Building the Economy and Reconstructing Syria: Building a Strong State? Or Integrating into a Regional Order?
(Translated)
https://www.al-waie.org/archives/article/19664

Al-Waie Magazine: Issues 462, 463, and 464

Thirty-ninth Year, Rajab - Sha'ban - Ramadan 1446 AH, corresponding to January - February - March 2025 CE

Ustadh Ahmad Al-Qasas – Lebanon

Since the collapse of the criminal Assad regime in Syria, there has been much talk about the priority of building the economy and rebuilding it. This priority takes precedence over all other considerations, and Syria will not be able to flourish without rebuilding its economy and ensuring the return of its displaced citizens. What is disturbing about this recurring rhetorical talk, since the fall of the criminal regime, is the acknowledgment that building the economy and rebuilding it can only be achieved through financial and investment support from major powers, international organizations, and Arab countries, particularly the Gulf States. These supposed axioms have become key justifications for establishing what have been described as strong and strategic relationships with major Western powers and regional regimes. Many sincere Syrians, overwhelmed with joy at the fall of the criminal regime, have embraced these narratives, treating them as self-evident issues that cannot be ignored or overlooked. They believe this is the only way to restore the Syrian economy and rebuild the country.

The truth is that this narrative, widely promoted in international and Western media and journalism, is nothing more than one aspect of the assault on Syria, its people, its blessed revolution, and its economy. The reconstruction and economic development plans being discussed are not tailored to Syria, its people, its economy, or its independent political decision-making. Instead, they are part of the economic projects of global capitalist corporations and Western countries, in which regional regimes, particularly the Gulf States, play a key role. Anyone who follows international and regional political news, including news related to the global and regional economy, will readily understand that one of the most important themes unfolding in ash-Sham—of which Syria is a key component—is the region’s economic role in achieving one of the most important strategic goals of the United States, Europe, and the Jewish entity.

Within this context, the region's major pivotal events have taken place, from the crushing of power of the Hezb (party) of Iran within Lebanon, placing it under de facto international tutelage, curtailing the influence of the Tehran regime there, its expulsion from Syria, the criminal war on Gaza, and the opening up to, and even sponsorship of, the new Syrian government. All of this is taking place alongside widespread propaganda about a promising near future for the region on the economic and developmental levels. Lebanon and Syria are promised rapid reconstruction and massive investment capital, and consequently, an increase in job opportunities, a decline in unemployment rates, a rise in average per capita income, and infrastructure development. How correct is this talk? And what is the basis on which it is based, if it is correct?

This talk is not just empty propaganda. Instead, within the limits of the aforementioned phrases, it is actualizing and likely to happen. Or at least it is part of what America's plan, along with Europe, regional regimes, and the usurping entity, which is for the region to include. The region has become a symbol of massive and promising investment since the discovery of the vast quantities of gas it holds in its territorial waters, in addition to its oil wells and mineral wealth. The added importance of this gas wealth, in particular, lies in the fact that it achieves a major strategic political goal for both the United States and Europe. It is a candidate to be the only adequate alternative to the gas that Russia used to pump to the European Union countries, which constituted Moscow’s most important financial revenue, and which has been cut off since the outbreak of the Ukrainian war. If the United States were to seize control of gas wells in the Eastern Mediterranean, which are in ash-Sham, and supply Europe with it, it would have achieved several strategic goals. The most important of these is depriving Russia of the gas revenues it is looking forward to returning. This would end Europe’s need for Russian gas, thus undermining one of the most important factors of the close relationship between the European Union and Russia. Europe would once again fall into the arms of America, which holds the key to gas in the region through its governments. In addition, the revenues from these investments would flow to massive American multinational companies, in addition to the huge revenues from reconstruction projects in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza, which would be mostly allocated to American companies, with shares allocated to European, Gulf, and perhaps Turkish companies.

The most dangerous aspect of the matter is that the occupying Jewish entity will have the largest share among the countries of the region in this large workshop. Even more dangerous than this danger is that this massive economic project comes entirely within the context of America's political plan for the region, which is represented by the Abraham Accords, normalization with the Jewish entity, and establishing it as a basic and natural partner for the countries of the region. All of this leads us to the conclusion that the promising economic future promised to the people of Syria and Lebanon was not tailored to their interests. Instead, they are American projects tailored to the measure of its interests and plan for the region, as well as the interests of the Jewish entity.

We know that the first thing that will come to mind for many readers is that our words mean that the people of Syria and Lebanon will benefit greatly from this massive economic project. Huge sums of money will flow into their economies through investments, a large number of job opportunities will be created for them, infrastructure and services will be built and developed in Syria and Lebanon, and many displaced Syrians will consequently return to their cities and villages. So, what's the problem with the convergence of interests between us and international projects?

