Displaying items by tag: Syrian Crisis

When the number 3500 billion SYP is mentioned in the budget, we are talking about 40% of total government expenditure for 2021. It’s the most important expenditure bloc in the budget, which is a normal thing because it reflects the significance of the energy sector and securing essential food at least, i.e., it is the sum that expresses the continuance of securing the essentials for living, as the confusion in dealing with subsidies, rethinking about them, and trying to reduce them, is a major part of the crisis of the decline in the means of life support inside the country.

There is a noteworthy consensus in assessing the objectives of the repeated “Israeli” military assaults in Syria. As we hear from analysts from various sides a unified assessment, the summary of which is that the attacks target Iranian and Hezbollah sites, forces, weapons, or leaders operating on Syrian soil, and that their objective is to undermine the possibilities of transferring weapons to Hezbollah, as well as undermining “Iranian influence”.

Logical estimates say that the newly introduced 5000 SYP [a piece of paper money that had never existed before] will turn into a surplus money supply in the market because the current level of prices needs an additional money supply of Syrian pounds. However, this will not be a reason for price increase, as prices are practically dollarized and are deeply related to the decline in the flow of goods inside and into the Syrian economy.

On Monday, the 25th of this month, the works of the fifth round of the Syrian Constitutional Committee – which has not accomplished anything significant up to the present moment – will begin.

Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mr. Sergey Lavrov held talks with a joint delegation of representatives of Moscow Platform of the Syrian opposition and Cairo Platform of the Syrian opposition, today in Moscow.

On the surface, it seems as if the Syrian crisis will continue for many years to come. Of course, one cannot blame ordinary Syrians who believe this insinuation, for many reasons, including:

With the dawn of a new year of the Syrian catastrophe, and because “your friend is one who is truthful with you, not the one who believes you”, we believe it is useful to share with the sides we believe have an interest in resolving the Syrian crisis, our views and observations about the stage the country has reached and the ways out of the disaster. We summarize this in the following messages:

Understanding the international positioning of every power and country involved in the Syrian issue is unavoidable to form a correct perception of the nature of the contradictory interests.

Some details and comparisons between the import costs of diesel oil and fertilizers, and between the costs of subsidizing them and the differences in selling them in the market, clarify which bloc of plundering public money is being talked about. 

A few days separate us from the end of a year that is, by all accounts, the most catastrophic for Syria and the Syrian people. While the world is preoccupied these days with counting its Coronavirus-related losses, the pandemic itself almost seems just a small detail in the long list of tragedies that Syrians are experiencing.