Tunisian authorities escalate election season crackdown and arrest Islamists

NEW YORK: Syria would need more than 50 years to get back to its economic level before its devastating civil war at current growth rates, the United Nations said Thursday.
“Fourteen years of conflict in Syria have undone nearly four decades of economic, social, and human capital progress,” the UN Development Programme (UNDP) said.
“At current growth rates, Syria’s economy will not regain its pre-conflict GDP level before 2080,” it added, calling for massive investment in economic recovery after the fall of president Bashar Assad this year.
Much of Syria’s infrastructure was destroyed and the country faced heavy sanctions over Assad’s crackdown on opposition after civil war erupted in 2011.
The UN study — “The Impact of the Conflict in Syria” — estimated that nine out of 10 Syrians now live in poverty, one quarter are jobless and the country’s gross domestic product “has shrunk to less than half of its value” in 2011.
It estimated annual economic growth over the past seven years at 1.3 percent and said “an ambitious ten-fold rise” would be needed over 15 years to bring the economy to the point it would have been at if there had been no war.
A more “realistic” five percent annual growth would be needed over 15 years to get back to the size of the economy in 2010, it added.
“Beyond immediate humanitarian aid, Syria’s recovery requires long-term investment in development to build economic and social stability for its people,” said UNDP chief Achim Steiner.
“Restoring productivity for jobs and poverty relief, revitalizing agriculture for food security, and rebuilding infrastructure for essential services such as health care, education and energy are key to a self-sustaining future, prosperity, and peace,” he added.
A strategy including “governance reform,” “economic stabilization” and “infrastructure rebuilding” was needed for Syria to “regain control over its future, reduce reliance on external aid, and pave the way for a resilient and prosperous future,” said Abdallah Al Dardari, UNDP regional chief for Arab states.

DAMASCUS: Creating an inclusive government in the Syrian Arab Republic in the coming weeks will help determine whether Western sanctions are lifted as the country rebuilds after the ouster of former President Bashar Assad, the UN special envoy to Syria said on Thursday.

“What I’m hoping is that with a truly new inclusive government in place on the 1st of March, this will help us in lifting sanctions” imposed on Syria by Western countries during Assad’s rule, Geir Pedersen said in an interview during a visit to Damascus.

After Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive in December, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, the group now in control of Syria, set up an interim administration comprising mainly members of its “salvation government” that had ruled in northwestern Syria.

At the time, the country’s de facto authorities said that a new government would be formed through an inclusive process by March. 

In January, former HTS leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa was named Syria’s president after a meeting of most of the country’s former militant factions.

In recent weeks, a committee has been holding meetings in different parts of Syria in preparation for a national dialogue conference to chart the country’s political future, the date of which has not yet been announced.

Pedersen said that in his first meeting with Al-Sharaa in December, Al-Sharaa had insisted that the interim government would rule for only three months. 

However, Pedersen warned him the timeline was tight.

“I think the important thing is not whether it is three months or not, but it is whether they will deliver on what they have said all along, that this is going to be an inclusive process where all Syrians will be included,” Pedersen said.

The US and European countries have not lifted sanctions that were imposed on the Syrian government under Assad’s rule, which the new authorities have said is handicapping their ability to rebuild the country after nearly 14 years of civil war and restore essential services like state electricity. 

Officials from some Western countries have said they want to see if the interim rulers will follow through on their promises of inclusive governance and protecting minorities.

Organizers of the national dialogue have said the conference will include all segments of Syrian society except for Assad loyalists and the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led force in the northeast that has so far refused to dissolve and be absorbed into the new national army. 

The SDF is currently negotiating with the central government, and Pedersen said he hopes to see a “political solution” to the impasse.

Pedersen said he is also concerned about a security vacuum following the country’s new rulers’ disbanding of the former national army and security services.

“It’s very important that the new structures of the state are coming in place quickly and that there is an offer to those who are no longer in service of the army or the security services, that there are other job opportunities, and that people do not feel that they are excluded from the future of Syria,” he said.

The UN envoy said he also remains concerned about Israel’s incursions into Syrian territory since the fall of Assad. The Israeli army has seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria and has also made forays beyond the buffer zone. 

The UN has said that Israel is violating the agreement.

Israeli officials have said they took the action to protect Israel’s security and that their presence would be temporary.

Pedersen said the security concerns are being addressed, and “there is really, in my opinion, no argument for why the Israelis should be staying.”

“The solution is very simple. The Israelis need to withdraw,” he said.