” Some Arab progressives yesterday were displeased with negative comments I wrote against Asad regime and against the “refusalness” (mumana`ah) stance of the lousy Syrian regime. Their point is that Asad regime has supported Hizbullah’s resistance to Israel. My answer: I don’t trust the Syrian regime: even when they, on rare occasions, take a verbal stand against Israel. This is a regime that is motivated first and foremost–since Hafidh days–by the obsession with its own security and survival. It killed resistance fighters against Israel when it suited its interests: i am talking about its murderous military intervention in 1976 when it crushed a nascent Lebanese-Palestinian alliance that was destined to win against Israel’s death squads in Lebanon. That victory would have been detrimental against Israeli interests and the Syrian regime collaborated with Israel in the war on Tal Az-Za`tar camp in the same year. The Syrian regime supported Hizbullah’s fight against Israel for its own reasons, and it also fought Hizbullah into the 1980s. The Asad regime’s calculations were never about liberating Palestine or about empowering resistance against Israel. The Asad regime truly supported one PLO organization: As-Sa`iqah, which contributed nothing in the struggle against Israel, unless you count thuggery, blackmail, looting, and murders as struggle. Asad was Minister of Defense when George Habash was put in jail in 1968, because the regime did not want any fight against Israel. In the 1990s, PLO leaders in Damascus were summoned by `Abdul-Halim Khaddam (on orders of Hafidh Al-Asad) to tell them that they are barred from plotting any attacks on Israel, and were sometimes prevented from making political statements against Israel (according to a senior member of the delegation who told me about it). So the progressive has a clear task: to support the overthrow of the regime, while opposing the reactionary Muslim Brothers and their liberal allies who are capable of replacing one lousy repressive regime with another. Secondly, progressive owe it to the Syrian people to support their legitimate struggle against dictatorship. And Syrian jails are full of leftists and communists who were the most daring in their struggle against the regime. I am thinking about the brutal treatment of the leaders and members of Communist Action Party (which succeeded in recruiting among `Alawites). Thirdly, the entire record of the regime vis-a-vis Israel is shameful: it was a record of defeats. And a senior Minister in the government of Hafidh Al-Asad in 1973 shared with me deep suspicions about the defeatist role played by Hafidh at the time. Fourthly, Arab progressive have no choice but to support the overthrow of every single Arab regime (and add Iran to the mix, and of course the Zionist entity which should be abolished and replaced by a liberated Palestine where people can live in freedom and equality without regard to religion). No Arab regime is worth the support of any progressive. Sixthly, Arab progressive should have more faith in the Syrian people: a free Syria can be more giving in terms of struggle against Israel than the present-day regime especially if we fight simultaneously against the Asad regime and the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies. Of course, we should fight against the Asad regime on our own terms and not according to the Saudi-Qatari-Israeli design which want us to believe that real opposition to the Asad regime should translate into support for their chosen clients. But since when we progressives take marching orders from oil dynasties or from Zionist hoodlums? “

Abu Khalil is an anarchist of all things (you can’t see it but I’m rolling my eyes at the thought of a grown and educated man proclaiming anarchism) and strongly and childishly irreligious (which I bring up only as evidence that there are many fundamental things which I disagree with him upon, not as a personal criticism). That said, I think he’s pretty much on point here. The posteuring of arab radicalism aside, I don’t think there’s much worth salvaging in the Syrian regime that wouldn’t be grandfathered in into a revolutionary one. The loss of its brutish security apparati? It’s pathetic army? A lot of checks written in polemics and uncashed in action? I just don’t see the issue: I’m very much a realist and against the chaos and violence of revolution generally, but as Asad has not delivered any kind of worthwhile governance I must say that I support the mass of Syrians if a revolution is what they want. Despite Hillary Clinton’s attempts to foster a relationship with the opposition; I don’t think the US is getting anywhere with Syrian, except through Saudi agitators like the MB, and that is a not a serious threat to a/the revolution, in my estimation.

I think the US has coordinated its allies in such a way as to make it in their interests to swarm on Syria. Turkey doesn’t want to deal with a Kurdish problem, and probably does have expansionist ambitions on Northern Syria. The Saudis are undoubtedly funding Sunni agitation in Syria and from Lebanon and Iraq. Israel has been quiet, sensibly, as they do not want to taint the opposition with accusations of Zionist alignment. The US and Israel want to take down Syria, have no means to do so except through regional allies, and so cannot be so blatant as they have been in Iraq and Libya. They have to work through the Saudis, the GCC and the Turks.

