'Normalisierung' mit Assad hat die Lage weiter verschlimmert

Was eigentlich hat die von Saudi Arabien im Frühjahr so forcierte Normalisierung mit Assad gebracht? 

Dieser Frage geht Charles Lister nach und kommt zu einem vernichten Urteil: Die Lage für Syrerinnen und Syrer hat sich seitdem eher verschlechtert, der Drogenhandel mit Captagon hat zugenommen, die Sicherheitslage in der Region ist prekärer als zuvor, während der Iran sich gestärkt sieht.

In deutschen Medien dagegen wird kaum noch über Syrien und die verzweifelte Lage von Millionen Menschen im Land berichtet.

Lister schreibt unter anderem:

A core goal underpinning the region’s normalization of Assad was a desire to see Syria stabilize. For more than a decade, the international community has supported a humanitarian aid effort across Syria worth tens of billions of dollars, meeting the needs of millions of people. The most vulnerable 4.5 million live in a small corner of Syria’s northwest, which is home to the world’s most acute humanitarian crisis. On July 11, Russia vetoed an extension of the United Nations’ 9-year-old mechanism for cross-border aid provision into the northwest, severing a vital lifeline and plunging the area into a profound and unprecedented state of uncertainty.

Days after Russia’s veto, the Assad regime announced an offer to open aid access to the region but added a set of conditions that made the offer practically impossible to implement. Even if the regime’s scheme were somehow implemented, the flow of aid would be a fraction of what was possible under the previous arrangement. For two years, the regime has sought to prioritize cross-line aid delivered from Damascus, and in that time, 152 trucks have been sent. In the same two-year period, more than 24,000 trucks arrived cross-border. As things stand, there is now no mechanism to provide unhindered aid to northwestern Syria and no serious effort to create one. So much for the idea that engaging Assad would bring forth concessions. (...)

In the past three months, Syria’s economy has precipitously collapsed, with the Syrian pound having lost 77 percent of its value. When the Saudi foreign minister visited Damascus in April, the Syrian pound was worth 7,500 to $1, but today, that number is 13,300.

Having been welcomed back into the regional fold while simultaneously benefiting from U.S. and European sanctions waivers in the wake of the February earthquake, Assad’s economy should not look like this. The fault here lies with the regime itself, which has proved systematically corrupt, incompetent, and driven by greed rather than the public good. Fiscal mismanagement and the prioritization of the illegal drugs trade have killed the Syrian economy, potentially for good.

As the region yearns for a stable Syria, ruled by a strong but reformed regime that welcomes refugees back home, the past three months have told a starkly different picture—one of escalation. Nearly 150 people have been killed in the southern governorate of Daraa since April, furthering the area’s status as the most consistently unstable region of the country since 2020.