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Kassioun Editorial 1092: The State Should Abandon the Dollar… and Quickly!
Despite the slight improvement in the exchange rate of the Syrian pound against the dollar during the last two days, the general tendency remains constant towards further deterioration, as long as the same policies continue and particularly the role of the dollar within the Syrian economy.
Kassioun’s last editorial, "An Ominous Omen of a New Wave of Sweeping", contemplated the exchange rate as one of several indicators that collectively constitute an ominous omen of the imminent phrase for the livelihood of the Syrian people and their ability to stay in their country.
We look here at an aspect that is organically linked to the issue, which is the role of the dollar within the Syrian economy, which represents one of the strangest contradictions of the Syrian crisis and one of its most revealing aspects at the same time.
While Western countries, led by Washington, continue their stifling siege on Syria, their sanctions, and systematic work against a political solution, their dollar continues to play its role as a unit for measurement and exchange in Syria. More strangely, all that is taking place in global circumstances in which all the countries seeking to preserve their resources and achieving independence (even if relative) from the Western plundering system, are increasingly racing to abandon the dollar. These countries are doing that through a set of policies, including increasing the levels of exchanges in local currencies, abandoning their dollar reserves and dollar treasury bonds in favor of gold and a basket of various currencies. Additionally, they are accelerating the bringing of their dollar stocks, whether as liquidities or as investments, from the Western center towards their countries and towards investment prospects in Asia in particular, and in Africa to a lesser degree.
Many countries are making great strides therein, even countries like the Arab Gulf countries that were for decades described (and rightfully so at the time) as being absolutely subservient to the US, they are moving towards raising the degree of their financial and economic, and therefore political independence from the dollar and its owners. While all of that is going on in the entire world, the policies of the government authorities in Syria, and behind it those who actually influence it, continue to cling to the dollar as the controller of the Syrian economy, and in complete contradiction to the anti-West political slogans they raise.
If the US is militarily occupying part of the Syrian territory, the dollar is economically occupying all of Syria, starting with its Central Bank. In the end, whoever owns the economy, has the authority and power.
This could explain to a large extent the similarity, not in word but in actions, between the policies of the extremists from the Syrian sides with regard to the political solution issue and the issue of economically turning East. As everyone knows, the extremists of the opposition are under the West’s wing and receive support therefrom – especially American support – and they are not ashamed of that, but actually say it openly and always demand more of it.
The extremists on the other side follow the same obstructive behavior with regard to the political solution, albeit using other tools and slogans. In the end, the picture is crystal clear that extremists on both sides, regardless of what they say, are economically linked with the Western dollar system and rely on it specifically to obstruct the solution to the Syrian crisis, and even to deepen it.
Liberation from the dollar colonialism, and primarily the Syrian state abandoning the dollar as a unit of measurement and exchange, is a patriotic task that must be done sooner rather than later. Achieving this will contribute quickly to improving the exchange rate of the Syrian pound. Additionally, achieving it will make easier opening the door to the comprehensive political solution through the full implementation of UNSC Resolution 2254, which will lead to reunifying the country, restoring its independence, and expelling the foreign forces out of it. These tasks overlap in that their main carrier and the real stakeholder therein are the plundered people who make up more than 90% of Syrians. Those people transcend all the secondary alignments on the scene – political, national, sectarian, religious, etc. – and converge on the fact that they have one interest, which is at the same time the interest of the homeland. Those, in particular, are the homeland itself, and they must unite their efforts to impose their political will in the political solution and get liberated from the dollar’s colonialism.
