When he succeeded his father in July 2000, Bashar al-Assad positioned himself above all as a reformer. First, he modernized his country’s economy – the Syrian GDP will be multiplied by three in ten years – and he briefly left some room for maneuver to his opponents who met and organized. A wind of freedom is (almost) blowing over Syria: it is nicknamed “the Damascus Spring”. But less than a year after his accession to power, Bashar al-Assad harshly repressed opposition and began to impose himself as a tyrant; he will soon be called “the butcher of Damascus”. It took twenty-five years for a rebel offensive to force him to flee to Russia.
Before him, millions of Syrians also had to flee their homes. From 2011, the first to leave wanted to escape the civil war which pitted the Assad regime against various rebel or separatist groups. Those who followed suffered the full brunt of the collapse of the local economic system and sometimes left to seek better opportunities elsewhere. Result: today there are 6.5 million Syrian refugees abroad and more than 7 million have the status of “displaced” within the country’s borders. Since 2015, their total number has never fallen below 12 million.
It is therefore not surprising that scenes of jubilation multiplied, in Damascus and abroad, when Bashar al-Assad left power this Sunday, December 8. Among the 6.5 million refugees, half took shelter in neighboring Türkiye. The others mostly fled to other countries in the Middle East or to Europe.
Two-thirds of the population requires urgent humanitarian aid
For those who remain in Syria, the situation is deplorable. In 2024, the UN estimates that 16.7 million people will need urgent humanitarian assistance. That’s 1.4 million more than in 2023, and represents roughly two-thirds of the country’s total population. Since 2015, the share of Syrians needing support has increased from 52.45 to 67.69%.
According to a report from the United Nations Refugee Agencythe rebel offensive would also have caused new population movements. In the short term, these new displaced persons could swell the ranks of Syrians in humanitarian distress. Population movements are also expected among supporters of the Assad regime who could also seek to escape.
The collapse of exports
The beneficial effects of economic modernization launched in the early 2000s were only short-lived. From the start of the civil war in 2011, Syria’s GDP collapsed and international trade was reduced to nothing. At issue: two sets of sanctions which deprived the country of a significant part of its income. The second was implemented in 2019, at the instigation of Donald Trump, to force the Assad regime to account following the publication of a report on the torture of opponents in jails of the country.
Today, Syria is no longer able to export as much as at the end of the 2000s. The total amount of its exports in 2022 thus amounted to less than a billion dollars, mainly from market gardening. On the import side, Syria is cruelly dependent on neighboring Turkey (45% of its imports come from Istanbul), as well as China and the United Arab Emirates (around 10% each). After fifteen years of war, its productive fabric is destroyed.
The result is directly reflected in its gross domestic product, which reached the same level as in 1978, at the start of the government of Hafez el-Assad, Bashar’s father and predecessor. The hopes of liberalization and reform of the early 2000s have come to an end.