The answer is: Well, yes, it’s likely that this abundance of money and job opportunities will occur. It’s more likely that reconstruction projects, infrastructure construction, and services will be established and developed. It’s likely that the people of both countries will experience a degree of financial prosperity compared to the past period, the hellish period the people of Syria have been living through since the al-Assad regime began its massacres against them, and the economic collapse that began in Lebanon about six years ago. However, all of this will be mixed with deadly poison. It will be nothing more than a passing phase of affluence, experienced before by large countries and peoples who enjoyed years, perhaps decades, of affluence, only to be transformed in the blink of an eye into poverty and a population of beggars. The collapse of the Asian tiger economies is not far off in the horizon.

However, what is far more dangerous than that is that this economic revival, that people are anticipating and that many are eager for is the economy that leads to a group of the greatest dangers to the identity of the people of Syria and the entire region, and to their security in all its forms, including military, food, social, ideological, cultural, and educational... and to their political decision-making and their civilizational future.

When a country makes its economy part of the economy of a major country or economic order, it means that it has mortgaged its economic sovereignty and fate to the economy of another. If that economy survives, its own economy may be safe. However, if it collapses, it collapses along with it, just as commercial peripheral branches of a company collapse, when the parent company collapses. Even more dangerous is that when a major power or economic system is an unreliable enemy, it has the power to destroy the economy of the country that has mortgaged its economy to it at any moment, thus making it vulnerable to its constant blackmail. Examples of this in contemporary history are almost countless. The closest example to Syria is its neighbor, Lebanon. A US political decision aimed at ending the rule of the Hezb of Iran in Lebanon led to the Lebanese economy collapsing in the blink of an eye, its currency losing 95 percent of its value, and most of its people becoming impoverished, bankrupt, and destitute overnight. The motto of all its politicians now is, “We have no hope of rising from the abyss into which we have fallen except by pleasing the international order and throwing ourselves into America's embrace.” This is because it is a country that has placed the key to its economy in America’s hands. There is no doubt that this, from the Islamic perspective, is a great sin, as it gives the disbelievers a way of authority over the believers, and Allah (swt) has clearly forbidden it, saying,

[وَلَنْ يَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لِلْكَافِرِينَ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ سَبِيلًا] “And Allah (swt) will never give the disbelievers a way over the believers.” [TMQ Surah an-Nisaa 4:141].

This economic dependence leads to the state becoming subject to its own decisions. To preserve its economic gains, which are controlled by foreign powers— a definite enemy—the state is keen to please them and not displease them. It never refuses any of their requests, which means the state loses its sovereignty and independent decision-making. It is no secret how regimes that have entangled themselves in debt, and relied on aid from major powers, submit to the demands, or even the orders, of these powers. These orders affect the most intimate aspects of the state, relating to its identity, educational curricula, media, laws, the way of life of its people, its sanctities and sanctities, and its security—not to mention its economy, which is the lifeblood of its life. Let us now consider Egypt and Jordan, and how Trump is blackmailing them by cutting off aid and destroying their economies if they do not follow his plan for Gaza and all of occupied Palestine.

The question that many will ask about what we are saying is:

How, then, can a stricken country like Syria emerge from its economic catastrophe? It is a devastated country with no infrastructure, no basic services, and no access to the most basic necessities of normal life. How can its economy recover and be rebuilt without foreign investment funds and international and regional projects? And where will the necessary funds come from?

The answer to this question is that this can only be achieved by mobilizing Syria's own economic energies and resources. It is a country that possesses the capabilities sufficient to achieve this plan according to its own requirements, not according to the aims of the “donor” countries and organizations. However, the illusions of the deluded and the deluding are what blind us to this truth, unfortunately.

The foundation of a successful and profitable economy in any country has two elements:

The first is the natural wealth of energy sources, raw materials, agricultural lands, and the wealth of brains and scientific competencies that can be well invested. Syria possesses all of this wealth.

The second is an economic system, i.e. legislation governing financial transactions and economic relations, which improves the distribution of wealth among people and clarifies the types of ownership: individual, public, and state. It also clarifies to the state the sources of revenues and expenditures of the public treasury. This second element is the greatest wealth possessed by the people of Syria and the entire Islamic Ummah, namely the detailed and comprehensive Islamic economic system, which Allah (swt) legislated as a mercy to the people and for their economic well-being. Unfortunately, no one has paid attention to it or asked about it, neither those newly in power in Syria, nor those who theorize about its economy and reconstruction. Instead, they rush, without any aware political thought, to throw themselves into the arms of the international community, regional regimes, and the Davos Conference, seeking treatment and medicine there, unaware that it is a deadly poison. Instead, the Syrian Foreign Minister hastened without hesitation to announce that his country would privatize public property, without paying attention to the fact that the Shariah Law of Allah (swt) made it public property and forbade it from being owned by individual.

