Syria’s crisis is set to enter its 13th year in March. Although the level of violence across the country remains relatively low today compared with earlier years, the crisis is a long, long way from over. Within Syria, at least six distinct conflicts involving internal actors and foreign governments are ongoing to this day, and all of them show more signs of escalating than calming down.
The country remains in ruins, society has been torn apart, and Bashar al-Assad’s regime rightly remains an international pariah. Every poll of Syrian refugees in Syria’s neighboring states continues to underline their complete lack of intent to return to a Syria ruled by Assad, and in 2022, illegal Syrian migration to Europe rocketed by 100 percent. That is likely a harbinger of what is to come in 2023.
With the exception of the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State, Syria has become an afterthought for most. In recent years, it has become increasingly common to hear claims that “Assad has won” or that “the war is over.” Whether driven by fatigue or genuine analysis, these assertions were as inaccurate in 2019 as they are today. With Turkey’s impending elections, Russia’s struggles in Ukraine, Iran’s energy crisis, and persistent regional hostilities associated with Iran, the prospect for major destabilizing developments in Syria this year are significant.
Syria’s crisis is set to enter its 13th year in March. Although the level of violence across the country remains relatively low today compared with earlier years, the crisis is a long, long way from over. Within Syria, at least six distinct conflicts involving internal actors and foreign governments are ongoing to this day, and all of them show more signs of escalating than calming down.
The country remains in ruins, society has been torn apart, and Bashar al-Assad’s regime rightly remains an international pariah. Every poll of Syrian refugees in Syria’s neighboring states continues to underline their complete lack of intent to return to a Syria ruled by Assad, and in 2022, illegal Syrian migration to Europe rocketed by 100 percent. That is likely a harbinger of what is to come in 2023.
With the exception of the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State, Syria has become an afterthought for most. In recent years, it has become increasingly common to hear claims that “Assad has won” or that “the war is over.” Whether driven by fatigue or genuine analysis, these assertions were as inaccurate in 2019 as they are today. With Turkey’s impending elections, Russia’s struggles in Ukraine, Iran’s energy crisis, and persistent regional hostilities associated with Iran, the prospect for major destabilizing developments in Syria this year are significant.
Admittedly, warnings of new waves of chaos in Syria are nothing new. But 2023 looks almost guaranteed to be a year of potentially game-changing instability, and although developments unique to Turkey, Russia, and Iran are likely to contribute toward significant changes, the most consequential dynamic relates to the economy and specifically the situation inside regime areas.
Although Assad’s ruthless scorched earth-style pursuit of survival has dealt a debilitating blow to Syria’s economy since 2011, it has been on a path of steady collapse since 2019, when Lebanon’s liquidity crisis had devastating knock-on effects on its Syrian neighbor. That path has been shortened since, first by the COVID-19 pandemic, then by the global effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and most recently by the acute economic decline in Iran.
As we enter 2023, Syria’s economic collapse is rapidly spinning out of the regime’s control. More than half of the country’s basic infrastructure remains destroyed, 90 percent of Syrians currently live below the poverty line, and 70 percent are dependent on foreign aid. A year ago, a single U.S. dollar was worth 3,600 Syrian pounds—but now it is worth about 6,850. This year’s national budget is Syria’s lowest ever. In an attempt to reduce pressure on the national deficit, the regime imposed further cuts on core subsidies by a real-world value of 40 percent.
After more than a decade of being the other way around, living conditions are now worst in regime-held areas. A “good” day in the capital of Damascus currently brings two or three hours of electricity, while many people are now burning pistachio peels, rubber, and even feces for warmth at home. With inflation, the average monthly salary in Damascus today is SYP 100,000 (about $15), but the cost of living for a family of five is now estimated at between SYP 2.8 million (about $427) and SYP 4 million (about $611)—marking a nearly 5,800 percent increase since 2015.
While the cost of living has been rising across Syria for some time, it has spiked markedly in regime areas since late 2022 after Iran’s decision to double the price of oil supplied to Syria (to $70 per barrel) and to demand prior payment instead of lending on credit as it has done throughout the crisis. As a result of that policy (which was driven by Iran’s own domestic economic crisis), shipments of fuel to Syria declined by 52 percent between October and November 2022, and in the three months since, Iran has provided less fuel to Syria than in October 2022 alone. The last Iranian vessel carrying oil to Syria departed in December, and no more appear to be planned until March, indicating that Syria’s fuel crisis at the height of winter is only just beginning.
