Syrian President Bashar Al Assad said on Wednesday that “stepping down” was not an option for his regime, which has managed to bypass economic sanctions following 12 years of war.
Mr Al Assad, speaking to Sky News Arabia from Damascus, said relations between Syria and the Arab world have drastically changed, although the West and the US have opposed normalisation.
He said Washington has been determined to press ahead with its sanctions programme and has refused to look the other way without a political solution to the conflict.
In 2020, the US passed the Caesar Act, which sanctions those who deal with the Syrian government by providing it with “significant financial, material, or technological support.”
In May, a group of bipartisan US House representatives introduced a bill dubbed the Assad Anti-Normalisation Act, which aims to “hold the Assad regime, and its backers, accountable for their crimes against the Syrian people and deter normalisation with the Assad regime”.
However, three years later, Mr Al Assad is adamant that the sanctions regime has not taken a serious financial toll on Damascus.
“The Caesar Act, no doubt, is an obstacle but we managed in several ways to bypass this law. It is not the biggest obstacle, the biggest obstacle is the destruction of infrastructure by terrorists,” Mr Al Assad said.
“The biggest obstacle is the image of the war in Syria, which prevents any investment in the Syrian market and economy,” he said.
Asked by Sky News Arabia whether he thought about stepping down, Mr Al Assad said it was “not an option on the table”.
He said a president leaves office “when the people want him to leave and not because of external pressure or because of an external war. So it is only natural when there is an internal push.”
The Syrian leader said that only hundreds of thousands went out to protest against his regime in “comparison to the tens of millions of Syrians. So there was no logic to leave”.
Descent into conflict
In recent months, Syria has improved relations with Arab states that opposed its response to mass protests across the country in 2011.
Mr Al Assad attempted to stem the protests with a mixture of security force violence and concessions, but the violent crackdowns escalated and soon the government was confronted with a spreading insurgency.
Civil war consumed the country, involving government forces, secular armed opposition, Islamist extremists and Kurdish militias. ISIS and Al Qaeda soon thrived in the maelstrom, which worsened with the increasing intervention of Iran-backed militias, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, and the massive application of Russian air power in 2015, which caused devastation in many areas of fighting.
Twelve million Syrians were displaced in the conflict, and around half a million died.
But while much of the country experiences a tense peace, the conflict still simmers along its northern borders. Parts of the North are held by Turkish-backed militias in an organisation called the National Army, alongside contingents of Turkish troops.
The Al Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir Al Sham control the densely populated Idlib province, home to several million refugees.
In the east, Kurdish militia groups, backed by US forces, still hold territory, including what remains of the country's now depleted oilfields and infrastructure.
Government-held areas, now the majority of the country, have suffered under sharply rising inflation, particularly due to Ukraine war, which has caused a spike in global food and fuel prices, leaving the isolated nation dependent on Iran for support.
The persistent humanitarian crisis has led to a change in sentiment in Damascus, and has deepened contacts between Syria and the region.
In May, Mr Al Assad, for the first time in over 12 years, participated in the Arab League summit hosted by Saudi Arabia in May, marking Syria’s return to the Arab fold.
On the American front, the Syrian president said that a behind-the-scenes dialogue between Damascus and Washington started several years ago and went on sporadically but “did not lead to any results.”
He claimed Damascus has been able “through different means” to overcome US sanctions.
The country now faces a colossal reconstruction bill, thought to be at least $150 billion for immediate infrastructure needs, and probably more to fully rebuild services across many sectors, including agriculture, electricity and water provision.
In response to Mr Al Assad's comments about the US Caesar Act, Rep Mike McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The National: “US sanctions are carefully designed to target specific individuals and entities responsible for crimes against the Syrian people, while also ensuring aid continues to flow to those who need it most.
''The Syrian pound has been crippled by Assad’s own actions and that of his Russian and Iranian backers, not by US sanctions.''
- Additional reporting by Ellie Sennett in Washington
Silent Hill f
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Rating: 4.5/5
The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
T20 World Cup Qualifier
October 18 – November 2
Opening fixtures
Friday, October 18
ICC Academy: 10am, Scotland v Singapore, 2.10pm, Netherlands v Kenya
Zayed Cricket Stadium: 2.10pm, Hong Kong v Ireland, 7.30pm, Oman v UAE
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Rohan Mustafa, Ashfaq Ahmed, Rameez Shahzad, Darius D’Silva, Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Boota, Zawar Farid, Ghulam Shabber, Junaid Siddique, Sultan Ahmed, Imran Haider, Waheed Ahmed, Chirag Suri, Zahoor Khan
Players out: Mohammed Naveed, Shaiman Anwar, Qadeer Ahmed
Players in: Junaid Siddique, Darius D’Silva, Waheed Ahmed
Day 1, Abu Dhabi Test: At a glance
Moment of the day Dimuth Karunaratne had batted with plenty of pluck, and no little skill, in getting to within seven runs of a first-day century. Then, while he ran what he thought was a comfortable single to mid-on, his batting partner Dinesh Chandimal opted to stay at home. The opener was run out by the length of the pitch.
Stat of the day – 1 One six was hit on Day 1. The boundary was only breached 18 times in total over the course of the 90 overs. When it did arrive, the lone six was a thing of beauty, as Niroshan Dickwella effortlessly clipped Mohammed Amir over the square-leg boundary.
The verdict Three wickets down at lunch, on a featherbed wicket having won the toss, and Sri Lanka’s fragile confidence must have been waning. Then Karunaratne and Chandimal's alliance of precisely 100 gave them a foothold in the match. Dickwella’s free-spirited strokeplay meant the Sri Lankans were handily placed at 227-4 at the close.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The Lowdown
Us
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseqph, Evan Alex and Elisabeth Moss
Rating: 4/5