That said, Syrians do have legitimate grievances against the regime, and the opposition voices are not pro-Zionist. NATO has not invaded as they did in Libya. I don’t entirely discount the uprising as illegitimate, along the lines of the Libyan resistance. N doubt there are legitimate grievances there too, but the rebels have been many, many times worse for the country than Qadaffi’s regime. The uprising there has in fact galvanized support for Qadaffi. This hasn’t been the case in Syria.

Syria has yet to demonstrate any resistance to the obvious conspiracy against it. I suppose Asad imagines that if his regime survives the uprising he will need to crawl back into Saudi arms. He supported Saudi repression in Bahrain, for example. I have little sympathy for him.

I think this is basically a case of Asad having become too isolated from the broader Zionist configuration, and so regime change is in order. I take no issue with the toppling of the regime per se, but the question is what happens afterwards? There’s no clear leadership, the US and its allies have no real ability to co-opt the uprising as they have in Libya. I am optimistic. I would hope to see something along the lines of the Egyptian situation (in fact Egypt is undergoing something strongly parallel to Syria at the moment: repression from the dictatorship and attempted co-option from Saudi-aligned MB agitators).

I'm interested in unpacking the present reality and examining the interests and weight of the various players involved, because this really has become a central factor to neocolonialism in the Middle East. Every significant actor is involved, and (I would argue) for their own interests. Also of secondary interest is the turncoat Western journalists and pundits who have become hawks irt Libya and Syria, namely Robert Fisk and Juan Cole.

Edited by NEOADMINISTRATOR (Aug. 18, 2011 20:09:21)

discipline posted:
no doubt the syrians have legitimate SERIOUS grievances with the assad regime but since the protests have been contained to certain cities and not others I think the assad regime has a good chance of holding on. and if bashar has to go, I'm sure someone else in his family can play kings regent for a while, a la egypt and the situation there.

could you elaborate on the "kings regent" thing? i've heard bashar's time in office described in similar terms before, but don't know the extent to which it's true or which interests are more powerful behind the scenes. is it baath party veterans calling most of the shots or the military? or are the two entities integrated to the point where such a distinction wouldn't matter?

discipline posted:
sure, well the king's regent thing is sort of separate from the politics. first of all, the baathists always take power from the military so it is in essence something heavily rooted in the military or at least in the officer corps. this is probably why the military and security apparati has been so solid on the side of assad thus far. when you think syria structure don't think egyptian structure, think iraq.

why I did bring up egypt was the fact that the egyptians "ousted" mubarak sure, but the thing is that mubarak was just a powerful figurehead for the system of control. sure you can knock him out, but they're just gonna replace him with someone else from the military. the military controls egypt because it is the number one employer and number one recipient of foreign aid money to the tune of billions per year from USA alone. the ikhwan for instance are just some weird long-in-the-tooth shadow fraternity trying to be the moral voice of the country. they don't even have the structure or support needed to run things.

likewise, in syria, the structure is so based on baathist bureaucracy that no one else would really be prepared to run the country at this point in time without using the same structure. that's why de-baathification was such an awful idea in iraq. you kicked out the entire structure of government and military, including the millions employed by it. then you expected stuff to get done... or did you? or did you just expect foreign companies to swoop in and start sucking blood. well, anyway, all that aside, unless something ACTUALLY revolutionary occurs in syria we should expect someone who looks a lot like bashar assad to take power.

I come back to the "king's reagent" thing because the west would want someone to take provisional power while democracy NGOs get to work trying to build an actual civil society that could produce candidates and bureaucracy to replace the baathist systems. after all the modes of governance and market structures in the middle east are TERRIBLY outdated and not at all conducive to participation in a global society WINK WINK. bashar assad has been well accepted in the west before this whole thing so it's possible they described him as thus because they expected him to facilitate this kind of change. after all, he let in a lot of foreign money, has enabled the USA to re-establish a diplomatic presence there, and is now recognizing the state of israel.

thanks, this is really informative.

Lebanese army intelligence has intercepted a covert shipment of 1,000 assault rifles, reportedly destined for the city of Baniyas in Syria. According to Arabic daily Al-Akhbar, Army investigators uncovered ties between the smugglers and the political entourage of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

. . .

