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Quick comments on a few interesting studies and reports on #Syria that I've read recently.
Narcotics is perhaps the only booming industry in Syria. This excellent report from @CoarGlobal summarizes news articles of seized drug shipments originating from the country since 2011.
According to @coarglobal, in 2020, the seized Captagon shipments from Syria had a market value of $3.46 billion.
To appreciate how massive this is, remember that the regime's 2021 budget stood at $2.7 billion. Much of the activity in the narcotics industry is in regime areas
ISIS' media mouthpiece, Amaq, published its operations summary for the month from 13 April to 13 May 2021.
While ISIS is significantly more active in Iraq, assassinations are more commonly used in Syrian.
I wonder why.
Apart from safety, there might not be many reasons for Syrians to stay in Lebanon anymore.
The @ICRC asked young Syrians in Syria, Lebanon and Germany about their access to essential services.
Syrians living in Syria fared better than those in Lebanon on every single front.
To top it up, according to the same survey from the @ICRC, Syrians sadly feel much less welcome in neighbouring, and culturally similar Lebanon, compared to far-away Germany.
Since 2016, Insecurity Insights documented 4,653 healthcare-related incidents globally. A whopping 1,066 of them were in Syria alone (nearly a quarter of them).
See where they’re concentrated to know who are the the perpetrators.
Being supposedly secular is good not only for regaining some tacit Western support, but it also helps in allowing a regime to continue torturing its people during the month of Ramadan. @snhr
Following the visit of UAE's Minister of Foreign Affairs to Damascus in late 2021, it was announced that the UAE will construct a 300-megawatt solar power plant near Damascus.
In June 2024, PM Hussein Arnoussaid a company called Infinity Skylight had been tasked with rehabilitating Syria's largest power plant and that a memorandum of understanding had been signed with it for the establishment of a 300-megawatt solar power plant near Damascus.
A month earlier, he and the Minister of Electricity visited the power plant in Der Ali, praising their private sector partner, Infinity Skylight, for refurbishing the plant.
Here's what I'm gathering from multiple sources. It looks like a UN-brokered deal has been struck between Western donor states and the Assad regime to deliver aid to those affected by the recent earthquake:
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The US Treasury issued a six-month sanctions exemption for all transactions related to responding to the earthquake in Syria.
+sending the aid
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In exchange, the Assad regime agreed to three things:
1- Provide a fair exchange rate for the money transferred to the UN and other humanitarian actors with respect to responding the earthquake, something we've demanded for a long time to no avail.
BREAKING: The US Treasury issues a six-month sanctions exemption for all transactions related to responding to the earthquake in Syria.
This is a step in the right direction.
I've long argued that targeting the banking sector is ineffective and unethical.
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Sanctioning the banking sector is
-a form of collective punishment: civilians pay much of the cost
-the Assad regime has the means to circumvent them
-They should be lifted in exchange for concessions.
Targeted primary and secondary sanctions need to be used far more often
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Today's exemption won't change the situation on the ground much, as sanctions weren't the main impediment to the humanitarian response, to begin with.
Lifting them will also deprive the regime of a key propaganda tool.
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A huge effort from the @MEDirections on studying the regime's control over the operations of non-governmental organizations in #Aleppo with a focus on the role of UN agencies.