Let no one claim that these measures are temporary, interim measures until Syria can stand on its own two feet, and then adopt an Islamic economy and self-sufficiency. This is a statement that even the most novice of economists would find ridiculous. Mortgaging a country’s economy to the global economy is not a path to self-sufficiency and independent planning. Instead, it is a move in the opposite direction to self-sufficiency. It would embroil the country in a dilemma from which it will be difficult to escape. The decision to shift away from this, if ever taken, would mean demolishing what has been built and embarking on a new economic construction. The foreign master who controls the entire economic structure is the one who will, if he wishes, demolish what has been built. This would be done by severing the arteries of the local economy, from the external vessels to which it has been connected, and from which it has derived its life, according to his own arrangement and planning. This would mean a comprehensive collapse that requires a new economic foundation that would protect the country from dependence on the global economy. Is it reasonable for someone to build, only to allow it to be destroyed later?

We have the best example in the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, when he established his state in Madinah. Immediately upon his arrival and realizing that the people of Madinah were dependent on the sole market controlled by the Jews of Madinah, he set out to establish a new market for Muslims, thereby eliminating the Jewish control over the Muslim economy.
No one should imagine that what we are saying means completely severing economic ties with the outside world. No, absolutely not. However, there is a vast difference between reciprocal, equitable foreign relations that distance the state from dependence on other economies, and making its economy part of a global and regional capitalist economy, depriving it of any control over its own decisions.

Let us now turn to another aspect of the subject, no less important or dangerous than the aspects I mentioned earlier: namely, the difference between the economy of peace and the economy of war.

The greatest economic crime committed by a country at war is to base its economy and development on sustainable peace and security alone. There is a world of difference between the two. Syria and the entire region are a battleground and a theatre of war, whether we like it or not. Anyone who views the fall of the tyrannical faction in Syria as the end of war and the beginning of sustainable peace is delusional and naive, if not a fully-aware collaborator. Parts of ash-Sham, with its four regions—Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan—are under threat and occupation by Jewish, American, and Russian forces, at least partially. All of this makes it a Shariah obligation for the people of ash-Sham, and those around them, to undertake the Shariah obligation of jihad against the kuffar occupying their land, without any regard for the false nationalistic borders established by the kafir colonialists, dividing the single land of Islam and transforming ash-Sham into four small states. While it is conceivable that some occupations, such as the Russian occupation, could be resolved through negotiations, it is certain that the occupation of the Jewish entity will not end without a decisive ground battle. This is the meaning of a country being in an inevitable state of war, sooner or later. Accordingly, the economy being built, must be the economy of a state under threat from an enemy entrenched on its soil, not just in its immediate vicinity. Anyone familiar with the most basic rules of war and politics knows the difference between a war economy and a peace economy, as well as the difference between reconstruction in a state of war, and reconstruction in a state of peace and sustainable security.

An example of the difference between the two, is that a state under threat of enemy aggression does not construct expensive buildings and infrastructure, nor of the kind that the enemy can easily destroy, and that are difficult to rebuild, as countries far from the threat of aggression do. They do not construct residential units within huge towers that can easily be bombed and destroyed by the enemy with a single missile, as the world witnessed, livestreams, in Beirut and Gaza. Instead, they build them as separate units, with each housing one, two, or at most four residential units in a separate building. The same applies to administrative and official facilities.

Commercial markets do not rely on the huge shopping complexes that have become popular in recent decades. Nor are large central power plants built that could be destroyed by the enemy in a single strike. Instead, small generators distributed throughout neighborhoods are used, which are inexpensive and do not all fail when parts of the transmission networks are destroyed. If the enemy destroys some of them, they can be easily replaced at a low cost. Large bridges are not used, as they are expensive and can easily be destroyed to disrupt transportation and are difficult to rebuild quickly. The same principle is used for oil extraction platforms and refineries. When building large industrial plants, especially military ones, care must be taken to ensure they are located deep in the ground and mountains to protect them from enemy bombardment. Experts and specialized engineers know the rest of these principles and have their own people, and we have provided a few examples. Lebanon, whose facilities, cities, and infrastructure have been destroyed several times in the repeated wars waged against it by the occupying entity, has witnessed similar examples. Each time, its rulers see themselves compelled to concede to these threats in order to avert dangers and seek reconstruction assistance. This aid only comes under conditions that violate sovereignty and the independence of decision-making and plunder the country's funds. Lebanon has now reached the point of effectively submitting to international guardianship, in which the occupying entity itself participates.

It is no secret to anyone following current politics that the anticipated economic structure and reconstruction plans being planned by the “donors” in Syria do not take into account all of these considerations. Quite the opposite. The construction, reconstruction, and investment plans being devised by the Americans, along with the regional regimes and the Jewish entity, are a comprehensive plan that integrates the economic and investment structure of the entire region, including the occupying Jewish state, to complement the peace and normalization processes, the Abraham Accords, and the integration of the entity into a new regional order whose broad outlines have begun to take shape in recent years.

