DAMASCUS: Rebuilding Syria after over a decade of civil war is expected to cost about $216 billion, the World Bank said in an assessment published Tuesday. The cost is almost ten times Syria’s 2024 gross domestic product.
Syria’s civil war began in 2011 when mass protests against the government of then-President Bashar Assad were met with a brutal crackdown and spiraled into armed conflict. Assad was ousted in December in a lightning rebel offensive.
The conflict destroyed large swaths of the country and battered critical infrastructure, including its electrical grid.
The World Bank says the rebuilding may cost between $140 billion and $345 billion, but their “conservative best estimate” is $216 billion.
The World Bank estimates that rebuilding infrastructure will cost $82 billion. It estimated the cost of damages for residential buildings at $75 billion and $59 billion for non-residential structures.
The province of Aleppo and the Damascus countryside, where fierce battles took place, will require the most investment, according to the assessment.
“The challenges ahead are immense, but the World Bank stands ready to work alongside the Syrian people and the international community to support recovery and reconstruction,” World Bank Middle East Director Jean-Christophe Carret said in a statement.
Despite reestablishing diplomatic relations with the West and signing investment deals worth billions of dollars with Gulf countries since Assad was ousted, the country is still struggling financially.
While the United States and Europe have lifted many of the sanction s imposed during the rule of the Assad dynasty, the impact on the ground has so far been limited.
Cuts to international aid have worsened living conditions for many. The United Nations estimates that 90 percent of Syria’s population lives in poverty.
World Bank estimates $216bn needed to rebuild Syria after civil war
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World Bank estimates $216bn needed to rebuild Syria after civil war
- The conflict destroyed large swaths of the country and battered critical infrastructure
- The World Bank says the rebuilding may cost between $140 billion and $345 billion
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
