Independent Consultant Founder/Editor of The Syria Dispatch Former @KShaar_Advisory, @TheSyriaReport, @Think_Triangle, @BadilMedia FR, EN, عر, TR
Istanbul, Türkiye
Joined October 2019
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Syria’s cement industry is showing promising signs of recovery, with projects moving from announcements to implementation.
In my September economic digest, I covered the agreement with Türkiye’s ÇİMKO to rebuild the al-Muslimiyah plant in Aleppo, a ~$200m investment.
Now, Al-Hassan Holding’s cement plant in Raqqa, announced earlier this year, is moving ahead with a reported investment exceeding $200m.
Electricity costs will remain a major challenge for domestic production, but the pipeline is taking shape in a market that's hungrier than ever for cheap, locally produced cement.
The Syria Dispatch's analysis: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-ce…
North Press reporting: npasyria.com/247220/
By mid-1982, only 20.3% of the EEC’s grants to Syria had been disbursed and EIB loans sat unused. The reasons: unfamiliar procedures, weak coordination, cheaper money elsewhere.
Read it as a 2026 report and little needs changing.
syriadispatch.com/p/eu-syria…
Benjamin Fève retweeted
Very happy to see my work on the history of EU–Syria relations featured in @TIMEP's Zakaria Al Shmaly (@ZakShmaly) analysis of how relations between Europe and Damascus are changing.
timep.org/2026/10/21/the-cha…
Zakaria draws on a 1982 Commission–EIB mission report I came across in my research. Even then, Brussels had money for Syria that barely got spent for three reasons: the procedures were hard to navigate, coordination on the Syrian side was weak, and other lenders offered cheaper, simpler deals. More than forty years later, as Zakaria shows, all three problems remain, and the competition is much stiffer.
Zak's piece is also quite insightful and clearly separates the signals from the substance. European engagement is higher than at any time since 2011, but Berlin and Paris do most of the real work bilaterally; the support comes with almost no conditions, and the returns debate leaves refugees in legal limbo rather than sending them home.
Very happy to see my work on the history of EU–Syria relations featured in @TIMEP's Zakaria Al Shmaly (@ZakShmaly) analysis of how relations between Europe and Damascus are changing.
timep.org/2026/10/21/the-cha…
Zakaria draws on a 1982 Commission–EIB mission report I came across in my research. Even then, Brussels had money for Syria that barely got spent for three reasons: the procedures were hard to navigate, coordination on the Syrian side was weak, and other lenders offered cheaper, simpler deals. More than forty years later, as Zakaria shows, all three problems remain, and the competition is much stiffer.
Zak's piece is also quite insightful and clearly separates the signals from the substance. European engagement is higher than at any time since 2011, but Berlin and Paris do most of the real work bilaterally; the support comes with almost no conditions, and the returns debate leaves refugees in legal limbo rather than sending them home.
Les massacres de mars 2025 ont visé des civils alaouites en tant qu’alaouites, et cela doit être dit sans détour.
Cependant, l’expression « côte alaouite » pose problème, car elle réduit à une seule confession une région qui n’en a jamais eu une seule. On parle de la côte syrienne, du littoral syrien, ou des gouvernorats de Lattaquié et de Tartous.
Ce littoral a toujours été partagé entre sunnites, alaouites, chrétiens et ismaéliens, de Lattaquié à Jableh, de Baniyas à Safita, et il appartient à l’ensemble des Syriens, ni à une minorité ni à une majorité.
L’assimilation de la côte aux Alaouites doit beaucoup au mandat français, et l’emploi de l’expression « côte alaouite » traduit soit une méconnaissance du pays, soit une volonté postcoloniale de division et de sédition. Le régime Assad a ensuite consolidé cette « côte alaouite » en faisant de la région un réservoir sécuritaire, et reprendre ce vocabulaire aujourd’hui revient à légitimer, ainsi qu’à accepter, cette géographie.
@LOrientLeJour peut bien mieux.
Article corrigé.
xitter.cf/BenjaminFeve/status/21…
L'article a été corrigé aujourd'hui, cinq heures après ma publication, alors qu'il était en ligne depuis près de deux jours déjà.
Merci quand même, @LOrientLeJour.
L'article a été corrigé aujourd'hui, cinq heures après ma publication, alors qu'il était en ligne depuis près de deux jours déjà.
Merci quand même, @LOrientLeJour.
Les massacres de mars 2025 ont visé des civils alaouites en tant qu’alaouites, et cela doit être dit sans détour.
Cependant, l’expression « côte alaouite » pose problème, car elle réduit à une seule confession une région qui n’en a jamais eu une seule. On parle de la côte syrienne, du littoral syrien, ou des gouvernorats de Lattaquié et de Tartous.
Ce littoral a toujours été partagé entre sunnites, alaouites, chrétiens et ismaéliens, de Lattaquié à Jableh, de Baniyas à Safita, et il appartient à l’ensemble des Syriens, ni à une minorité ni à une majorité.
