WASHINGTON -- Syria's economy is nearing collapse and basic services
are threatening to come to a halt, an Israeli researcher says.
Steven Plaut, an instructor at the Graduate School of Business
Administration at the University of Haifa, writes in the September issue of
Middle East Quarterly, that Syria's foreign debt has run out of control
unable to buy basic goods let alone weapons.
"The impoverishment and lack of development not only hold the potential
for increasing Syrian political instability, but they also seriously
constrain the ability of the regime to acquire armaments and make serious
trouble abroad," he writes. "Various sources report a decline of morale in
the Syrian military, resulting at least in part from the fact that it
operates aging Soviet-era equipment that often are missing spare parts."
On Friday, Israel's military intelligence chief, Maj.-Gen. Amos Malka,
told Yediot Aharonot that over the last two years Syria has embarked on an
intensive training program. "The Syrian chief of staff has dealt with the
prepartion of the army in a very focused way in all sorts of frameworks
including an initiated attack and total war," he said. "They are also
improving some of their weapons. I am sure if you ask the Syrian CoS today
if he is more ready than a year ago, he would answer positively."
Plaut says Syria's occupation of Lebanon has resulted in increasingly
diminishing returns. About a million Syrians are said to work in Lebanon, a
fifth of the country's labor force.
"Lebanon is also experiencing economic deterioration, having stagnated
for several years with growth rates below population growth rates," Plaut
writes. "The real growth rate for the Lebanese economy in 1998 was a fourth
of what it was in 1994."
Plaut says Syria might find it increasingly difficult to feed its
population. This year, he says, Syria imported barley for the first time in
that nation's history. Rail passenger service in Syria has all but
collapsed, dropping by 62 percent between 1991 and 1995.
Illiteracy remains widespread in Syria with the rate for males as high
as 29 percent and a higher rate for females.
Foreign investments have been limited to oil development. Plaut says
Syria has a foreign debt of $22 billion, growing by up to $1.5 billion a
year. About half the current debt is to Russia.
Plaut says Israel's rush to reach agreement with Syria is the equivalent
of the United States in 1989 trying to conclude an accord with the Soviet
Union. "If anything, the present is probably the very worst time
strategically to strike a deal with Syria because 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," he
said. "Israel should now be in the business not of making concessions to
Damascus but of imposing additional economic burdens on it by strengthening
Israel's military position. Western states can help this by imposing
economic sanctions. Together, 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."
