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Joshua Landis Profile picture
@joshua_landis
Sep 15, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Report: Regional Consequences of the Syria War - by @WorldBank

(GDP) growth was reduced by 1.2% yearly in Iraq, 1.6% in Jordan, & 1.7% in Lebanon solely b/c of conflict in Syria

Cumulatively, this adds up to 11.3% off the GDPs across the 3 countries.

worldbank.org/en/region/mena…
The marginal effect of the trade shock on GDP reached –3.1% points in Jordan and –2.9% points in Lebanon. In comparison, the demographic shock (refugee arrivals) boosted GDP by 0.9% points in both countries by increasing aggregate demand and labor supply.
Poverty rates increased by 4% in Jordan, 7.1% in Lebanon &, with internal displacement, 6.0% points in Iraq.

A strong economic recovery in Syria and an associated positive fallout for neighboring states are unlikely.
"A regional approach can help better internalize these spillovers to minimize public bads and maximize public goods. Adopting a regional focus for stability and prosperity necessitates a concerted international effort. Relaxing economic exclusion. Can a consensus be mustered? "
This World Bank Report advocates a policy that runs counter to US policy, which is to strangle the Syrian economy, stop international or regional efforts to facilitate Syrian trade or reconstruction. US sanctions specifically target energy/electric, etc.
worldbank.org/en/region/mena…

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More from @joshua_landis

Joshua Landis Profile picture
Jul 16
How to Understand the battle between Damascus and the Jabal Druze

Read this thread 🧵

History provides important context for the battle being waged today in the Jabal Druze

This is not the first time that the Druze demand regional autonomy and a federal system. Let's see what happened to them the first time they demanded autonomy in 1946.Image
The leaders of the Druze demanded autonomy in 1946 at #Syrian independence.

President Quwatli refused it and relations between the two quickly turned to war, ending with the bombardment of the Jabal Druze by President Shishakli in 1954. Most issues were the same then as they are today.

(These events are quotes are taken from my article: "Shishakli and the Druze: Integration and Intransigence." joshualandis.oucreate.com/Joshua_Landis_…President Quwatli in 1946
Under the military leadership of Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, the Druzes provided much of the military force behind the Great Syrian Revolt against the French that raged from 1925 to 1927.

In 1945 Amir Hasan al-Atrash, the paramount political leader of the Jabal, led the Druze military units in a successful revolt against the French, making the Jabal Druze the first and only region in Syria to liberate itself without British assistance from French rule. Because of the Druze success in arresting all the French soldiers in the Jabal, months before other parts of Syria, it was able to establish an autonomous administration and self rule well before President Quwatli was able to proclaim Syrian independence in April 1946.

No Syrians played a more heroic role in the struggle against colonialism or shed more blood for independence than the Druzes. The Druzes, made confident by their successes, demanded to keep their autonomous administration and many political privileges accorded them by the French. They also sought generous economic assistance from the newly independent Syrian government.

Sultan al-Atrash and Hasan al-AtrashSultan Pasha al-Atrash
Image
Read 10 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
Jul 3
The Alawite women taken as sex slaves in #Syria

She resisted. He called another man. One of them held her down and the other raped her. She says, “I fainted. When I woke up, there were seven men in the room. They took turns raping me.”

spectator.co.uk/article/the-al…
Samira says that she escaped after being abducted, gang-raped and sold into a forced
marriage. That isn’t her real name, of course.

She’s too scared to allow it to be published. She is 23, with long chestnut hair, and we speak over WhatsApp using a translator. She tells me she was snatched off the street while visiting the city of Homs in February. This is
her account of what happened:
A white panel van daubed with mud for camouflage – ‘a military vehicle’ – pulled up and six men wearing balaclavas jumped out.
Samira ran but they caught her and threw her into the back. She thrashed around as the van moved off, trying to free herself while hands gripped her arms and legs and punches rained down. Then one of the men raised his boot and stamped on her face. ‘I didn’t move
after that.’
The next morning, Samira found her-self alone. She opened the door and started down the concrete stairs. Someone hit her
on the back on the head with a rifle-butt and she crumpled. She was dragged back to the
room with the mattress. This time, four men raped her. They called her ‘unveiled whore’
and ‘Nusayri pig’, a sectarian insult. Days passed with more rapes. In between, she was
left blindfolded, hands tied. She remembers two ropes, one green, one brown. She grew
very weak.

