Rachel Schor - World Report News - Feb. 14, 2016 -
The Syrian civil war and the conflict that preceded it have led to a complete collapse of the Syrian economy, severe unrest in neighboring countries and the wider Middle East as a whole, hundreds of thousands of lost lives, and nearly twelve million displaced persons or refugees.
The conflict began in March of 2011 after a peaceful protest led by Syrian citizens who wanted reform in their government. They were specifically protesting their lack of freedom and the corrupt leadership of Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, whose resignation soon became a condition of their protests. Assad responded as his father did before him and crushed the protests with lethal military force.
In 2012, The International Committee of the Red Cross officially declared the unrest in Syria a civil war.
Assad inherited the presidency in 2000, when his father Hafez al-Assad passed away. He initially gave the Syrian people a great amount of hope; the young, Western-educated, successful doctor, with the charming Syrian-British wife who could change the corrupt way that his father had once led the country, was a symbol of a new era. His first years were marked with an increase in international trade and a strengthening of the Syrian economy.
By 2011 Assad's momentum had waned, and his government had fallen back into corruption and gridlock.
On April 25th, 2011, several thousand Syrians gathered in Deraa, a city that had hosted protests since March, to protest against the Assad regime. This was just one of many peaceful protests that had been hosted in Deraa over the past few weeks. They had been calling for a major upheaval of their corrupt government and for its leader, Bashar al-Assad, to step down from office. What made this date notable was that instead of ignoring the protestors as the government and its army had previously been doing, they responded with violence. They shot automatic weapons into the crowd and brought in military personnel whose job it was to silence the protestors. Al Jazeera reported that at least fifty protestors were shot down and killed. This was unfortunately only the beginning. In response, the protests expanded across the entire country. In Deraa and other cities, over 25,000 protestors peacefully expressed their disapproval of their government, Damascus, the capital city, included. Protestors began calling "With our soul and with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for Deraa," "Down with the regime," and "We stand with Deraa."
Since that day in 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has declared that over 6.5 million Syrians are considered to be refugees, that over 10.8 million people in the region will be hurt by the conflict, and that only about 26,000 of these people have been “targeted for assistance.” These numbers grow daily. Citizens that are targeted for assistance are the people that the UNHCR has committed to financially supporting through various means as they try to find a new place to live. That is only about 0.2% of the predicted number of people who will be hurt by the conflict.
Besides the tragic loss of life and the equally as devastating mass displacement of Syrian citizens, the economic burden of these past four years will be felt by generations of Syrians and middle easterners more broadly for years to come.
It is not just Syrians who are facing the onus. The UNHCR has had to more than triple its financial support to Syria, increasing from $116.8 million USD in 2011 to an estimated $362.5 million USD by the end of 2015. While UNHCR Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) projects are gaining funding, the refugee programs are quickly losing it. In 2010, the refugee program budget in Syria was well over $150 million USD. It is now barely over $50 million USD. As an increasing number of people become refugees, an even larger group of people are becoming IDPs. What this means for refugees is that unless they choose to stay in Syria (which they most likely will not), the chances of them getting aid or assistance from the UNHCR is significantly lower now than it previously was.
While the UNHCR is spending a great deal of money, the Syrian economy is certainly bearing the biggest portion of the cost of this war. A Harvard Center for International Development study estimated that “large government-involved civil wars typically reduce the gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.25 percent each year.” In 2013, Syria’s economy did not just drop the estimated 1.25 percent. Instead it dropped 20.6 percent. In 2014, the Syrian government was so broken that no data was available for an updated figure. The same was true for 2015.
The World Bank published a report saying that a primary cause of this striking decline in funds is a sharp decline in oil production, down from 368,000 barrels per day in 2010 to about 40,000 in 2015.
This decrease in production certainly had an effect on the rest of the world and their demand for oil. According to a graphic put together by information organization Info Mine, crude oil prices rose to over $100 starting right at the time that the crisis did, and has stayed that high or higher until August of last year when it slowly began to lower.