Thus, it becomes clear that the new Syrian government’s adherence to the construction and investment plans drawn up for it from abroad places it before two bitter choices:

The first bitter choice is that Syria's massive economic and civil infrastructure, built on the scale of global and Gulf investments, will be subject to total destruction at the moment of the inevitable outbreak of war with the occupying enemies, sooner or later. This will be an economic, livelihood, and moral setback for the people of Syria and ash-Sham in general, the effects of which are already imaginable, Allah (swt) forbid.

The second bitter choice, and more dangerous matter, is that this state would prefer safety, buying the safety of its infrastructure, its civil facilities, and its continued presence in the economic system by abandoning the Shariah obligation of Jihad in the Path of Allah (swt) to liberate the Blessed Land of ash-Sham, and by engaging in America’s peace treaty with the region, and coexisting with the usurping Jewish entity, whether through official recognition and normalization, or through implicit recognition under the title of the Disengagement Agreement signed in 1974. This, Allah (swt) forbid, is a betrayal of Allah (swt), His Messenger (saw), and the entire people of the Levant—Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese—and indeed, of the entire Ummah.

O people of ash-Sham in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan:

The situation is serious, and the scenario is dangerous. Your tremendous sacrifices, which you have made over decades to liberate yourself from colonialists, occupiers, and tyrants, are liable to be aborted on the altar of American plots, global and Jewish investments, and the normalization through the Abraham Accords. The path is paved by flimsy excuses, false fatwas, and the lack of awareness of the elite and the general public regarding the imminent danger looming over their Deen, honor, land, and dignity. Is a revolution that emerged from masajid, praising and glorifying, chanting, هي لله هي لله لا للسلطة ولا للجاه “It is for Allah (swt), it is for Allah (swt), not for power or prestige,” and challenging the kafr faction with the chant, قائدنا للأبد سيّدنا محمّد “Our leader forever is our master Muhammad (saw)”? Would that blessed revolution be satisfied to be buried with involvement in America's investment project and normalization with the Jewish entity?!

O people of ash-Sham, ponder carefully the following verses of Surat Al-Anfal, and you will find that they are as if they were revealed to you now, addressing you in your reality and the journey you have taken since the launch of your blessed revolution until this day, and it is the best conclusion:

[يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اسْتَجِيبُوا لِلَّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ إِذَا دَعَاكُمْ لِمَا يُحْيِيكُمْ ۖ وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ اللَّهَ يَحُولُ بَيْنَ الْمَرْءِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَأَنَّهُ إِلَيْهِ تُحْشَرُونَ (24) وَاتَّقُوا فِتْنَةً لَّا تُصِيبَنَّ الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا مِنكُمْ خَاصَّةً ۖ وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّ اللَّهَ شَدِيدُ الْعِقَابِ (25) وَاذْكُرُوا إِذْ أَنتُمْ قَلِيلٌ مُّسْتَضْعَفُونَ فِي الْأَرْضِ تَخَافُونَ أَن يَتَخَطَّفَكُمُ النَّاسُ فَآوَاكُمْ وَأَيَّدَكُم بِنَصْرِهِ وَرَزَقَكُم مِّنَ الطَّيِّبَاتِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ (26) يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا لَا تَخُونُوا اللَّهَ وَالرَّسُولَ وَتَخُونُوا أَمَانَاتِكُمْ وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ (27) وَاعْلَمُوا أَنَّمَا أَمْوَالُكُمْ وَأَوْلَادُكُمْ فِتْنَةٌ وَأَنَّ اللَّهَ عِندَهُ أَجْرٌ عَظِيمٌ (28) يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِن تَتَّقُوا اللَّهَ يَجْعَل لَّكُمْ فُرْقَانًا وَيُكَفِّرْ عَنكُمْ سَيِّئَاتِكُمْ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ۗ وَاللَّهُ ذُو الْفَضْلِ الْعَظِيمِ]

“O believers! Respond to Allah and His Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allah stands between a person and their heart, and that to Him you will all be gathered. * Beware of a trial that will not only affect the wrongdoers among you. And know that Allah is severe in punishment. * Remember when you had been vastly outnumbered and oppressed in the land, constantly in fear of attacks by your enemy, then He sheltered you, strengthened you with His help, and provided you with good things so perhaps you would be thankful. * O believers! Do not betray Allah and the Messenger, nor betray your trusts knowingly. * And know that your wealth and your children are only a test and that with Allah is a great reward. * O believers! If you are mindful of Allah, He will grant you a decisive authority, absolve you of your sins, and forgive you. And Allah is the Lord of infinite bounty.” [TMQ Surah At-Tawba: 24-9].