Syria is one of the last surviving
communist countries – communist not formally but in its economic
structure. The ruling Ba'th Party of Assad plays a role similar to that of
the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and Syria's economy resembles that
of Russia before perestroika and glasnost. Its economy is centrally
planned, rigid, backward, impoverished, dilapidated and shrinking. An
all-powerful central planning bureaucracy fixes prices and owns the bulk
of industry in the country. As in the Soviet Union, Syria operates under
five-year plans that are often formulated two or three years into the
plan’s five years. Also similar is the fact that the military-political
elite ultimately operates the Syrian planning apparatus.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says
that Syria has the worst array of harmful government controls over its
economy in comparison to any other Mediterranean country. The central
government controls resources, operates large governmental monopolies,
prints oodles of money, serves as the main employer (40% of the labor
force), controls all of the imports and exports of the country, owns all
banks and insurance companies, regulates every financial and most
commercial transaction, owns all big industry and much of the small
industry, controls ordinary wholesale and retail trade, and controls
agricultural markets.
It is a pariah country due to its
extensive involvement in terrorism and drugs trading. It is on poor terms
with all of its neighbors (except the one it occupies militarily –
Lebanon). Its Russian-supplied military equipment is rusting even as it
becomes increasingly obsolete. It is backward technologically and has yet
to introduce credit cards, cellular phones, or a stock market. It has yet
to open its first business school. It has outlawed access to the internet
except for the closest cronies of the regime.
Syria’s economy produces a level of GDP
per capita that lies somewhere between $600 (well below Egypt’s) and
$1,200, depending on source. No one – at least no one outside the CIA –
seems to believe the Syrian regime’s own claims that its GDP is in excess
of $6,000 per capita. In any case, nearly 70% of Syrian workers earn less
than $100 per month. At the same time, Syria’s external debts are huge
relative to its GDP and growing. Most of these are in arrears, and Syria
has been cut out of the international financial markets altogether. The
current debt level is equal to about 5½ years worth of Syrian export
earnings; just paying the interest service on this sum of money would take
up perhaps a third of Syria's export earnings.
Syria is finding it increasingly difficult
to feed itself. Its agriculture sector is low-tech and primitive. Only 20%
of its farmland is irrigated, this in a country with long rainless summers
and frequent droughts. The World Health Organization estimates that 28% of
Syrian children suffer from stunted growth, in large part due to
malnutrition. Syrian forests are being systematically destroyed and an
ecological disaster is in the making.
Any look at its internal living conditions
shows Syria to be a brutish impoverished country, often near the bottom of
the Third World. The proportion of babies who are born in any sort of
health facility is only 37%, one of the lowest rates in the world outside
sub-Saharan Africa. Only 33% of mothers have any medical care during
pregnancy, and only 61% have care during delivery. The proportion of
infants receiving ante-natal health care is only 13%, again one of the
lowest outside Africa. The number of hospital beds is one bed per 832
Syrians; Botswana has twice as many. (The comparable number in Israel is
one per 165.) The number of physicians is one per 1,221 Syrians,
comparable to the lower ranges of the Third World. (In Israel the number
is one per 206 people.) Syria has just 10 nurses, 3 pharmacists and 3
dentists per 10,000 people.
Syrian infrastructure is undeveloped and
primitive. Much of the water is unsafe, many Syrians have no sewers,
electricity supply is primitive and unreliable. Rates of ownership for
cars and major appliances are at levels similar to the bottom of the Third
World, as are rates for newspaper and magazine distribution. Of the 40,000
kilometers of highway in the country, 31,000 or about three-quarters are
unpaved. Only 866 kilometers are expressways. Of the 104 airports in the
country, 80 of them have unpaved runways. Rail passenger service in Syria
has all but collapsed, dropping by 62% between 1991 and 1995. The civil
aviation sector in Syria as measured by passenger miles is just slightly
larger than in Namibia or Zimbabwe.
The level of Syrian education and
scientific training resemble those in darkest sub-Sahara Africa. College
attendance is extremely low. Illiteracy is still widespread in Syria. Half
the women in the 20-24 age group nation-wide are illiterate. The
Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Center for Islamic
Countries (SESRTCIC), a database for Islamic countries, puts the overall
illiteracy rate in Syria at 32% for the entire adult population (1992).
The comparable illiteracy rate in Zimbabwe is estimated at 15%.
In science, Syria has yet to get started.
Syrians applied for a total of 55 patents in 1995, about the same as
Botswana. The comparable number in Israel was 4,425. Emigration of skilled
Syrians and technicians is thought to be considerable, almost as common as
the capital flight of Syrians stashing their savings abroad.
A Syria whose economy is contracting may
be one that can be deterred by an Israel willing to engage it in an
economic race, or – more specifically – an arms race. This means that
Israel need not hurriedly accommodate Syria. If anything, it should sit
back and await Syria's collapse to proceed, for the economic situation is
getting worse with time.
The United
States won the Cold War by letting the Soviet empire collapse under its
economic dead weight, with no military confrontation. Why should not the
same strategy work with Syria? A rush by Israel to reach agreement with
Assad makes about as much sense as there would have been in the United
States rushing in 1989 to reach agreements with the Soviet Union. With
each passing year Syria will be less capable of feeding and arming itself,
and more susceptible to outside economic threats and pressures from the
West. Western states can help things along by imposing economic sanctions.
With a bit of determination, this could lead to a collapse of the
totalitarian regime in Syria and that, in turn, would redraw the strategic
map of the Middle East, most likely in a direction that would benefit
Syrians, Turks, Jordanians, Israelis, and everyone else.
