Displaying items by tag: Kassioun Newspaper Editorial

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.

In recent weeks, new statements and indications have emerged regarding the printing of new banknotes and their introduction into circulation starting early next year. This issue can be considered an economic and social time bomb with a direct impact on the lives of Syrians, requiring swift action before it turns into a social catastrophe with unpredictable consequences.

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.

The past ten months — specifically after the transitional president Ahmad Al-Shar’a’s visit to Russia on Wednesday, October 15 — make it possible to objectively assess of the American role in Syria. Despite the “sweet talk” and repeated promises, US policy toward Syria has been clearly working against Syrian interests, and there has been no genuine intent among American decision-makers to give Syria a serious chance to get out of the quagmire in which the Americans themselves were openly a party to creating.

Shortly after “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation on 7 October 2023, and the start of the Zionist’s brutal genocidal war against the Palestinian people, Kassioun wrote in its editorial 1154 on 24 December 2023, titled “Beyond Gaza”, the following: “Perhaps the most important conclusion that can be confirmed regarding the American management of the battle is that the required battle goes far beyond the borders of the Gaza Strip and the borders of Palestine. The slogans ‘NO to expanding the war’ in parallel with ‘NO to a ceasefire’ are precisely intended to prevent a direct war between the Zionist entity and several countries in the region, in exchange for the need to expand the war in the form of comprehensive chaos that includes the entire region”.

About a week ago, Trump presented a “new proposal” containing 20 points to end the war on Gaza. Arab states accepted it before Netanyahu introduced amendments thereto. Hamas responded with a shrewd diplomatic reply that neither rejected nor accepted it, leaving the door open for negotiations and a possible agreement.

The last Kassioun editorial, titled “He Who Perseveres Wins... He Who Gives Up Will Be Defeated”, addressed the recent talk of a forthcoming “security agreement” with “Israel”. This talk intensified over the past week, coinciding with the UN General Assembly meetings, part of which were attended by the Syrian president. Multiple media sources, mostly Western and mostly “Israeli” in their orientation, confirmed that the agreement would be signed in New York or Washington, would include major concessions from the Syrian side, and that a Trump-sponsored meeting would be held between the “Israeli” occupation’s prime minister and the transitional Syrian president on the 29th of this month.

Official and journalistic sources, both Syrian and non-Syrian, are talking about the possibility of a US-sponsored “security agreement” with the “Israeli” entity soon. The discussions include various details about the nature of the supposed agreement. Regardless of the veracity of the rumors, what these discussions all have in common is that they all involve Syrian concessions and concessions to the occupier in exchange for “some sort of” security or non-security “guarantees”, as well as talk of lifting US sanctions, which have yet to be lifted despite all the hype surrounding their eventual lifting.