The Political Economy of the Violence in Syria: An Impact-Based Analysis

The civil war that has engulfed the Syrian Arab Republic, since March 2011, is set to unleash a lasting effect on both the political and socio-economic trajectories of the country. The country’s political and economic challenges would be in dire need of outside-the-box curatives long after the violence activities are over. In other words, the political economy of Syria would encounter a set of unparalleled interconnected difficulties that cannot be unriddled by a simple prescription of traditional textbook economic policies. Even though the Syrian economy was able to weather the global economic recession in 2008, it is apparent that, if the country wants to pull through future economic shocks while upholding both political and social stability it desires, then it needs to overhaul its administrative and economic structures. The country’s economy was already in dire difficulties long before the conflict. The most important foreign exchange earner of the country was oil, but production was in sharp decline. In the 1990s, oil output almost doubled. However, in 2002, it fell from a peak of 677,000 barrels per day. Again, only 327,000 bpd were produced in 2011. The civil war has killed over a million Syrians and displaced more than 5.5 million citizens of the country. The country’s economy slumped by over 80 percent from 2010 to 2019. The extreme violence that dominated the scene in Syria has shifted attention away from the deep structural transformations affecting the country’s economy and governance structures. Now that violence has considerably subsided, these are becoming more visible. Much has been written about the ethnic and sectarian divisions in the conflict in Syria. However, very little attention is given to its political economy, which is very crucial in understanding the taproots of the ongoing war. The contraction of the economy of the country and the emergence of a war economy have seriously affected the composition and stratification of the political economy of Syria. This study seeks to examine the political economy of the Syrian civil war, including the exposition of the conditions of the Syrian economy before and during the war, the changing dynamics of the war, and the roles of external players.