Damascenes are tense, sullen, but not panicked following the recent events and what many consider terrorist acts by so-called "rebels."
According to students I very much enjoy meeting with from Universities and Colleges here, their President, Bashar Assad, still has the support of a majority of the population. Many, as does the Assad government, accept, in principal, the April 2012 Geneva Proposals. That initiative proposes a transitional government resulting from dialogue leading up the 2014 election that would be open to all candidates. They favor letting the Syrian people choose at the ballot box the next president whoever that may be.
It is evident here in Damascus that the main worry of the population is the manifold effects of the generally viewed illegal and immoral US-led sanctions. On a another subject, Tamara, a university student, explained that the target of students and intimidation by rebel backers of students and faculty plus the kidnappings, taking of houses and cars by these same elements are affecting education here although almost all the schools and universities are still functioning.
This observer had the help of a small group of Damascus University students in conducting a survey of the effects of the US-led sanctions regime on the civilian population. Virtually every person who expressed a view on this subject told this observer that the only purpose of the American sanctions is regime change by way of trying to force the population to suffer to such an extent that the long lines for bread etc. turn violent and break the bond between the Bashar Assad government and the civilian population. People here commonly refer to the US-led sanctions against Iran as also being about regime change and not because Washington believes it can force Iran to abandon its perfectly legal nuclear-development program.
The results of a student-led survey of grocery stores in Damascus, completed on 12/12/12, shows the following increases in food prices that citizens here must pay against the backdrop of current unemployment figures currently estimated by economists as being between 40-60 percent of the population.
Damascus Student survey: Price rises for food items between May 2011 and December 2012
(Official exchange rate is currently 80 Syrian pounds for one US dollar)
Lamb--500 Syrian pounds to this week's price of 750 sp, Chicken--200 sp to 450 sp, Milk--per liter, from 40 to 95 sp, Rice--from 40 sp to 100 sp, Eggs--160-300 sp for a carton of 30 medium-sized eggs, Cooking oil--30 per liter to 60, Sugar--40 sp per kilo to 85 sp, Bread--20 sp for 10 loaves of flat bread to 55 currently in Damascus but 220 s.p. in Aleppo where, as in Homs, Hama and the east, a massive humanitarian crises in rapidly spreading.
Russia has promised wheat for this basic staple in Syria. But time is of the essence. In many areas of Syria most in need, basic food-stuff-supplying NGO's are absent.
Bottled cooking gas-- 500 sp now up to 1000 sp, is also becoming more difficult to find in several Damascus neighborhoods.
Heating oil, which was 100 sp per liter, is now on average 250 sp but becoming quite scarce. Even some of the five-star hotels here in Damascus, due to a severe shortage of "mazot" fuel oil, are cutting off the heat and hot water to rooms except for periods between 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 8-10 p.m. Russia has reportedly promised a tanker of fuel oil but it will be dangerous to transport it by road to the population centers here because, according to students working as volunteers with the Syrian Arab Republic Red Crescent Society and other humanitarian organizations, rebel forces are increasing stealing or destroying aid convoys and rampaging the countryside.
Students here in Damascus intend to publish a more detailed list of consumer goods every two weeks. Yesterday some picketed the empty American embassy in protest against US-led sanctions. "The Syrian people will never forget or forgive the American campaign to starve us into submission", one sign read.
It appears to this observer that, rather as is the case with Iran, the illegal and immoral US-led sanctions, which urgently need to be challenged at The Hague, imposed on the civilian population of Syria, are having the opposite effect of what their cynical architects intended. The piling on of sanctions is giving credibility to the Assad government, which, while employing measures to curtail prices increases here, so far with modest success, is arguing that the price rises are the result of Syria's American and Zionist enemies. This view is widely shared among students at Damascus University and the general public.
Franklin Lamb is doing research in Damascus and is reachable c/o Email address removed
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