People that follow me know full well that I have lived within the Syrian community for over 7 years. So I am ideally placed to communicate the feelings of the Syrian people, as I don’t stay in a fancy hotel as visiting journalist do but live with the Syrian population.
As in all societies there are three main levels. Working Class, Middle Class and Upper Class to put it in a simplified way, a generalization of how society is within the population. Over the last few weeks I have stopped people and asked questions on how life for them is at this moment.
Working Class industrial laborers and tradesmen and lower office staff low pay scale.
What did you eat today? Breakfast bread and water lunch Bread and water evening meal Bread and tea. No cheese no filling just bread.
Middle class breakfast an egg lunch vegetables and bread, evening meal Salad.
Upper Class traditional Syrian Breakfast lunch Chicken evening meal take away or barbecue meat.
While standing in a queue at a government bakery I watched people devouring bread
you could see they were hungry. The Syrian Government bakeries are heavily subsidized by the Syrian Government without them the people would starve.
The down side is private Bakery’s are suffering and closing.
Restaurants and cafes are empty or they have gone out of business, people don’t have the money anymore to spend shops and businesses are closing rapidly.
All types of businesses if a shop or a wholesaler closes it has a knock on effect on other businesses.
This is due only to sanctions forced upon the Syrian people and its Government .by the USA and EU.
In a recent video the EU produced on sanctions they said no one is starving no one is doing without medicine and the EU has spent 180 billion euro to achieve this.
A total fabrication from start to finish, the 180 billion euro went to the terrorists, not the government side, yes that money went to the people who have committed atrocities across Syria chemical attack, murder, ethnic cleansing, destruction of churches, mosques, and historical heritage sites.
Banking, today I visited two banks what normally takes ten minutes in each bank took one hour for each bank queues the bank was packed as people were trying to withdraw money.
During the war you could draw out the equivalent of $5.000 USD, then it changed to $2.000 USD, today I was told only $1.000 USD in both banks the ATMs were closed this is to curtail any bank run.
Example of prices tissues were 25 Syrian pound now 2.000 Syrian pound, cigarettes my brand 250 Syrian pound now 1000 Syrian pound 6 month ago Nescafe sashay Three in one has increased from form 150 Syrian Pound to close to 300 Syrian Pound in less than a week.
Meat most people don’t buy it anymore its beyond their means, my Neighbor would have a barbecue every Sunday with different types of meat and salad for the last six month no barbecue.
This is not the fault of the Syrian Government but a deliberate economic attack by the USA and EU on the people of Syria, using Economic Terrorism as a weapon,
to create resentment of the Syrian Government and its leadership among Syrian People.
I predict an increase in malnutrition and suicides and also increase in crime.
What with sanctions and the Caesar act and more deaths due to lack of medicines.
During the Covid 19 pandemic Syria enforced one of the strictest lock down procedures in the world which was hardly reported by Foreign or Domestic journalists, it worked ,it was very effective in controlling the spread of the virus , but the side effect was loss of business and people’s income, people went for months without salary.
That has weakened each person’s bank account as they have been forced to live on savings.
Already questions are being asked in the Syrian parliament, read next report …
