Four years ago, the Syrian young man, Imad Al-Hajj, residing in the Turkish city of Istanbul, got used to a “monthly behavior”, which he sees as a “blessing of God” for his family, which he left in 2014 in the city of Hama, which is within the areas under the control of the Syrian regime.
In an interview with Al-Hurra, he says, “A refugee abroad is a blessing and a curse at the same time. The curse is that I have to work 12 hours for 3,300 Turkish liras a month. While the blessing is that half of this amount goes to my family as rent for the house and to pay other expenses such as fuel, electricity and others.” They have no one but me.”
This behavior is not limited to the pilgrim alone, among the other Syrians residing abroad, whether in Turkey or elsewhere. He is one of the millions of young men, who work throughout the month, to meet their personal needs on the one hand, and to “send a monthly salary to their families as a bond,” according to the young man. Emad.
He explains that his 50-year-old father works as an employee in an office affiliated with “Social Affairs and Labor” in Hama, but he is unable to meet the expenses of only two days, as he “receives a monthly salary of 55 thousand Syrian pounds.”
“This number is not enough to pay a quarter of the rent in the house they live in,” according to the young man, who works in a factory for the production of sports shoes in the famous Avcilar neighborhood in European Istanbul.
“From the lack of death!”
From the same picture, but to the other side of the lives of Syrians inside the country, especially the areas controlled by the Syrian regime, a “tragic reality” and a “complete state of hunger” prevail. “There are families on the edge of the abyss, and a large part of them are already in the abyss,” says Abdel Ghaffar (who requested that his full name not be used for security considerations), a Syrian employee in the Education Directorate in the central city of Homs.
Abdel Ghaffar added in an interview with Al-Hurra website that, “Families that depend on sources of income for their livelihood from the Syrian salary are alive from lack of death!”, as he put it, noting that more than 70 percent of Syrians in the country depend mainly on What comes to them from their families from Europe, Turkey and others. When the Syrian government says it wants to return the refugees, it lies to everyone.”
Abdel Ghaffar receives a sum of $200 every two months from his brother, who lives in the German state of Hesse, explaining: “I can’t imagine how I could live without this help.”
There are no accurate statistics on the volume of remittances that enter the Syrian regime-controlled areas or the rest of the country in just one year.
But the semi-official Al-Watan newspaper had quoted the head of the banking department at the Faculty of Economics in Damascus, Ali Kanaan, in April 2021 as saying that “the rate of people’s remittances in foreign currency is about 3-4 million dollars per day.”
He added that “this number usually rises in Ramadan to more than 10 million dollars.”
In turn, the economic researcher, Rasha Syrob described these figures as a “lifeline” for the government of the Syrian regime, and a source for strengthening the dollar’s deduction locally, although it constitutes a source of income for many families in light of the tragic economic situation they have been living in for many years.
Types of remittances
In the latest data released by the World Food Program (WAF), the number of people who received nutritious food in Syria during the past year (2021) was lower than at any time during the decade of war.
“The new price hikes across Syria have made three out of five Syrians food insecure,” the UN Program said in its annual report published on Tuesday.
The report stated: “The significant increase in food prices, along with the loss of livelihood opportunities, and stagnant income levels practically affected the purchasing power of the population, which constituted the main causes of food insecurity in all Syrian governorates.”
Syrians believe that there is “no glimmer of hope” to get out of the prevailing economic situation, which is increasing negatively every day, in the absence of any government measures that might mitigate even a small part of what is happening.
In August 2021, the Syrian economic researcher, Ammar Youssef, estimated the number of Syrians living on external remittances at 70 percent.
Youssef explained that these transfers are not huge amounts, as the average value of one transfer does not exceed two hundred euros as a maximum. He said that the majority of them arrive informally through “the knowledge”.
The “method of knowledge” is related to the fact that the difference between the government dollar’s exchange rate and its black market price is about 20 percent, which Syrian citizens consider “their right.”
The economic consultant, Younis al-Karim, explains that the remittances that arrive in Syria from abroad differ from one region to another, from areas controlled by the regime to the opposition factions and then to areas controlled by the Kurdish forces.
Al-Karim told Al-Hurra that “the areas west of the Euphrates consider remittances an essential part of life, and they come from three sides: humanitarian organizations, people, companies and merchants with the aim of investing.”
As for the east of the Euphrates, its remittance methods are similar to those used in northwestern Syria, from companies, humanitarian organizations, and ordinary individuals, with the aim of helping their families.
And the economic consultant adds: “In the Syrian regime areas, there are remittances for ordinary individuals only. There are no companies or merchants that send money for the purpose of investment, because the regime is strict and has set conditions such as security approval.”
“tightened security”
Meanwhile, at a time when there was increasing talk about the increase in the value of foreign remittances entering Syria, the Syrian regime had tended to tighten security dealings with remittance offices, “because of their influence on the exchange rates in Syria,” according to his account.
The head of the Financial and Economic Criminal Court in Damascus, Nizam Dahdal, spoke in August 2020 about “recovering” billions to the state treasury from exchange companies whose license has been withdrawn, but which still practice the banking profession in an “illegal” way, and from fake companies.
Dahdal said in newspaper statements, at the time, that most of the “illegal” money transfers come from the Gulf countries and Turkey, and communication takes place through special international numbers that are activated via the Internet, and the money is distributed according to the numbers sent to them.
He added that the government of the regime allowed, according to clear laws, the licensed exchange companies to allow the transfer of funds in coordination with the Central Bank, and therefore any transfer of funds outside these licensed companies is considered illegal transfer, whether it is from fake people or companies.
The consultant Younes al-Karim notes that the Syrian regime has benefited greatly during the past years from foreign remittances, but it has not recently focused on them for the benefit of the officers close to it, and the “royalties” related to them.
He explains this by saying: “These officers are mostly affiliated with the State Security Branch, and they benefit from the portal of the so-called al-Dur office. This office pays bribes ranging from 5 to 10 thousand dollars in order to speed up access to the trial related to trading in non-Syrian currency.”
Is she the only manga?
While the young Imad and Abdul Ghaffar, like him, who resides in areas under the control of the Syrian regime, assert that “external remittances” have become an inseparable part of the lives of Syrians at the present time, the economic consultant, Karim, believes that many citizens had turned to other “supportive” options.
Among these options is the sale of property and real estate at low prices, in favor of “warlords” and major merchants who floated on the economic scene during the past years of the war.
Al-Karim says: “The standard of living inside Syria needs from 1.5 million to 2 million Syrian pounds to secure 2500 calories per person. We are talking about a collapsed situation.”