Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?

Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
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Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?

Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)

As the fuel, diesel and bread crisis continues to deepen, the Syrian government announced additional reductions of gasoline and diesel subsidies for the second time this month. Observers see that Damascus “is bitterly disappointed and quietly suffering because of its allies’ failure to intervene to rescue it from its latest crisis.” Syrians are questioning Russia and Iran as massive queues overwhelm government-subsidized bakeries amid the acute grain shortage.

On Monday, the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection issued a sudden decree raising the price of a liter of industrial and commercial gas to 650 Syrian pounds after being priced at 296 pounds. It also raised the price of a liter of Octane 95 gasoline to 1,050 pounds, after having had already raised the price from 450 to 850 pounds earlier this month.

With its decision, the ministry confirmed that the price of gas for heating, 180 pounds per liter, has not been changed. The same applies to other sectors, like transportation, agriculture and the public sector. It also maintained the price (135 Pounds per liter) at which gas is sold to bakeries that distribute bread rations.

The ministry justified its decision to raise the price at which gas is sold to manufacturers and businesses with the high cost of supplying petroleum derivatives in light of the “unjust blockade” imposed by the American administration on the Syrian people, adding that the measure will help to curb smuggling.

Car owners told Asharq Al-Awsat that they still spend hours, sometimes a whole day, waiting to buy 30 liters of gas at the subsidized price of 250 pounds, while others resort to the black market and buy it at astronomical prices.

Meanwhile, the government has kept quiet about the reasons for the long queues at bakeries and puts the gasoline shortage down to maintenance work, the completion of which has been announced several times this year, at the Baniyas refinery.

But economists have been asking: what are our allies, Russia and Iran, doing about what is going in Syria? Why haven’t they intervened? Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, one economist asked: “Is a major power like Russia incapable of supplying an oil tanker or a ship loaded with grain?”

He added: “The government is silent! Is it a silence about being let down by our allies?”

In a joint press conference on September 7, during Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said: “The future of relations with Russia is promising, and it has positive indications for the county’s economic and political future.”

“We are optimistic that the general economic situation will improve in the coming months,” he said.

However, a month and a half later, and after a government delegation recently visited Moscow, the economic situation has yet to improve in areas under the regime’s control; indeed, it has become worse.

The crisis has been intensifying over the past month, and living conditions have become hellishly dire. Amid the grain shortage, dozens of bakeries in Damascus and its periphery shut their doors, while the large state-run bakeries in the capital have been unable to supply the quota that it had promised.

After the expected waiting time at these bakeries exceeded five hours, the price of a bundle of bread (seven loaves) surged in the black market, first going from 200 pounds to 500 before reaching 1,000 pounds on Tuesday. Subsidized bread is sold for 50 pounds. As for gas for heating, local sources claim only 10 percent of families on the ration lists have received their share.



Things to Know About the UN Special Rapporteur Sanctioned by the US

Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
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Things to Know About the UN Special Rapporteur Sanctioned by the US

Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, talks to the media during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, July 11, 2023. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

A UN special rapporteur was sanctioned by the United States over her work as an independent investigator scrutinizing human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories, a high-profile role in a network of experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Francesca Albanese is among the experts chosen by the 47-member council in Geneva. They report to the body as a means of monitoring human rights records in various countries and the global observance of specific rights.

Special rapporteurs don't represent the UN and have no formal authority. Still, their reports can step up pressure on countries, while their findings inform prosecutors at the International Criminal Court and other venues working on transnational justice cases.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement announcing sanctions against Albanese on Wednesday that she “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West.”

Albanese said Thursday that she believed the sanctions were “calculated to weaken my mission.” She said at a news conference in Slovenia that “I’ll continue to do what I have to do.”

She questioned why she had been sanctioned — “for having exposed a genocide? For having denounced the system? They never challenged me on the facts.”

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, called for a “prompt reversal” of the US sanctions. He added that “even in face of fierce disagreement, UN member states should engage substantively and constructively, rather than resort to punitive measures.”

Prominent expert

Albanese, an Italian human rights lawyer, has developed an unusually high profile as the special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, a post she has held since May 2022.

Last week, she named several large US companies among those aiding Israel as it fights a war with Hamas in Gaza, saying her report “shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many.”

Israel has long had a rocky relationship with the Human Rights Council, Albanese and previous rapporteurs, accusing them of bias. It has refused to cooperate with a special “Commission of Inquiry” established following a 2021 conflict with Hamas.

Albanese has been vocal about what she describes as a genocide by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel and the US, which provides military support to its close ally, have strongly denied the accusation.

‘Nothing justifies what Israel is doing’

In recent weeks, Albanese issued a series of letters urging other countries to pressure Israel, including through sanctions, to end its deadly bombardment of the Gaza Strip. She also has been a strong supporter of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegations of war crimes.

Albanese said at a news conference last year that she has “always been attacked since the very beginning of my mandate,” adding that criticism wouldn't force her to step down.

“It just infuriates me, it pisses me off, of course it does, but then it creates even more pressure not to step back,” she said. “Human rights work is first and foremost amplifying the voice of people who are not heard.”

She added that “of course, one condemned Hamas — how not to condemn Hamas? But at the same time, nothing justifies what Israel is doing.”

Albanese became an affiliate scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University in 2015, and has taught and lectured in recent years at various universities in Europe and the Middle East. She also has written publications and opinions on Palestinian issues.

Albanese worked between 2003 and 2013 with arms of the UN, including the legal affairs department of the UN Palestinian aid agency, UNRWA, and the UN human rights office, according to her biography on the Georgetown website.

She was in Washington between 2013 and 2015 and worked for an American nongovernmental organization, Project Concern International, as an adviser on protection issues during an Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Member of a small group

Albanese is one of 14 current council-appointed experts on specific countries and territories.

Special rapporteurs, who document rights violations and abuses, usually have renewable mandates of one year and generally work without the support of the country under investigation. There are rapporteurs for Afghanistan, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Russia and Syria.

There also are three country-specific “independent experts,” a role more focused on technical assistance, for the Central African Republic, Mali and Somalia.

Additionally, there are several dozen “thematic mandates,” which task experts or working groups to analyze phenomena related to particular human rights. Those include special rapporteurs on “torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” the human rights of migrants, the elimination of discrimination against people affected by leprosy and the sale, sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children.