Aside from collapsing infrastructure and economy, the Syrian Civil War has given birth to one of the most dramatic human refugee crises since the Second World War. Many people have argued against their own governments allowing these refugees into their nations for a variety of reasons, the most popular being that they will take natives’ jobs, that it is too expensive, and that terrorists will sneak in with the refugees.
The most popular complaint against accepting more refugees, that it is just too expensive, has recently been proven incorrect by a World Bank study. After evaluating the GDPs of the nations bordering Syria, (Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan) the report stated that all three countries have experienced about three percent growth since they began accepting refugees.
While these nations have accepted more refugees, they have also received an increasing amount of financial aid from other nations. The cost of dealing with refugees is quite high, but a “recent study carried out under the auspices of the UN concluded that the refugee-aid packages alone actually boosted Lebanon’s GDP by more than one percent.” This said, the same report has claimed that on the other side of the coin, the crisis in Syria and the spillover of the economic down turn there has lowered Lebanon’s GDP by about .3 percent. So while refugee aid can be a boon to national economies, the countries that are located in the immediate area of conflict still suffer detrimental results.
The second most common reason why nations do not want to accept more Syrian refugees is because they supposedly take all the open jobs away from natives. This should sound all too familiar, as the same rhetoric is used in the United States when talking about immigrants from Mexico. The Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies conducted a study on this and found that Syrian refugees actually were benefitting the economies of neighboring nations in this way as well, as they were taking the jobs that natives were actively choosing not to apply for, creating a more productive and powerful work force.
The third reason is that of the two major jihadist attacks against Western targets tied to Syrians (Paris and San Bernardino, CA). Only in one of the cases (Paris) did one single assailant have a falsified refugee passport. No attack inside America has been conducted by a Syrian refugee.
“Since 2012 the European Union has received about 1.9 million requests for asylum, and even that number is dwarfed by the number of people who have sought refuge in countries adjacent to Syria. According to the United Nations, Turkey has taken in an estimated 2.2 million, Lebanon 1.1 million, and Jordan six hundred and thirty thousand.” According to the UNHCR, over 50 percent of the Syrian population is currently internally displaced. Creating support systems for those people to find their way back to their homes once it is safe to do so will be a tedious and expensive task. But as much press as the refugee crisis has received, it remains true that for every Syrian refugee abroad, approximately three Syrians remain displaced inside of Syria, and their plights are often the worst of all. They continue to struggle with war, homelessness, personal loss, and famine, and addressing their needs in the long term will be as important as handling the refugee crisis.
The United Nations expects that it will take at least thirty years for the Syrian economy to return to its prewar prosperity. "The scale of the economic destruction in Syria is reminiscent of some nations after WWII," suggested Jihad Yazigi, editor of The Syria Report. "It could take 40 to 50 years to recover." For too many victims and refugees, that means recovery will not happen in their lifetimes- unless other countries commit to helping.
Works Cited
Al Jazeera. Scores Killed on Syria's 'Day of Rage'. 29 April 2011. 3 December 2015 <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/04/201142993412242172.html>.
Cassidy, John. The Economics of Syrian Refugees. 18 November 2015. 14 December 2015 <http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-economics-of-syrian-refugees>.CIA World Factbook. Syria. 7 December 2015. 10 December 2015 <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html>.
Heller, Seth. The Price of Civil Wars: Syria's Economy After Four Years of Conflict. 1 April 2015. 15 December 2015<http://www.globalenvision.org/2015/03/25/cost-civil-war-syria’s-economy-after-four-years-conflict>.
Infomine. 5 Year Crude Oil Prices and Price Charts. 12 October 2015. 12 December 2015 <http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/5-year/>.Nassar, Revd. Nadim. What Caused Syria's Civil War? 16 August 2013. 2 December 2015 <https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/08/2648161/>.
The Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies. Effects of the Syrian Refugees on Turkey. January 2015. 15 December 2015 <http://www.orsam.org.tr/en/enUploads/Article/Files/201518_rapor195ing.pdf>.
The World Bank. Syria - Overview. 29 September 2015. 15 December 2015 <http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/syria/overview>.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR Global Appeal 2015 Update - Syrian Arab Republic. August 2015. 5 December 2015 <http://www.unhcr.org/5461e60716.html>.
