The impact of international sanctions cannot be separated from the deterioration of all economic and social indicators in Syria, as the blockade is a major contributor to the deterioration of health indicators, such as: decrease in the average age, increase in child mortality rate, expansion of undernourishment, and others. The blockade is also a major contributor to economic deterioration based on all its indicators.
The minimum wage in Syria has become the lowest in the world, when measured in dollars, and it may also be the lowest in terms of its purchasing power. Within two weeks, the costs of the basic food basket became 6.6 times the minimum wage – the latter is approximately 50 thousand pounds! This means that the cost of living for a family of five members has exceeded 550 thousand Syrian pounds, taking into account that food constitutes 60% of the cost of living in the current harsh conditions that constrain spending on other aspects!
The two Syrian Kurdish sides – the Kurdish National Unity Parties, which includes 25 parties, and the Kurdish National Council – announced on the 16th of this month, that they had reached a preliminary agreement after many years dominated by a sort of disconnect between the two parties. There was even a dispute that reached the level of contradiction and an exchange of accusations on many occasions, despite the fact that there is between the two parties, or between major parts thereof, a history of a series of agreements – Hawler 1, Hawler 2, Dohuk – that did not succeed in reaching the desired objectives thereof.
The Syrian government has started a new wave of subsidy removal. This time, the government wanted to be fair in applying the distribution of subsidies, so it targeted high capacity cars and people who own more than one car, in an effort to reduce gasoline consumption and collect additional revenues from domestic sales. However, to whom do the oil product subsidy amounts actually go? They are a source of domestic and international profit for anyone blockading Syrians.
The new US sanctions package, or the Caesar Act, came into effect yesterday, Wednesday, with a “spectacle” involving cheering, applause, and welcoming on the part of that type of personalities, who were nine years ago begging for external intervention in its various forms, especially militaristic.
As-Suwayda governorate witnessed during the past week several demonstrations whose slogans and chants ranged between demand-oriented and political, and included old slogans, including those used during the years 2011-2014, with some new ones.
“The Obama administration welcomed Russian intervention in Syria, assuming it would be a quagmire... and this frankly was a fatal mistake.”
As the overall American crisis deepens with its various dimensions – economic, social, political, and even cultural and ideological – its repercussions frequently reflect on Washington’s foreign policies.
Media platforms were frenzied over the past few days with the issue of Syriatel’s Chairman, Rami Makhlouf, and his failure to pay the financial dues owed to the state.
Extremism in the public political field can be simply defined as being detached from reality, manifested by insisting on raising unattainable slogans. The extremists, over time, reach a satisfactory and chronic state of denial. We can see this in the Syrian case with an endless number of examples and it does not stop at the limits of “settling matters” (as in the regime settling things militarily) and “toppling” (as in toppling the regime).
