Syria starts rebuilding amid more destruction
HOMS (Syria): In the Syrian city of Homs’ landmark Clock Square, where some of the first anti-government protests erupted in 2011, stands a giant poster of a smiling President Bashar Assad waving his right arm, with a caption that reads: “Together we will rebuild”.
Four years after the military brought most of the city back under Assad’s control, the government is launching its first big reconstruction effort in Homs, planning to erect hundreds of apartment buildings in three neighbourhoods in the devastated centre of the city.
It is a small start to a massive task of rebuilding Syria, where seven years of war, airstrikes and barrel bombs have left entire cities and infrastructure a landscape of rubble.
The government estimates reconstruction will cost some US$200bil (RM783bil) and last 15 years.
As in neighbouring Iraq, which faces a similar swath of destruction after the war against the Islamic State group, no one is offering much to help fund the process.
Moreover, destruction is still being wreaked.
For the past 10 days, government forces have been relentlessly bombarding eastern Ghouta, a collection of towns on Damascus’ edge in an all-out push to crush rebels there.
Hundreds have been killed and even more buildings have been blasted to rubble in a community already left a wasteland by years of siege.
At the same time, only 10km away on the other side of Damascus, government workers have begun clearing rubble from Daraya, another suburb wrecked by a long siege, to begin reconstruction.
The question of who will rebuild Syria has become part of the tug of war between Assad and his opponents.
The government can cover US$8bil (RM31bil) to US$13bil (RM50bil) of the reconstruction costs, according to the Cabinet’s economic adviser, Abdul-Qadir Azzouz.
So Damascus says it will need the international community.
But it also says only those who “stood by” Syria will be allowed to participate, a reference to staunch allies Russia and Iran.
That likely means lucrative rebuilding contracts will be handed to private companies from those countries, as well as probably China.
The international community, in turn, faces a dilemma. It wants to stabilise Syria to allow for millions of refugees to return – the longer it takes, the less likely it becomes that they will go back.
But any support for reconstruction in Syria would buttress Assad and be seen as contributing to the normalisation and legitimisation of his government.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, for instance, is unlikely to put money in a country that is backed by its regional arch rival, Iran.
“There is little chance that any reconstruction process will happen unless a comprehensive political deal is reached, which is itself very unlikely,” wrote Jihad Yazigi in Syria Deeply recently.
“The countries and institutions that have the money and which traditionally fund such large-scale financial efforts, namely the Gulf countries, the European Union, the United States and, through it, the World Bank, have, indeed, lost the Syrian war.”
American officials say the United States will not work with Assad’s government, whose leadership they describe as illegitimate.
“Until there is a credible political process that can lead to a government chosen by the Syrian people – without Assad at its helm – the United States and our allies will withhold reconstruction assistance to regime-held areas,” acting Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month.
Even Assad’s allies Russia and Iran are too cash-strapped to fund a massive rebuilding.
China’s special envoy on Syria, Xie Xiaoyan, sounded a note of caution not to expect his country to carry the burden.
“The tasks ahead are daunting,” he said during a round of the Geneva peace talks in December.
“A few countries cannot undertake all the projects. It needs a concerted effort by the international community.” — AP