The Syrian civil war and the conflict that preceded it have led to a complete collapse of the Syrian economy, severe unrest in neighboring countries and the wider Middle East as a whole, hundreds of thousands of lost lives, and nearly twelve million displaced persons or refugees.
The conflict began in March of 2011 after a peaceful protest led by Syrian citizens who wanted reform in their government. They were specifically protesting their lack of freedom and the corrupt leadership of Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, whose resignation soon became a condition of their protests. Assad responded as his father did before him and crushed the protests with lethal military force.
In 2012, The International Committee of the Red Cross officially declared the unrest in Syria a civil war.
Assad inherited the presidency in 2000, when his father Hafez al-Assad passed away. He initially gave the Syrian people a great amount of hope; the young, Western-educated, successful doctor, with the charming Syrian-British wife who could change the corrupt way that his father had once led the country, was a symbol of a new era. His first years were marked with an increase in international trade and a strengthening of the Syrian economy.
By 2011 Assad's momentum had waned, and his government had fallen back into corruption and gridlock.
On April 25th, 2011, several thousand Syrians gathered in Deraa, a city that had hosted protests since March, to protest against the Assad regime. This was just one of many peaceful protests that had been hosted in Deraa over the past few weeks. They had been calling for a major upheaval of their corrupt government and for its leader, Bashar al-Assad, to step down from office. What made this date notable was that instead of ignoring the protestors as the government and its army had previously been doing, they responded with violence. They shot automatic weapons into the crowd and brought in military personnel whose job it was to silence the protestors. Al Jazeera reported that at least fifty protestors were shot down and killed. This was unfortunately only the beginning. In response, the protests expanded across the entire country. In Deraa and other cities, over 25,000 protestors peacefully expressed their disapproval of their government, Damascus, the capital city, included. Protestors began calling "With our soul and with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for Deraa," "Down with the regime," and "We stand with Deraa."
Since that day in 2011, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has declared that over 6.5 million Syrians are considered to be refugees, that over 10.8 million people in the region will be hurt by the conflict, and that only about 26,000 of these people have been “targeted for assistance.” These numbers grow daily. Citizens that are targeted for assistance are the people that the UNHCR has committed to financially supporting through various means as they try to find a new place to live. That is only about 0.2% of the predicted number of people who will be hurt by the conflict.
Besides the tragic loss of life and the equally as devastating mass displacement of Syrian citizens, the economic burden of these past four years will be felt by generations of Syrians and middle easterners more broadly for years to come.
It is not just Syrians who are facing the onus. The UNHCR has had to more than triple its financial support to Syria, increasing from $116.8 million USD in 2011 to an estimated $362.5 million USD by the end of 2015. While UNHCR Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) projects are gaining funding, the refugee programs are quickly losing it. In 2010, the refugee program budget in Syria was well over $150 million USD. It is now barely over $50 million USD. As an increasing number of people become refugees, an even larger group of people are becoming IDPs. What this means for refugees is that unless they choose to stay in Syria (which they most likely will not), the chances of them getting aid or assistance from the UNHCR is significantly lower now than it previously was.
While the UNHCR is spending a great deal of money, the Syrian economy is certainly bearing the biggest portion of the cost of this war. A Harvard Center for International Development study estimated that “large government-involved civil wars typically reduce the gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.25 percent each year.” In 2013, Syria’s economy did not just drop the estimated 1.25 percent. Instead it dropped 20.6 percent. In 2014, the Syrian government was so broken that no data was available for an updated figure. The same was true for 2015.
The World Bank published a report saying that a primary cause of this striking decline in funds is a sharp decline in oil production, down from 368,000 barrels per day in 2010 to about 40,000 in 2015.
This decrease in production certainly had an effect on the rest of the world and their demand for oil. According to a graphic put together by information organization Info Mine, crude oil prices rose to over $100 starting right at the time that the crisis did, and has stayed that high or higher until August of last year when it slowly began to lower.
Aside from collapsing infrastructure and economy, the Syrian Civil War has given birth to one of the most dramatic human refugee crises since the Second World War. Many people have argued against their own governments allowing these refugees into their nations for a variety of reasons, the most popular being that they will take natives’ jobs, that it is too expensive, and that terrorists will sneak in with the refugees.
