Re-Construction of Syria

[goldenequity]

After six years conflict, substantial resources are required to rebuild Syria.
The World Bank estimates that apart from the human capital lost in the war,
the country will need billions of dollars to support reconstruction efforts.
Funding might prove a challenge though, considering the economic sanctions placed on the Syrian government by the West.

“Estimates by the World Bank show that if a political solution is reached today and reconstruction begins,
it will take 10 years for the Syrian GDP to get close to its pre-war (2010) real GDP level, if the economy grows by 5 percent on average,”
World Bank’s latest semi-annual MENA Economic Monitor report stated.
“Growing at lower than this rate i.e. at 3 percent growth rate, will delay the recovery by another 10 years.”

“The scale of destruction and forgone economic growth (the loss in GDP relative to a “no-war” counterfactual in Syria)
alone is estimated at $200-300 billion.



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Russia sends 4,000 tons of pipes, cables & machinery in reconstruction aid to Syria – MoD
https://www.rt.com/news/403133-syria...struction-aid/




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Iran strikes deal with Syria to repair power grid
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mid...ower-grid.ashx

LONDON/BEIRUT: Iran signed deals with Damascus on Tuesday to repair Syria's power grid, state media said,
a potentially lucrative move for Tehran that points to a deepening economic role after years of fighting in the Syrian conflict.

Shunned by Western powers, the Syrian government is looking to friendly states such as Iran, Russia and China
to play a major role in rebuilding the country, as the war heads towards its seventh year.

On Tuesday, Iran and Syria signed a memorandum of understanding during a visit by Syria's electricity minister to Tehran,
including building a power plant in the coastal province of Latakia with a capacity of 540 megawatts.

The agreement also includes rehabilitating a 90-megawatt power station in Deir al-Zor province.

Two contracts were also signed, including for Iran to supply power to Aleppo city.

The agreement involves restoring the main control center for Syria's electricity grid in the capital Damascus.

GRID NETWORK

Iran aims to export electricity and create the biggest power network in the Islamic world
by hooking up Iran's national grid with those of Iraq and Lebanon.

[goldenequity]

"Nobody ever asked for your help in rebuilding Syria. We know you only destroy countries, you're never about rebuilding. Just leave us alone."



"They even try to tell us not to cross OUR river on OUR land."

[Swordsmyth]

"Nobody ever asked for your help in rebuilding Syria. We know you only destroy countries, you're never about rebuilding. Just leave us alone."



"They even try to tell us not to cross OUR river on OUR land."

Friends of Syria? Who do they think they are kidding?

[Raginfridus]

Friends of Syria? Who do they think they are kidding?

96% of Westerners (excluding Russians).

[goldenequity]

Iran to build oil refinery in Syria - Fars news agency

Iran to Build Oil Refinery in Syria: Official
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article...yria-official/

The acting chief of Iran’s Research Institute of Petroleum Industry, Mansour Bazmi,
said that the refinery would be totally designed and constructed by Iranian companies.

The Iranian official also said that the plant will be constructed after the conflict in Syria ends.
Iran will also rebuild two existing refineries, according to a Farsi report by the Fars News Agency.

The refinery, to be built near the city of Homs, will have an initial production capacity of 70,000 barrels per day
and it will reach 140,000 barrels per day once fully developed.

The crude oil plus light and heavy oil to be refined in this complex will be provided from Syria’s resources.

Bazmi further said that the main products of the refinery would be LPG, petrol, gasoline, petrol, gasoline and kerosene.

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.ft.com/content/47933554-...6-2d969e0d3b65

Russia asks world powers to pay for Syria reconstruction



Russia is pressing world powers to provide Syria with billions of dollars for reconstruction to bolster its faltering efforts to resolve the Arab state’s six-year conflict.

But European and Gulf states, angered by Russia’s military intervention that tilted the war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad, will only contribute if Moscow secures a peace settlement that sets the terms for an eventual political transition, western diplomats say.

