Strategic Assessment

This article outlines the main features of the Syrian economy prior to the current civil war, and documents the principal economic developments in the course of the conflict. This serves as the background for an analysis of possible future scenarios for the Syrian economy, which will likely take decades to recover its (poor) pre-conflict status. The physical and human capital costs are such that hundreds of billions of dollars will likely be required to rebuild the economy. This means that under the best of circumstances Syria will need a very long period of time to regain even the difficult situation it had before the civil war.