The most popular complaint against accepting more refugees, that it is just too expensive, has recently been proven incorrect by a World Bank study. After evaluating the GDPs of the nations bordering Syria, (Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan) the report stated that all three countries have experienced about three percent growth since they began accepting refugees.
While these nations have accepted more refugees, they have also received an increasing amount of financial aid from other nations. The cost of dealing with refugees is quite high, but a “recent study carried out under the auspices of the UN concluded that the refugee-aid packages alone actually boosted Lebanon’s GDP by more than one percent.” This said, the same report has claimed that on the other side of the coin, the crisis in Syria and the spillover of the economic down turn there has lowered Lebanon’s GDP by about .3 percent. So while refugee aid can be a boon to national economies, the countries that are located in the immediate area of conflict still suffer detrimental results.
The second most common reason why nations do not want to accept more Syrian refugees is because they supposedly take all the open jobs away from natives. This should sound all too familiar, as the same rhetoric is used in the United States when talking about immigrants from Mexico. The Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies conducted a study on this and found that Syrian refugees actually were benefitting the economies of neighboring nations in this way as well, as they were taking the jobs that natives were actively choosing not to apply for, creating a more productive and powerful work force.
The third reason is that of the two major jihadist attacks against Western targets tied to Syrians (Paris and San Bernardino, CA). Only in one of the cases (Paris) did one single assailant have a falsified refugee passport. No attack inside America has been conducted by a Syrian refugee.
“Since 2012 the European Union has received about 1.9 million requests for asylum, and even that number is dwarfed by the number of people who have sought refuge in countries adjacent to Syria. According to the United Nations, Turkey has taken in an estimated 2.2 million, Lebanon 1.1 million, and Jordan six hundred and thirty thousand.” According to the UNHCR, over 50 percent of the Syrian population is currently internally displaced. Creating support systems for those people to find their way back to their homes once it is safe to do so will be a tedious and expensive task. But as much press as the refugee crisis has received, it remains true that for every Syrian refugee abroad, approximately three Syrians remain displaced inside of Syria, and their plights are often the worst of all. They continue to struggle with war, homelessness, personal loss, and famine, and addressing their needs in the long term will be as important as handling the refugee crisis.
The United Nations expects that it will take at least thirty years for the Syrian economy to return to its prewar prosperity. "The scale of the economic destruction in Syria is reminiscent of some nations after WWII," suggested Jihad Yazigi, editor of The Syria Report. "It could take 40 to 50 years to recover." For too many victims and refugees, that means recovery will not happen in their lifetimes- unless other countries commit to helping.
Works Cited
Al Jazeera. Scores Killed on Syria's 'Day of Rage'. 29 April 2011. 3 December 2015 <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/04/201142993412242172.html>.
Cassidy, John. The Economics of Syrian Refugees. 18 November 2015. 14 December 2015 <http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-economics-of-syrian-refugees>.CIA World Factbook. Syria. 7 December 2015. 10 December 2015 <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html>.
Heller, Seth. The Price of Civil Wars: Syria's Economy After Four Years of Conflict. 1 April 2015. 15 December 2015<http://www.globalenvision.org/2015/03/25/cost-civil-war-syria’s-economy-after-four-years-conflict>.
Infomine. 5 Year Crude Oil Prices and Price Charts. 12 October 2015. 12 December 2015 <http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/5-year/>.Nassar, Revd. Nadim. What Caused Syria's Civil War? 16 August 2013. 2 December 2015 <https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/08/2648161/>.
The Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies. Effects of the Syrian Refugees on Turkey. January 2015. 15 December 2015 <http://www.orsam.org.tr/en/enUploads/Article/Files/201518_rapor195ing.pdf>.
The World Bank. Syria - Overview. 29 September 2015. 15 December 2015 <http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/syria/overview>.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. UNHCR Global Appeal 2015 Update - Syrian Arab Republic. August 2015. 5 December 2015 <http://www.unhcr.org/5461e60716.html>.