“They [Russia] go in, they mess it all up, they break everything and want everyone to pay for it,” said a European diplomat.

The issue is expected to be raised at UN-backed talks between the Syrian government and rebels that begin in Geneva on Thursday. Russia is the dominant foreign player involved in the war, but after helping broker a ceasefire between the warring parties in December, it has struggled to bring the adversaries closer to a political agreement.

Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister in charge of Middle East issues, told a meeting of EU ambassadors in Moscow last week that the reconstruction of Syria would top the agenda very soon, according to European diplomats. He said “tens of billions of dollars” would be needed, while warning that “nothing” should be expected from Russia, the diplomats said.

“The Russians really do not want to inherit a completely destroyed Syria — that’s a problem that would stick with them as long as Iraq has been haunting the Americans,” said a Middle East-based diplomat.

But the Russian initiative could face resistance — particularly as Russian air strikes were responsible for destruction in cities such as Aleppo. The conflict has reduced entire neighbourhoods across the country to rubble and forced millions of people from their homes.

[goldenequity]

Assad receives Russian economic delegation
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/10/ass...28Fort+Russ%29



Syrian President Bashar Al Assad today received a Russian economic delegation, consisting of several government officials, as well as a number of directors and representatives of various Russian companies.
stressing importance of strengthening economic cooperation between Syria and Russia, mostly by boosting the trade and launching new investment projects, particularly in the fields of natural resources, transportation, pharmaceutical industries, and infrastructure & the need to take advantage of the great opportunities that await in the field of economic cooperation, and which are in the interest of the two countries and both nations.

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Saudi Arabia's investment in Russia to exceed $1 bln
http://tass.com/economy/968467

MOSCOW, October 2 /TASS/. Saudi Arabia's investment in Russia will exceed $1 bln after the announcement of new landmark deals
during the visit of Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to Moscow on October 5.

Russia and Saudi Arabia in September last year signed an agreement on joint actions to maintain stability in the oil market.
This deal made possible an agreement on reducing production.

[goldenequity]

Our ‘Enemies’ Are Winning Syria’s Future
http://www.theamericanconservative.c...syrias-future/



Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is well on the road to a military victory over his numerous enemies. A coalition of Syrian government, Iranian, Lebanese, and Russian forces now control upwards of 80 percent of the country, signaling an approaching end to the six-year war.

Assad’s hard-won military victory over a motley coalition of ex-Baathists, Islamist forces and IS, however, will not bring much-needed peace to Syria. The continuing contest for control of Syria’s destiny is about to enter another phase—the battle over the country’s reconstruction.

The war has wreaked havoc throughout the country, killing close to a half million people and forcibly displacing more than half of the country’s prewar population of 21 million. Two of every three Syrians live in extreme poverty, in a war economy that in 2016 generated only a third of its prewar (2010) value. The World Bank and others have estimated that Syria’s reconstruction will require upwards of $200 billion.

Once upon a time war was the ultimate arbiter. The coalition joined by Washington and its allies has failed, at great cost, to defeat Assad on the battlefield. But while nothing it has done to prevail has worked, its members are not prepared to concede defeat. Instead these so-called “Friends of Syria” are prepared to use reconstruction aid as a weapon in the next stage of what is shaping up to be a never-ending battle to undermine the victorious regime’s postwar effort to consolidate power.

Reconstruction aid is viewed by proponents as offering the best vehicle for regime change, a successor to the now discredited and all but abandoned policy of arming the opposition. The emerging consensus among western governments and their international institutions is that aid for Syrian reconstruction will not be forthcoming as long as Assad rules Syria. A joint statement by CARE International, the International Rescue Committee, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, and Save the Children argues that assisting in the reconstruction of Syria under current conditions will bolster the regime and thus “risks doing more harm than good.”

In remarks at the end of a September 18 meeting of the U.S.-led “Friends of Syria,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “We believe that the only way forward is to get a political process going and to make it clear to the Iranians, Russians and Assad regime that we, the like-minded group, will not support the reconstruction of Syria until there is such a political process and that means, as Resolution 2254 says, to a transition away from Assad.”

