Without clarity on the country’s economic framework, Assad-era cronyism may reappear.
English
Yezid Sayigh
Diwan, a blog from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Program and the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, draws on Carnegie scholars to provide insight into and analysis of the region. Learn More
Syria needs an economic reconstruction program. Desperately. Yet nearly a year after the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, there is still no talk of putting together a comprehensive economic reconstruction plan, whether in Damascus or among the obvious international stakeholders. Without clarity and wide-based consultation on the country’s new economic framework, there is a distinct risk that the cronyism of the Assad-era economy will reappear, undermining social equity and generating political discontent, and that violence will reemerge as “a central mechanism for the redistribution of power and wealth among competing forces,” as it did during the long civil war.
The new Syrian authorities have announced memorandums of understanding worth $14 billion and contracts worth billions more with foreign commercial and government entities. Yet this only underlines the absence of an integrated, overall approach to economic reconstruction, one in which the present focus on generating quick revenue through real estate schemes and leasing major infrastructure facilities to foreign investors is balanced with investment in productive sectors including industry, agriculture, and services that can generate jobs and enhance economic complementarity. Moreover, the lack of transparency when it comes to contract details, settlements with Assad-era business cronies, liquidation of Baath Party assets, and the government’s new sovereign wealth fund impedes accountability and threatens the viability of investments. The official embrace of a free-market approach lacks guardrails and is not shaped by consultation with relevant economic actors and social groups.
The absence of a comprehensive economic reconstruction plan for Syria is paradoxical. After all, it was evident during the long, brutal war that the country would need large-scale economic reconstruction. In 2012, the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia launched the first major effort to prepare for reconstruction, the National Agenda for the Future of Syria, which was intended as “a platform for technical dialogue for Syrian experts” to discuss “social, economic and governance factors” in a “post-conflict Syria.” A year later, Friends of the Syrian People, an international diplomatic collective, foreshadowed reconstruction by creating a multi-donor Syria Recovery Trust Fund “to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people” by funding essential services.
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