The war in Syria has now rumbled on for more than two years, causing massive destruction to the country’s infrastructure and civil society. The economy has collapsed. The value of the currency has bottomed out. Agriculture, normally accounting for about a 5th of GDP, is in ruins.
The World Bank has determined that the war in Syria has been the most devastating to the following sectors: transportation, communications, mining, manufacturing, retail trade, and tourism. This list fails to mention the impact on agriculture, which has seen production of staple crops like wheat and barley cut in half.
Prior to the war, Syria was crop self-sufficient. The UN expects that the devastation to farming will force the government (whoever that ends up being) to spend more money on food imports….big surprise.
(Global food trade is basically controlled by about half a dozen multinational corporations)
The reconstruction bonanza of Iraq is going to be duplicated in Syria, and it will, of course, include a whole raft of structural adjustment reforms (that had been previously resisted), to completely subjugate the country to multinationals.
The revolution was supposed to be about obtaining freedom, justice, and liberty….if it continues as it is, it will result, I’m afraid, in nothing but slavery.