The annual budget provided for only 30 percent of Syria’s fuel needs for 2023, but that was with Iranian supplies costing half what they do today. Such a dramatic reduction in supply and Iran’s imposition of cash payment conditions have therefore had a catastrophic impact on regime areas in Syria. In three months, the cost of basic food goods has risen by 30 percent and the cost of fuel 44 percent. An entire monthly salary currently buys around 2 gallons of gas. With the cost of transport and supplementary electricity soaring, people are increasingly unable to get to work; factories and bakeries are shuttering their doors; the dairy industry is collapsing; and the working week has been reduced to four days. If it weren’t for Russia’s industrial-scale theft of Ukrainian grain in 2022, Syria would also be in the midst of a paralyzing wheat crisis.
Syrians are sadly no strangers to suffering, but what is occurring today within regime areas is unprecedented and comes while hostilities are at a low point. As Syria’s middle class disappears and well-employed Syrians increasingly go without, the situation is engendering considerable pressures. As is typical in war economies, those holding the guns are now preying on those without, seeking additional sources of income. Sources living in regime areas are reporting the “systematic” extortion of small, medium, and even the largest of businesses by the regime’s security services. Driven both by greed and corruption, but also the regime’s urgent need to fill its emptying coffers, hundreds of the regime’s own business elite have been quietly “held ransom,” shaken down and threatened with ruin since 2020.
Instability is rising, with the southern governorate of Daraa the most unstable region of Syria. Next door in Druze-majority Suwayda governorate, protesters have sustained seven weeks of consecutive popular demonstrations in the city center, demanding political change, economic reforms, the release of tens of thousands of political prisoners, and a negotiated political settlement to Syria’s crisis. Public expressions of anger at regime corruption and incompetence are on the rise, particularly on social media, and even some die-hard regime loyalists have begun investigating cases of corruption—some subsequently disappearing as a result.
As economic collapse pushes Syrians under the regime to the brink, the regime itself is wealthier than it has ever been. Despite repeated investigatory reports, internationally sanctioned regime figures continue to receive tens of millions of dollars of United Nations money. According to one recent study, at least $140 million of U.N. procurement funds were disbursed in 2019 and 2020 to entities owned by and linked to the likes of Maher al-Assad, Nizar al-Assad, Samer Foz, and Fadi Saqr—all sanctioned for their involvement in and links to war crimes.
However, with Assad’s crony elite increasingly isolated from the world economy, the regime has switched to drugs as a source of extraordinary income, becoming a narco-state of global significance. In 2021, authorities across the Middle East and as far afield as Sudan, Malaysia, and Nigeria seized at least $5.7 billion worth of a Syria-made amphetamine known as captagon. According to regional intelligence officials, seizures account for only 5-10 percent of the total Syrian drugs trade, meaning the value of the 2021 trade was at least $57 billion—nearly nine times Syria’s budget and far larger than the combined revenues of Mexico’s cartels. Of course, none of that money gets filtered down to Syria’s people; it merely fills the pockets of Assad’s wealthy loyalist elite.
Fueled by its leading role in this massive captagon trade, the Syrian regime’s elite 4th Division is fast emerging as an entity of immense, unchallenged power. Led by Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher, the 4th Division has in recent weeks begun dramatically expanding its influence in regime areas, assuming de facto control of all transport routes linking Lebanon and Jordan to Syria, and all main roadways in western and southern Syria. A mass recruitment drive is underway to man checkpoints that crisscross this extensive road network, guaranteeing drug transit routes but also a virtual monopoly on the routine bribery required to travel throughout the country.
With Syria’s economic collapse showing no signs of slowing, the coming months are loaded with the ingredients of serious combustibility. Put simply, the regime has no cards to play that would better the situation, and neither Iran nor Russia is in a position to bail it out. This goes some way toward explaining Russia’s keenness to explore reengagement with Turkey, as achieving such a breakthrough would be game-changing in breaking apart Assad’s isolation. Yet despite all the public rhetoric and optics pointing toward rapprochement, there is no reason to envision a substantive normalization of ties.
Today’s dire trajectory, in other words, looks set to continue and likely accelerate further. While a return to outright war remains highly unlikely, the status quo is wholly unsustainable. Something has to give.
