After ten years of war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad reigns over ruins
A flag bearing the effigy of Bashar al-Assad at a checkpoint in Douma, in the suburbs of Damascus, on March 10, 2021. REUTERS - OMAR SANADIKI
Text by: Paul Khalifeh Follow
7 mins
Bashar al-Assad survived ten years of war, but he rules a crumbling Syria and shares influence with four foreign armies and a multitude of militias.
Publicity
Read more
From our correspondent in Beirut,
Ten years after the start of the war, the rhetoric of Syrian diplomacy and the rhetoric of the leaders in Damascus have not changed on major regional issues.
Listening to President
Bashar al-Assad
- affected by Covid-19 as well as his wife Asma - or reading Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mokdad, one gets the impression that Syria is still this central country, this actor prominent in the Middle East.
For decades, Syria had found its place at the heart of the geopolitics of a region torn by endless conflicts.
Feared and courted, it had established itself as an essential interlocutor thanks to the political skill of its leaders, in particular the former president Hafez el-Assad, but also to the favor of other assets, which allowed it to retain a large independence despite limited resources compared to Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the rich Gulf oil monarchies.
► Also to listen: Syrian the endless conflict: disaster country, failed state?
Little indebted, Syria had achieved agricultural self-sufficiency and had developed a cottage industry, pharmaceutical, metallurgical and electronics.
A major phosphate exporter, in 2010 it also produced 390,000 barrels of oil and 21 million cubic meters of gas per day, which gave it relative energy independence.
It had eradicated illiteracy, consolidated a good level of higher education, developed research centers, built dams and refineries.
All locked by an authoritarian power defended by a powerful army and omnipresent security services.
A fourth term?
Bashar al-Assad, 55, whose imminent fall had been announced many times, is still in power, ten years after the start of the war.
All attempts to overthrow it or to defeat it militarily have failed.
He will undoubtedly run for a fourth term next summer and will probably be reelected in an electoral process that will not meet Western democratic standards.
He is still there, his speech has remained the same, but his country has changed.
Syria is nothing more than a huge field of ruins, its people are half exiled, its cities are destroyed, its industry and its agriculture are devastated.
The figures show that the Syrian war is the most serious humanitarian disaster since World War II, as claimed by the United Nations.
Ten years of fighting left 390,000 dead, 200,000 missing and over a million injured, including tens of thousands of disabled.
Almost half of the 24 million Syrians have been displaced and 5.6 million have taken refuge in neighboring countries, including Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
The others are internal refugees, who sometimes live in unsanitary and overcrowded camps, in government areas or areas beyond the control of central power.
"Nobody can buy anything anymore"
More than 80% of the population has fallen into poverty and 12.4 million people live in a situation of food insecurity, according to the World Food Program (WFP).
The Syrian pound has lost almost 100% of its value against the dollar in ten years, destroying the purchasing power of millions of Syrians.
"
The average salary of a civil servant is worth the equivalent of 15 dollars, that of a soldier 10 dollars, nobody can buy anything any more
", regrets Ghazouane, a Syrian veterinarian converted into a daily worker in Lebanon.
The relentless economic and financial sanctions imposed by Western countries, reinforced by the Caesar law signed by Donald Trump in June 2020, prevent most commercial and financial transactions with Syria.
The situation deteriorated after the crisis in Lebanon, which served as an economic lung for its eastern neighbor.
Syrian businessmen have seen their deposits, estimated at more than ten billion dollars, blocked in Lebanese banks, as is the case for all Lebanese.
The fighting has caused the destruction of entire cities like Raqqa, the former capital of the self-proclaimed "caliphate" of the Islamic State (IS) group.
Large neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble in Aleppo, Homs, Deraa and dozens of other towns.
The infrastructure has been devastated.
Some 70% of the electricity grid substations are out of service, a third of schools have been destroyed or requisitioned by combatants, and only 58% of the country's hospitals are fully operational.
About 70% of the medical staff have fled the country.
Oil production has fallen by more than 90%.
A recent
report by the NGO World Vision
estimates the economic cost of ten years of war at over $ 1,200 billion, and various estimates put the cost of reconstruction at several hundred billion dollars.
On the ground, the front lines did not move in 2020. The direct intervention of Russia (2015), Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah from 2013, had enabled the regime, which only controlled 15% of the territory, to take over two thirds of the country where more than 13.5 million people live.
Bashar al-Assad survived dissent, defections and sanctions.
He eradicated, with the help of his allies, the main centers of the rebellion, which were at the gates of Damascus.
He reversed the balance of military power in his favor while refusing to make fundamental political concessions.
But it did not for all that regain its power of yesteryear.
He reigns over a country in ruins, forced to share territory and influence with four foreign armies and a multitude of militias.
Turks, Russians, Americans and Iranians
The Turks deploy 15,000 troops in Syria where they control a border strip 120 km long and 30 km deep in the north and Idleb province in the northwest.
This region is the last jihadist stronghold of the country after the destruction of the ISIS "caliphate" in March 2019. The Russian army is deploying dozens of aircraft in the air base of Hmeimim, in the North-West, and of other aerodromes, and has a naval base in Tartous and military positions in the east.
Eight hundred American soldiers are present in the North-East, around the main oil wells, as well as in the base of Tanaf, on the border crossroads between Syria, Iraq and Jordan.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iraqi and Afghan Shiite militias are mainly deployed in and around the towns of Boukamal and al-Mayadeen, not far from the border with Iraq in the east.
Kurdish militias, backed by the United States and France, control a third of the territory in Hassaké in the northeast, Raqqa in the north, and the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
In the south, the province of Daraa, cradle of the revolt, is not yet stabilized, because the ex-rebels have a certain autonomy in certain cities like Tafas, in accordance with the surrender agreement concluded under the aegis. from Russia.
In the central Badia desert, the Syrian army regularly confronts cells of the IS organization which engage in deadly guerrilla warfare.
Even if his speech gives it the air of geopolitical grandeur, the regime is only one actor among many others in a fragmented and weakened Syria.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Syria
Bashar al-Assad
On the same subject
International report
Syrian refugees in Turkey, a peaceful cohabitation
International book
"The shame of the West, behind the scenes of the Syrian fiasco" by Antoine Mariotti
Geopolitics, the debate
Syria: the endless conflict.
Disaster country.
Failed state?