L’assimilation de la côte aux Alaouites doit beaucoup au mandat français, et l’emploi de l’expression « côte alaouite » traduit soit une méconnaissance du pays, soit une volonté postcoloniale de division et de sédition. Le régime Assad a ensuite consolidé cette « côte alaouite » en faisant de la région un réservoir sécuritaire, et reprendre ce vocabulaire aujourd’hui revient à légitimer, ainsi qu’à accepter, cette géographie.
@LOrientLeJour peut bien mieux.
Quoted in @althawra_sy (in Arabic) in @AmmarJello's piece on whether Syria can become a transit route for Gulf and Iraqi energy, and what it would take to get there.
thawra.sy/report/%D8%A3%D9%8…
On a map, Syria has always been the obvious shortcut between the Gulf, Iraq and the Mediterranean, and this year that geography has finally started to turn into infrastructure.
As I put it to Al-Thawra, “Hormuz didn’t create the idea, but it changed the risk calculus and fast-tracked decisions that would otherwise have taken years.” Not all of these flows will last. Trucked oil may fade once shipping through Hormuz normalises, while some pipeline projects predate the crisis.
My test is whether Kirkuk–Baniyas moves from an MoU to signed contracts and financing before the pressure eases.
If it doesn’t, it could end up back in the drawer, as it has several times since 2003.
Quoted in @haberciyizorg (in Turkish) in @serrayedikardes' report on daily life in Syria after September’s fuel price hikes and the protests that followed.
haberciyiz.org/suriyede-geci…
My point was that a cash-strapped state can’t keep an economy running on subsidies for long, and the money would go further if it helped create private-sector jobs. The people in the piece show what’s at stake, among them a dentist in Aleppo whose patients now choose extractions because they can’t afford a $20 filling.
The article is also available in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic!
🇪🇸: al-monitor.com/es/originals/…
🇨🇳: al-monitor.com/zh-hans/origi…
🇸🇾: al-monitor.com/ar/originals/…
Quoted in @AlMonitor by @shellykittleson on how the Hormuz crisis is reshaping economic ties between Iraq and Syria.
al-monitor.com/originals/202…
Energy has brought Baghdad and Damascus closer than at any point in decades, and the practical work on customs and border crossings suggests this could last beyond the crisis.
Whether it does will only become clear once Hormuz reopens and the urgency is gone.
Read 👇
Quoted in @AlMonitor by @shellykittleson on how the Hormuz crisis is reshaping economic ties between Iraq and Syria.
al-monitor.com/originals/202…
Energy has brought Baghdad and Damascus closer than at any point in decades, and the practical work on customs and border crossings suggests this could last beyond the crisis.
Whether it does will only become clear once Hormuz reopens and the urgency is gone.
Read 👇
The 1977 EEC–Syria Cooperation Agreement was signed for an unlimited period, came with EUA 60 million in financial aid, and contained no provision for political dialogue.
Damascus now wants to replace it.
How it was built: syriadispatch.com/p/relation…
Syria’s new oil deals give the state 60–70% of revenues. But inspectors found no genuine tanker sealing at Deir Ezzor’s loading yards, with loads estimated arbitrarily.
A state that can’t verify what leaves the yard can’t verify its share.
syriadispatch.com/p/spc-oil-…
“Banal evil is evil without evildoers. Radical evil is evil with evildoers.”
Yassin al-Haj Saleh on why what Syrians endured was not Arendt’s banality of evil, and why the structures behind it may be outliving the regime.
syriadispatch.com/p/yassin-a…
Rahaf Aldoughli interviewed men who spent years fighting Assad, and heard them talk about honor, sacrifice and manhood in the idiom the Baathist state had spent fifty years building.
“The opposition inherited the political culture it was fighting.”
syriadispatch.com/p/rahaf-al…
Syria’s Finance Ministry reviewed the draft 2027 budget with state companies’ finance directors this week. By law, it must reach parliament by the end of October.
SANA: sana.sy/economy/syrian-econo…
What to watch: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-sp…
Benjamin Fève retweeted
2/ MPs came armed with numbers: a 200L barrel of third-tier diesel costs about 2.3 million old SYP, roughly a public employee’s monthly salary.
One asked how a family on USD 250–300 a month is meant to heat its home.
Another called the rise “a tax the poor pay to the rich”.
Benjamin Fève retweeted
1/ When Syria’s Energy Minister finished his presentation to Parliament on September 20, 87 MPs signed up to speak, one minute each.
Almost nobody kept to the minute... and that is where the hearing got interesting. 👀
Part 2 of my account, the open floor, is out now 🧵
Yassin al-Haj Saleh says there was one gathering under Assad that no regime, however tyrannical, could disband.
Syrians ended up doing politics through it, and that shaped what came after.
Our conversation on political poverty: syriadispatch.com/p/yassin-a…
Asked “where are the tenders?”, Syria’s energy minister told parliament: “We are buying diesel at auctions at sea.”
Meant as a rebuke, it’s also an admission: spot cargoes, no term contracts, little bargaining power.
syriadispatch.com/p/syria-en…
