The Lebanese model for Syrian reconstruction: The ESCWA bid to hold Syria hostage to debt | Al Akhbar English
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Debt and conditional grants, or continued devastation: These are the only options that the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) seems to be giving to the Syrians, as if to say that they have no choice but to go through the practical application of the so-called Shock Doctrine, where disasters are exploited by a handful of banks, corporations, and speculators to reap huge profits at the expense of the living standards of all Syrians. But isn’t this exactly what happened in Lebanon in the 1990s?
“It is no longer possible to finance deficits using internal savings. There is no alternative to grants, foreign direct investment, or foreign debt in order to be able to continue financing the budget deficit.” This was more or less the gist of what chief economist at ESCWA and Syria’s former Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdullah al-Dardari wanted to say. Dardari was giving the bottom line of the “technical” report released by ESCWA on Wednesday, titled “The Cost of conflict in Syria: The impact on the economy and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).”
The dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Damascus, Ruslan Khaddour, called on ESCWA member states to lift the embargo and economic sanctions imposed on Syria, stressing that this would improve the socio-economic indicators that ESCWA is using as a pretext to suggest the country faces a de facto reality that imposes on it having to borrow from abroad and accept conditional grants.
Khaddour believes that there is an “exaggeration” in the figures contained in ESCWA’s report, which indicate that around 50 percent of homes have been damaged in the conflict, and that 90 percent of the population has fallen below the poverty line. The economist also expressed concern over the so-called roadmap in the report, which he said had a “political-security” dimension.
Khaddour argues that Syria has enough local sources of revenue to fund reconstruction. He also said that Syria is relying on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and other non-NATO nations to provide credit facilities to finance the works, adding that the countries that participated in arming the Islamic State (IS/ISIS) and al-Nusra Front must pay reparations, rather than grants, for the crimes committed by the groups that they have been sponsoring.