{"id":282974,"date":"2024-12-23T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=282974"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:05:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:05:47","slug":"privatizing-syria-us-plans-to-sell-off-nations-wealth-after-assad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/12\/privatizing-syria-us-plans-to-sell-off-nations-wealth-after-assad\/","title":{"rendered":"Privatizing Syria: US Plans to Sell Off Nation\u2019s Wealth after Assad"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Illustration by MintPress News<\/p><\/div>\n

Sanctions-privatization-reconstruction: Washington\u2019s approach to post-Assad Syria offers a glimpse into the true nature of US foreign policy agenda.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

17 Dec 2024 <\/em>– In the immediate wake of the Syrian government\u2019s abrupt collapse, much remains uncertain about the country\u2019s future \u2013 including whether it can survive as a unitary state or will splinter into smaller states as did Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, a move that ultimately led to a bloody NATO intervention. Moreover, who or what may take power<\/a> in Damascus remains an open question. For the time being at least, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad\u2019s ouster after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change<\/a> efforts.<\/p>\n

As Reuters reported on December 12<\/a>, HTS is already \u201cstamping its authority on Syria\u2019s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.\u201d Meanwhile, its bureaucrats \u2013 \u201cwho until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria\u2019s northwest\u201d \u2013 have moved en masse \u201cinto government headquarters in Damascus.\u201d Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS\u2019 \u201cregional government\u201d in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed<\/a> the country\u2019s \u201ccaretaker prime minister.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured \u2013 the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last.<\/p>\n

Multiple reports<\/a> show that HTS has informed local and international business leaders that when in office, it will \u201cadopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Alexander McKay<\/a> of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells MintPress News<\/i>, state-controlled parts of Syria\u2019s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt it wasn\u2019t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country is that economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides when \u201csecuring key economic assets will be vital to societal reconstruction, and therefore a matter of priority\u201d:<\/p>\n

We can see clearly what kind of country these \u2018moderate rebels\u2019 plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with U.S. imperialism, and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence [that] other nations in the region lack. Assad\u2019s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new \u2018free market\u2019 approach will see all of that utterly decimated.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Reconstruction Project\u2019<\/h2>\n

Syria\u2019s economic independence and strength under Assad\u2019s rule and the benefits reaped by average citizens, as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the decade-long proxy war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions underline this reality \u2013 which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how<\/a> Damascus \u201chad one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Per a 2018 U.N. investigation<\/a>, \u201cuniversal, free healthcare\u201d was extended to all Syrian citizens, who \u201cenjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.\u201d Education was likewise free, and before the conflict<\/a>, \u201can estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class, and Syria\u2019s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women<\/i> [emphasis added].\u201d By 2016<\/a>, millions were out of school.<\/p>\n

A U.N. Human Rights Council report two years later<\/a> noted pre-war Syria \u201cwas the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,\u201d its \u201cthriving agricultural sector\u201d contributing \u201cabout 21%\u201d to GDP 2006 \u2013 2011. Civilians\u2019 daily caloric intake \u201cwas on par with many Western countries,\u201d with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country\u2019s economy was \u201cone of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%\u201d annually.<\/p>\n

At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors and, even then, was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything<\/i>, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo<\/a>. Simultaneously, the U.S. military occupation of a resource-rich third<\/a> of Syria cut off the government\u2019s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation would only worsen<\/a> with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act\u2019s passing in June 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under its auspices, a vast volume of goods and services in every conceivable field were and today remain banned from being sold to or traded with any Syrian citizen or entity. The legislation\u2019s terms<\/a> explicitly state preventing attempts to rebuild Syria was its chief objective. One passage openly outlines \u201ca strategy to deter foreign persons from entering into contracts related to reconstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immediately after coming into effect, the Syrian pound\u2019s value collapsed further, sending living costs skyrocketing. In a blink, almost the entire country\u2019s population was left barely able to afford even the bare essentials. Even mainstream sources<\/a> typically approving of belligerence towards Damascus cautioned of an inevitably impending humanitarian crisis. However, Washington was neither concerned nor deterred by such warnings. James Jeffrey, State Department chief of Syria policy, actively cheered<\/a> these developments.<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, as Jeffrey subsequently admitted<\/a> to PBS, the U.S. was engaged in frequent, secret communication with HTS and actively assisting the group \u2013 albeit \u201cindirectly\u201d due to the faction\u2019s designation as a terrorist entity by the State Department. This followed direct approaches to Washington by its leaders, including Abu Mohammed Jolani, former leader of Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. \u201cWe want to be your friend. We\u2019re not terrorists. We\u2019re just fighting Assad,\u201d HTS reportedly said.<\/p>\n

Given this contact, it may be no coincidence that in July 2022<\/a>, Jolani issued a series of communications about HTS\u2019 plans for future Syria, containing multiple passages in which finance and industry loomed large. Directly foreshadowing the group\u2019s recent pledge to \u201cadopt a free-market model,\u201d the extremist mass murderer discussed his desire to \u201copen up local markets to the global economy.\u201d Many passages read as if they were authored by representatives of the International Monetary Fund.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, Syria, since 1984, has refused<\/a> IMF loans, a key tool by which the U.S. Empire maintains the global capitalist system and dominates the Global South, ensuring \u2018poor\u2019 countries remain under its heel. The World Trade Organization, of which Damascus isn\u2019t a member<\/a> either, plays a similar role<\/a>. Accession to both would go some way to cementing the \u201cfree-market model\u201d advocated by HTS. After over a decade of deliberate, systematic economic ruin, geopolitical risk analyst Firas Modad tells MintPress News:<\/p>\n

They have no choice. They need Turkish and Qatari backing, so [they] will need to liberalize. They have no capital whatsoever. The country is in ruins and they desperately need investment. Plus, they hope liberalizing may attract some Saudi, Emirati or Egyptian interest. It\u2019s impossible for Syria to rebuild using its own resources. The civil war might resume. They are acting out of necessity.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Shock Therapy\u2019<\/h2>\n

In Syria\u2019s protracted political and economic dismantling, there are eerie echoes of the U.S. Empire\u2019s destruction of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. During that decade, the multiethnic socialist federation\u2019s breakup produced bitter wars of independence in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia \u2013 encouraged, financed, armed, and prolonged every step<\/a> by Western powers. Belgrade\u2019s perceived centrality to these brutal conflicts and purported complicity in and sponsorship of horrendous war crimes led the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against what remained of the country in May 1992.<\/p>\n

The measures were the harshest ever levied<\/a> in U.N. history. At one point, producing inflation<\/a> of 5.578 quintillion percent, drug abuse, alcoholism, preventable deaths and suicides skyrocketed<\/a>, while shortages of goods \u2013 including water \u2013 were perpetual. Yugoslavia\u2019s once thriving<\/a> independent industry was crippled, its ability to manufacture even everyday medicines<\/a> virtually non-existent. By February 1993, the CIA assessed<\/a> that the average citizen had \u201cbecome accustomed to periodical shortages, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surveying the wreckage years later, Foreign Affairs noted that sanctions against Yugoslavia demonstrated how<\/a> \u201cin a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated,\u201d and such measures can serve as uniquely lethal \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d against civilian populations of target countries. Yet, despite such desolation and misery, throughout this period, Belgrade remained resistant<\/a> to privatization and foreign ownership of its industry or to the pillaging of its vast resources. The overwhelming majority of Yugoslavia\u2019s economy was state- or worker-owned.<\/p>\n

Yugoslavia was not a member of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO, which went some way to insulate the country from economic predation. In 1998, though, authorities began waging<\/a> a heavy-handed counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army, a CIA and MI6-funded and armed al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia. This provided the U.S. Empire with a pretext to, at last, finish the job of neutralizing what remained of the country\u2019s socialist system. As a Clinton administration official later admitted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It was Yugoslavia\u2019s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform [in Eastern Europe] \u2013 not the plight of Kosovar Albanians \u2013 that best explains NATO\u2019s war.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From March \u2013 June 1999, the military alliance bombed Yugoslavia for 78 straight days. Yet, Belgrade\u2019s army was barely in the firing line at any stage. In all, officially, just<\/a> 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed by NATO, but 372 separate industrial facilities got smashed<\/a> to smithereens, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Markedly, the alliance took guidance<\/a> from U.S. corporations on which sites to target, and not a single foreign- or privately-owned factory was hit.<\/p>\n

NATO\u2019s bombing laid the foundations for Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic\u2019s removal via a C.I.A.- and National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored color revolution<\/a> in October of the following year. In his place, a doggedly pro-Western government advised by a collective of U.S.-sponsored economists took power. Their explicit mission<\/a> was to \u201cmake an economic environment favorable for private and other investments\u201d in Belgrade. Ravaging \u201cshock therapy\u201d measures were deployed<\/a> the moment they assumed office, to the further detriment of an already immiserated and impoverished population.<\/p>\n

In the decades since successive Western-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced<\/a> an endless array of neoliberal \u201creforms\u201d to ensure<\/a> an \u201cinvestor-friendly\u201d environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities stubbornly endure or worsen while living costs<\/a> rise, producing mass depopulation<\/a>, among other destructive effects. All along, U.S. officials intimately implicated in the country\u2019s breakup have brazenly sought<\/a> to enrich themselves from the privatization of former state industries.<\/p>\n

\u2018Internal Repression\u2019<\/h2>\n

Does such a fate await Damascus? For Pawel Wargan, founder of the Green New Deal for Europe, the answer is a resounding \u201cyes.\u201d He believes the country\u2019s story is familiar \u201cto those who study the mechanisms of imperialist expansion.\u201d Once its defenses are fully neutralized, he foresees the country\u2019s industries being \u201cbought-up at bargain sale prices as part of market \u2018reforms,\u2019 which transfer yet another chunk of humanity\u2019s wealth to Western corporations\u201d:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve witnessed the well-rehearsed choreography of imperialist regime change: a \u2018tyrant\u2019 is overthrown; backers of national sovereignty are systematically and viciously repressed; with tremendous, but hidden, violence, the country\u2019s assets are chopped and diced and sold to the lowest bidder; labor protections are discarded; human lives are cut short. The most predatory forms of capitalism take root in every crevice and pore that emerges in the collapse of the state. This is the agenda of structural adjustment policies enforced by the World Bank and IMF.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Alexander McKay echoes Wargan\u2019s analysis. Now \u201cfree,\u201d Syria will be forcedly made \u201cdependent upon imports from the West\u201d evermore. This not only fattens the Empire\u2019s bottom line but \u201calso severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.\u201d He notes similar efforts have been undertaken throughout the post-1989 era of U.S. unipolarity. It was well underway in Russia during the 1990s \u201cuntil the slow turn around in policy started in the early 2000s under Putin\u201d:<\/p>\n

The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The U.S. and its allies do not want independent development of any nation\u2019s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Kit Klarenberg is a British investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mintpressnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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