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television identified the smugglers as Wassam and Samir Tamim. They have reportedly confessed to running over 30 arms-smuggling operations from Marina to Baniyas with the assistance of Mohammad Kabbara, a member of the Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc . Al-Manar stated that the center of operations was Kabbara’s farm in northern Lebanon, adding that this was also a transit point for Salafist fighters traveling to the Syrian city of Homs.

The Syrian army claimed last week that in recent fighting near Homs it has detained hundreds of Salafi fighters (reportedly including Afghans) with Lebanese documents, whose transfer to Syria was facilitated by Kabbara.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=108778

The Economic Origins of Syria's Uprising


A banker stacks packed Syrian lira bills at the Central Bank in Damscus. (Photo: AFP - Joseph Eid)
By: Nabil Marzouq

Published Sunday, August 28, 2011


Why have socioeconomic demands been largely absent from the agenda of the popular protest movement in Syria? Does this mean that the uprisings were not fuelled by tangible socioeconomic needs or were these secondary and non-essential concerns for Syrians?

The poet Ibrahim Qashoush captures the demands of the Syrian people with the phrase “Syria wants freedom,” the rallying cry of protests across the country. The suggestion that the absence of individual and collective freedoms is the common root of social and economic problems has become almost axiomatic and ingrained in the popular consciousness. Indeed, slogans demanding social justice and an end to corruption disappeared within a month of the uprising. This reflects the dialectic of development and freedom expressed in Indian economist Amartya Sen’s notion of development as freedom, where development is seen as the free choice of peoples and a tool for enhancing their freedom. However, protest slogans do not detract from the reality of the socioeconomic crisis that has unfolded in Syria over the past 5 years.

In the years preceding 2005, the Syrian regime – in efforts to justify restrictions on freedom and oppression – carefully nurtured a ‘social development’ rhetoric centred on the role of the state, the public sector, justice, and social programs. Although social programs have steadily decreased since the mid-1980s, what was left of them has been removed with the unequivocal adoption of free market mechanisms in 2005. These ‘trickle down’ economic policies and zealous liberalization efforts have only served to entrench the power and influence of a select group of politically influential nouveau riche.

This process was accompanied by the persistence of an authoritarian system that had become even fiercer. What would have been called ‘criticism’ in the 1990s had become a crime by the early 21st century, subjecting perpetrators to an array of public and private censorship measures. The government’s irresponsible dealings with thousands of Syrian families displaced by years of drought, mainly in the northeast, further sullied its image. With the start of the uprising, the rupture between protesters and the regime became apparent.

So why are we Syrians regressing and becoming poorer while others get richer? This question was not addressed by public and economic administrators of the country, who drove forward economic liberalization policies.

Syria’s social and economic crisis in recent years has also been laid bare, as economic growth has been sluggish, unstable, and unable to meet the needs of a growing population. Growth and investment has been increasingly concentrated in the trade, finance, real estate, and service sectors. Meanwhile, the agricultural sector continues to contract, with investments declining from 5 percent in 2005 to about 3 percent in 2009. Similarly, investments in industry have dwindled by half a percentage point and growth in the industrial and mining sector has been extremely weak due to decreasing oil production and the depletion of reserves. Moreover, the lack investment in technology and environmentally sustainable industry in line with international standards has led to major deficits and slowed productivity in these sectors.

Economic liberalization policies exacerbated the crisis of productivity, as well as the associated social problems of unemployment, poverty, and the lowering of living standards. The annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate between 2005 and 2009 reached 5.6 percent, which at first glance seems an acceptable figure. But fluctuations from one year to the next were considerable – 16.5 percent in 2006 compared to 1.2 percent in 2008 and 3.2 percent in 2009. This points to the economy’s reliance on the rapid expansion of the banking and insurance sectors, for which annual growth rates stood at 9 percent each, and trade, where growth neared 15 percent. Meanwhile, industrial growth did not surpass 1.7 percent and agriculture was contracting at an average 0.5 percentage points annually.

These resulted from the policies pursued by the government at the behest of international financial institutions and in preparation for the state’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the signing of the EU Association Agreement. The state retreated from investments in productive sectors of the economy, failed to address the problems of public sector industries, and left productive investment to the local and foreign private sector. As a result, the level of investment in the national economy was insufficient to sustain required growth rates – the share of gross investment was 18 percent in 2008 and 21 percent in 2009.