Supporters of this strategy apparently believe that a victorious Assad regime will now surrender the peace in order to win access to the coffers of the West and the privilege of being drawn and quartered at The Hague.

Notwithstanding the best efforts of Syria’s erstwhile “friends,” Russia, Iran, and even Hezbollah are today far better placed than Washington to affect the kind of government sitting in Damascus. What does it say about U.S. policy that it continues to be rooted in the same assumptions that produced such an outcome?

Support for Syria’s continuing misery as long as Assad and his cohort remain in the chair is the unarticulated subtext of this strategy, which resembles the draconian policy adopted by the U.S.-led Quartet towards the Palestine’s Hamas Party a decade ago. The widespread opposition to assisting the Palestinian economy in the wake of a Hamas electoral victory in January 2006, and the international effort to keep Hamas-led Gaza Strip “on a diet” after its rout of Fatah in Gaza in June 2007, offer a number of useful and instructive precedents as to how a U.S.-led boycott of a postwar Syria under Assad might proceed.

State Department official David Satterfield, a top Middle East diplomat, explained on September 18 that the U.S. would continue to provide humanitarian but not reconstruction aid—totaling more than $4 billion since 2001—to the beleaguered Syrians.

Such a policy will see that Syrians, like the Palestinians in Gaza, do not die of hunger, or disease. They will survive—just—but the U.S. commitment to their well being will not extend to providing them with the tools to rebuild their country and their shattered lives.

Gaza continues to suffer from a similar policy. The World Bank has noted that continuing the engineered deprivation of Gaza’s two million Palestinians could make the isolated enclave “uninhabitable” by 2020.

The U.S.-led campaign against current reconstruction efforts aims to keep Syria on the Gaza diet. It will retard but not stop Syria’s reconstruction, nor force Assad’s ouster.

But in this instance Washington is not playing chess with itself. As instructive as the Gaza precedent may be, there are substantive, qualitative differences that militate against the success of anti-Assad policies—and also risk undermining U.S. allies (Lebanon, Jordan). This approach will perpetuate the travails of stateless Syrian refugees, and enhance the regional power of Russia, Iran, and China.

We may not like it but the wartime victory of the system of rule and governance implemented by Hafez al Assad and continued by his son represents a referendum on the historical balance of forces within Syrian society.

The Assad regime is far better placed than Gaza and Hamas post-2007 to prevail: Assad has powerful benefactors—Iran, Russia, and China—who helped to win the war and have a stake in the postwar peace. These allies are already mobilizing for reconstruction, sending delegations, and making deals to rebuild critical infrastructure, no matter Washington’s willingness to bankroll such efforts. Assad himself has declared that supporters of his wartime opponents, some of whom have compelling reasons for an uneasy rapprochement, are not welcome to participate in reconstruction.

Some in the West may not like it, but Syrians, increasingly confident that the guns have fallen (relatively) silent, are already voting with their feet, returning in ever increasing numbers to their country and homes. “The generation of new internally displaced persons is dramatically reduced and, equally important, those displaced outside of Syria’s boundaries have begun to return in significant numbers,” explained Satterfield.

Both Lebanon and Jordan, who have hosted millions of displaced Syrians at great political and political cost, are anxious to end the refugees’ bitter sojourn. The return of refugees to Syria, along with the desire to grab a share of the business of Syria’s reconstruction, are powerful incentives for Beirut and Amman to reconcile with Damascus, a process that is now underway.

Humanitarian aid provided by the U.S. and others has value. But countries committed to Syria’s reconstruction are pursuing a politically and economically more palatable and effective strategy. Engineering the permanent penury of long-suffering Syrians—and consolidating an enormous and disruptive Syrian diaspora in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey—is no recipe for success.

Geoffrey Aronson is chairman and co-founder of The Mortons Group and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute.