The Financial Times reports that Syria's Sovereign Fund was valued at US$50 billion last year by the finance minister. The figure traces back to an unpublished ministry estimate relayed by an economist, with no date, method or basis. The only asset value the fund's own officials have given in public is about US$2.5 billion, and its deputy director said in August that its assets were still being counted. Set against the economy and the World Bank's capital stock, damage and reconstruction figures, here is what fifty billion would have to mean, and why, without a stated basis, it cannot yet be checked.
On 15 September 2026 the Ministry of Local Administration held a conference on real estate management and property rights and proposed four things: digitise the land registers, simplify procedures, steer development by property data, and find financing. None of the four decides whose name belongs in the register. That is settled by at least nine statutes, most written by the government this one replaced and every one still in force, and the conference named none of them. This piece sets the instruments out with their windows and remedies, reads the register's own coverage figures, follows one family through Law 33's six months, and puts five other states' claims mechanisms beside Syria's, on each body's own numbers.
On 13 September 2026 diesel in Syria went from 125 to 175 new pounds a litre, and by Sunday afternoon roads were closed in four governorates. This piece sets out what the record establishes about that price and what it does not: a pricing committee with a list of factors and no formula, a world price the ministry cited but did not show, a stated need of 300,000 barrels a day of which a fifth is itemised, two import shares from one ministry on one day, and a population with nothing between it and the price. Five charts, every figure with its publisher, unit and date.
One argument recurs constantly in Syrian conversation today, and it is true in much of what it claims: "there are problems, but things are better than they were under Assad". The problem begins the moment it stops describing reality and starts answering every question. This piece separates the question of how far we have come from the question of where we are going, distinguishes rights that need capacity from rights that need only a decision, and sets out a floor of demands that needs no budget and no ten years.
An analysis of the Syrian Ministry of Endowments' plan to reclaim historic waqf properties using Ottoman archives. Explore why reopening century-old title deeds acts as a tax on property confidence, undermining post-conflict reconstruction and urban recovery.
On 21 April 2026 the Damascus Governorate and the Ministry of Tourism launched "Qasyoun Journey", a tourism and heritage megaproject on Mount Qasyoun, prepared by "a team of specialised designers" with no open tender, no published brief, no costing and no impact studies. It is the second time the new Syrian authorities have commissioned a symbolic national asset behind closed doors and framed it as a national gift. This piece tests the official claims, asks whether the public or the investors are being misled, and sets out what a serious course correction would look like.
When Sednaya prison opened in December 2024 it forced an old question into the open: how does a state become a prison, and how do ordinary people end up running it? Drawing on Milgram's obedience studies, Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment and UN and Amnesty documentation of systematic torture in Syria, this essay argues that the answer is not better leaders but better institutions. Syria's real safeguard against another Sednaya is constitutional: separated powers, independent oversight and accountability written into the state itself.
An Energy-as-a-Service Framework for Post-Conflict Syria Executive Summary This document presents a strategic proposal for utility-led distributed energy storage (DES) in post-conflict Syria, structured as an Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) framework. It draws on international evidence from pioneering programmes in the United States, Australia, Lebanon, and other markets, extracting both positive models and cautionary lessons to inform
Military emissions were exempted at Kyoto and made voluntary at Paris, which leaves roughly 5.5 per cent of global emissions, some 2,750 MtCO2e a year, off the world's climate books. Reconstructed from expenditure data, that footprint would rank as the fourth-largest emitter on Earth, ahead of Russia and larger than aviation and shipping combined. This piece reads the full ledger: operations, the industrial supply chain, reconstruction, lost carbon sinks and the capital diverted from climate finance.
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