These investment patterns resulted in skewed GDP growth and contributed to the rising demand for real estate and the ensuing price increases. Powerful figures in the regime seeking to cash in have purchased or commandeered lands, provoking the ire of small landowners who saw in the uprising an opportunity to express their rejection of these injustices. Years of drought were accompanied by economic liberalization policies, including IMF-recommended subsidy cuts to reduce the budget deficit, particularly for fuel, power, cement, and fertilizers (insecticide and other agricultural subsidies had already been scrapped). Producers were suddenly faced with exponential cost increases and lacked access to funding or credit facilities. Some were forced to farm less of their lands than before and others abandoned their crops altogether.

The agricultural sector in Syria is comprised of mainly small- to medium-sized farms and a handful of larger estates, which are usually divided over time among large families through inheritance. A mere 28.5 percent of farmlands are irrigated, with the rest farmed without the use of water. More than 50 percent of irrigated land is watered by wells, most of which are unlicensed. The government requires that well licenses be renewed annually to allow for the assessment of groundwater levels, which determines the renewal or termination of licenses. However, this has created opportunities for extortion, allowing security personnel or provincial officials – including some provincial governors – to levy royalties from farmers, rendering them impoverished and resentful. Such practices have been a direct factor for seething resentment in the countryside, but the crisis has more deep-seated causes.

People of the Syrian countryside face the effects of poverty, declining education standards, unemployment, inadequate public services and facilities, and a failing, inequitable development process. Emigration to urban areas and large cities provided an outlet between the 1970s and 1990s, but sluggish growth and the inability of cities to absorb the new arrivals spawned slums at the outskirts of these cities. These areas are packed with young people aspiring towards a better life and in search of decent work opportunities. These people can be put to many uses, including, more recently, as thugs to suppress protests. On the other hand, the countryside has accumulated swathes of depressed communities, where outward migration inside Syria is severely restricted and emigration abroad has become increasingly difficult. The sum of these factors has led to frustration and a sense of injustice in mostly rural marginalized areas.


A Syrian street vendor displays women's shoes for sale in a street in Damascus, two days ahead of Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo: AP - Muzaffar Salman)

The Syrian social and economic crisis has slowly escalated since the new millennium. Increasing poverty and unemployment and large population increases in recent decades are partly to blame. The average population growth surpassed 3.3 percent annually even in the mid-1990s. These averages have steadily declined since, resulting in significant demographic shifts; in the last decade, the proportion of children under 15 years constituted 37.9 percent of the population in 2009 down from 44.8 percent in 1998. Similarly, the working age population (15 to 65 years) now represents 58.3 percent of the population compared to 52.3 percent in 1998.

These shifts were accompanied by advances in educational standards, especially for those between the ages of 15 and 25 (many areas claim universal literacy for this group). Meanwhile, the average population growth increase in the 1990s reached 476,000 people per year – the majority of whom began to join the workforce towards the end of the current decade. The labor market has been unable to absorb this bulging workforce at the current pace of economic growth, so many have entered the informal economy or remain unemployed. The official Labor Market Survey estimated unemployment as between 8 and 8.5 percent, while independent estimates surpass 14 percent. According to the Syrian Central Bureau for Statistics, more than 900,000 Syrian nationals have permanently left their country over the past five years, amounting to an estimated 200,000 emigrants per year.

A severe development crisis became apparent at the start of the 2000s. Syrian society neared demographic maturity and people became more educated and knowledgeable. Institutional structures stagnated and the economy sputtered under the leadership of the leading party. Their archaic mindset and leadership relied on exclusion, enslavement, dependency, and sycophancy. This bred an unjust and corrupt culture that was unacceptable to a generation exposed to satellite television and the Internet, a generation aware of its rights. This crisis stirred society’s latent sense of oppression and persecution.

When Syrians look around them, they are deeply disappointed. Having once surpassed Arab and non-Arab neighbours in living standards and development. According to the 2010 Human Development Report, Syria now ranks 111 out of 169 countries on the Human Development Index, lower than most Arab countries, with the exception of Morocco, Yemen, Mauritania, and Sudan. The average Jordanian’s share of the GDP in Jordan is 1.5 times greater than a Syrian’s share of his national GDP. In Lebanon it is double and in Turkey it is four times. These figures are even more distressing in view of Syria’s abundant and diverse resources, their higher education standards, and other achievements.

