On Friday, Syria’s central bank announced that a shipment of local currency had arrived from Russia, where the Syrian lira has been printed for years.
The move follows a phone call between Syria’s de facto president Ahmad al-Sharaa and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, and may provide a clue about the future relations between the countries.
While the fall of Assad was welcomed and even celebrated by many western states, they remain largely hesitant when it comes to lifting sanctions that were meant to weaken the ousted president’s grip on power.
Syria’s economy, battered by years of war, was further weakened by these sanctions, which make it nearly impossible for investment and serious reconstruction efforts.
“I doubt the Americans are going to lift sanctions on Syria any time soon,” Yazigi said. “I think they might use them as a pressure card on the Syrians.”
Yazigi recalls the case of Sudan, where the US only lifted its “state sponsor of terrorism” designation after it recognised Israel in 2020.
How to push new states into your geopolitical enemies’ camp 101.
It’s not a new state. It’s the same state that zios/empire have been trying to steal for at least a century. And it’s the same old imperial “policies” for achieving this.
The West’s sanctions morality theater continues, punishing civilians while warlords and autocrats laugh over caviar. Syria’s economy lies in ruins, but Brussels and D.C. would rather clutch pearls than admit their “principled stands” achieved nothing but a humanitarian disaster.
Russia’s cash flights? A calculated chess move dressed as charity. Moscow knows every pallet of banknotes buys deeper hooks into whatever’s left of Syria’s carcass. Let them eat printed money while the ruble’s artillery does the real work.
Meanwhile, the Gulf monarchies pour billions into reconstructing Dubai’s skyscrapers of sin while Damascus crumbles. Priorities, right? But why rebuild nations when you can just host another COP summit and call it progress?
For anyone that were still wondering, yup, HTC are scumbags…
And for people still wondering why, this shipment will greatly increase inflation in Syria. This is litteraly HTC enriching itself upon syrian population and through the help of Russia. In the end nothing changed, greedy scumbags government under the hold of Russia.
I have almost zero knowledge about Syria, historical, political, or otherwise, so please take this as the genuine question it is:
While HTC (I assume this is the current government?) is obviously not perfect, are they not still a clear improvement over Assad? I guess it’s possible that the new government would treat people similarly, but just has different “enemies”, which would explain why the new government freed people imprisoned by the Assad regime.
HTS is short for Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, or the Levant Liberation Front, and it’s the main and leading faction of the multi-faction offensive that took down Assad in December, and they constitute the core of the new transition government. Also while they’re not perfect, and it’s very unclear how they’re going to run things going forward, they’re absolutely a massive improvement over Assad. Assad was running a reign of terror that’s reminiscent of pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany.
I mean all countries print money so I’m not sure how this is different to when any other country does it. It’s literally just fiscal policy.
Edit: And also they’re HTS, not HTC.
Read the article, Syria has no control over its lira…