One day, the men ordered Samira and the older woman to go down the stairs and sit on
Caption here over 2 lines if
necessary the bare concrete floor. They told the older
woman, ‘No one paid for you’ and shot her in the chest, a single bullet from a Kalashnikov. Somehow, the woman remained sitting upright, her legs slightly splayed, blood gushing from her chest. The men told Samira: ‘Say your prayers.’ She threw herself to the ground, fingertips touching their boots, begging for her life. ‘I was shaking all over.’
But they didn’t kill her. They told her to lay down and they collected some of the other woman’s blood in a bucket. They
poured blood on the ground next to Samira’s head and they took pictures, apparently to fake her death. That evening, she understood why. An older man arrived, in his sixties, and
the others called him ‘emir’ or prince. She had to shower and dress and he made her turn around, inspecting her. Then he handed the men a suitcase full of cash. She had been sold.
The emir gave Samira a black niqab to wear and took her to sit in the back of a Range Rover.

Pointing to a pistol on his hip,
he said: ‘If you make a move on the road, I’ll shoot you.’ She begged him to say what was
going to happen to her. ‘I saved your life,’ he replied. ‘They were going to kill you like that other woman. I paid for you. You belong to me. It will be like I am your husband; you will do everything I say.’ She stayed with him in a house somewhere in the northern province of Idlib.

She did not want to speak about that period, just saying: ‘I wish I had died before I went there.’ He seemed to be someone impor-
tant: officials visited his home; he was never stopped at checkpoints. She managed to convince him that she had accepted her fate and he let her call her family. They had already
held a funeral for her.
Read 5 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
Jun 21
Syria's minorities are being killed and abducted with a relentless regularity that many Syrians can only conclude is supported by HTS leaders.
Lattakia, #Syria: The young Alawite, Ali Iyad Hamdan, 22 years old, was martyred by bullets from members of government-backed militias near the al-Muzayri’a Bridge in the city of Lattakia this morning, June 21. Image
A young Alawite man was martyred in a sectarian attack in Baniyas.

The young man, Muhammad Shaaban Diop, from the village of Al-Mawrid in the Baniyas countryside, was shot June 19 by gunmen on a motorcycle from the predominantly Sunni village of Al-Bayada. There have been no arrests.Image
Read 11 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
May 19
Syria’s phantom institutions - 🧵

By @SyriaTransition

"What is emerging in Syria is not a failed state but a hollowed-out one."

"Sharaa's promised state overhaul has delivered the illusion of government"

syriaintransition.com/syriasphantomi…Image
The trappings of governance exist – ministers, ministries, announcements, ceremonies, meetings, photo-ops; but the substance does not.

Authority is centralised in the person of the president and radiates outwards from him through a constellation of loyalists, family members and HTS veterans.
"Authoritarian mechanisms based on loyalty and patronage appear not as temporary necessities, but deliberate tools of power."

Sharaa’s rule is defined by the presence of institutions but in phantom form. Accountability mechanisms are avoided; transparency is smothered.
Read 13 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
Apr 29
The US stand on Syria and Sanctions - Sam Heller @AbuJamajem explains what he learned in Washington about US policy toward #Syria

Opinions on Syria within the Trump administration are divided
enabbaladi.net/751283/
between figures who support conditional engagement with the new Syrian leadership and others (including Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council's counterterrorism official) who view the new Syrian leadership as "jihadists" and de facto "al-Qaeda" elements. Image
It seemed to me that this latter group currently predominates within the government. I also heard that the Israeli position, hostile to the new Syrian leadership and calling for keeping Syria fragmented and weak, is having a significant impact on the Trump administration's thinking on #Syria.
Read 15 tweets
Joshua Landis Profile picture
Apr 17
Alawite women in #Syria being abducted and used as Sabaya just like the Yazidis.

“They tortured and beat us. We weren’t allowed to speak to each other, but I heard the kidnappers’ accents. One of them had a foreign accent and the other had a local Idlib accent. I knew that because they were insulting us because we were Alawites.”

daraj.media/%d9%85%d9%86-%…
Following the testimonies of Syrian women who were kidnapped on the Syrian coast, we found Rabab, who was kidnapped in broad daylight and found herself with Basma (a pseudonym) in the same house, where they were both beaten and insulted for being “Alawites,” Image
The phenomenon is reminiscent of the Yazidi captivity in Iraq, but has yet to reach the same level.

There have been repeated pleas from families trying to uncover the fate of their daughters who were kidnapped in broad daylight, whether from the Syrian coastal cities and countryside, or from the countryside of Homs and Hama.Image
Read 4 tweets

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