council, though it has yet to be implemented.

When Syrian business owners talk about their coping mechanisms and the continuation of their business under the extreme Syrian conditions, one saying is repeated: «the wages of workers have decreased». This fact is the only «positive factor» for the business sector in Syria, as all costs have increased: raw materials, transportation, money transfer, corruption costs and others, but workers have remained with their wages, or more precisely «with their hunger», snatching away the remnants of the Syrian production!