So why are we Syrians regressing and becoming poorer while others get richer? This question was not addressed by public and economic administrators of the country, who drove forward economic liberalization policies and entered into unfavorable free trade agreements with Turkey, Arab states, and other countries. These agreements mean the ruin of small enterprise, the transition of former industrialists to traders, and an exposure of the lack of competitiveness of the Syrian economy.

Middle and lower class citizens have bore the brunt of these economic failures and the skewing of economic policies towards the rich. The budget deficit and depletion of resources were addressed by cutting subsidies to the bare minimum and reducing spending on health care and education. These cuts come in the absence of adequate universal health care and follow the privatization of the health sector. The government has also begun referring public sector employees to a health insurance scheme run by recently created insurance companies. This process has effectively raised the costs of treatment and health care for citizens. This, at a time when direct taxes on profits and income have been reduced to a minimum, the lowest rates compared to neighboring Arab countries, and with high rates of tax evasion that the government has been unable limit over the past five years. The grossly uneven distribution of the national income has concentrated incomes and capital in the hands of a limited few. The share of wages from the national income was less than 33 percent in 2008-2009, compared to nearly 40.5 per cent in 2004, meaning that profits and rents command more than 67 percent of the GDP. This measure does not exceed 50 percent in the most liberal capitalist states.

Despite grave concerns expressed by several Syrian economists and local groups regarding these economic policies, the government’s callous and careless posture towards these demands has fostered despair among youth. Young people have transformed their personal agony into collective anger and rejection of the present situation and future prospects that offer them no hope of decent living standards. They have made the conscious connection between the regime’s repressive governance mechanism, corruption, and the difficult living conditions they endure.

Nabil Marzouq is a Syrian economist and researcher

Low Income
According to the latest Syrian household income and expenditure survey conducted by the Central Bureau for Statistics (2009-2010), the average household expenditure is approximately 31,000 Syrian pounds per month (approximately USD 653), more than SYP 14,000 (USD 295) of which is spent on food. The survey indicates that 63 percent of household expenditure falls below this threshold, but the average expenditure is not commensurate with the average wage. The 2009 labor market survey indicates that nearly 48 percent of the workforce earns less than SYP 9000 (USD 189) per month. The percentage of Syrians earning more than SYP 30,000 (USD 632) per month remains unclear. Despite gaps in the data, these figures are representative because they cover nearly 61 percent of the workforce. The evidence suggests that many social groups suffer difficult socioeconomic conditions, including wage earners and young entrants into the labor market. This situation is exacerbated by the marginalization of women and their exclusion from the labour market, despite the fact that they are more educated and qualified than ever.

Source URL: http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/economic-origins-syrias-uprising

Long story short people are pissed about neoliberalism more than anything else

(. . .)

As the noose gradually tightens around Assad's neck, there is increasing indication that influential voices in Tehran are beginning to think about contingency planning. But the essential problem remains Iran's inability to imagine a Syria without the existing power structures and supporting ideology.

A recent interview with the well-informed and well-travelled Iranian lawmaker Sirous Borna Baldaji, which appeared in the influential Iranian Diplomacy website, is indicative of the depth of confusion that prevails in Tehran. Entitled "If Assad goes the Salafis will seize power", the interview is based on Baldaji's extensive recent field research in Syria.

The latter's insinuation that the cutting edge - if not the controlling brain - of the Syrian demonstrators are hardline Salafi extremists, is not only indicative of poor research but lack of imagination in terms of viewing a post-Assad Syria.

Baldaji's argument appears to be that once these so-called Salafis seize control of the reins of power in Damascus they will proceed to limit ties with Iran and cut off the vital support line to Hezbollah. It is an argument that is not only devoid of a deep understanding of Syria's strategic profile, but one that takes insufficient stock of broader regional dynamics.

In view of these regional dynamics, namely the empowerment of potentially pro-Iranian Islamists in Cairo and the emergence of a volatile and inexperienced regime in Tripoli, Iran should look to cultivating deeper ties with these states and by extension de-emphasizing the relationship with non-state actors.

The resistance axis needs to be rethought and reconfigured to adapt to emerging political and strategic developments and ultimately tied to a more lucid definition of Iranian national interests.

If Iran's primary national interest in the region is the expulsion of foreign military forces from the Persian Gulf area, then the emergence of more democratic regimes, whose chief sensitivity is their own public opinion, is supportive of this long-term strategic goal.

From this point of view, the downfall of Assad, however unlikely it may appear at this stage, is not necessarily the disaster imagined by many in Tehran's policymaking circles.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MI02Ak01.html