Very happy to see my work on the history of EU–Syria relations featured in @TIMEP's Zakaria Al Shmaly (@ZakShmaly) analysis of how relations between Europe and Damascus are changing. timep.org/2026/10/21/the-cha… Zakaria draws on a 1982 Commission–EIB mission report I came across in my research. Even then, Brussels had money for Syria that barely got spent for three reasons: the procedures were hard to navigate, coordination on the Syrian side was weak, and other lenders offered cheaper, simpler deals. More than forty years later, as Zakaria shows, all three problems remain, and the competition is much stiffer. Zak's piece is also quite insightful and clearly separates the signals from the substance. European engagement is higher than at any time since 2011, but Berlin and Paris do most of the real work bilaterally; the support comes with almost no conditions, and the returns debate leaves refugees in legal limbo rather than sending them home.

L'article a été corrigé aujourd'hui, cinq heures après ma publication, alors qu'il était en ligne depuis près de deux jours déjà. Merci quand même, @LOrientLeJour.

Quoted in @althawra_sy (in Arabic) in @AmmarJello's piece on whether Syria can become a transit route for Gulf and Iraqi energy, and what it would take to get there. thawra.sy/report/%D8%A3%D9%8… On a map, Syria has always been the obvious shortcut between the Gulf, Iraq and the Mediterranean, and this year that geography has finally started to turn into infrastructure. As I put it to Al-Thawra, “Hormuz didn’t create the idea, but it changed the risk calculus and fast-tracked decisions that would otherwise have taken years.” Not all of these flows will last. Trucked oil may fade once shipping through Hormuz normalises, while some pipeline projects predate the crisis. My test is whether Kirkuk–Baniyas moves from an MoU to signed contracts and financing before the pressure eases. If it doesn’t, it could end up back in the drawer, as it has several times since 2003.

Quoted in @haberciyizorg (in Turkish) in @serrayedikardes' report on daily life in Syria after September’s fuel price hikes and the protests that followed. haberciyiz.org/suriyede-geci… My point was that a cash-strapped state can’t keep an economy running on subsidies for long, and the money would go further if it helped create private-sector jobs. The people in the piece show what’s at stake, among them a dentist in Aleppo whose patients now choose extractions because they can’t afford a $20 filling.

The article is also available in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic! 🇪🇸: al-monitor.com/es/originals/… 🇨🇳: al-monitor.com/zh-hans/origi… 🇸🇾: al-monitor.com/ar/originals/…

Quoted in @AlMonitor by @shellykittleson on how the Hormuz crisis is reshaping economic ties between Iraq and Syria. al-monitor.com/originals/202… Energy has brought Baghdad and Damascus closer than at any point in decades, and the practical work on customs and border crossings suggests this could last beyond the crisis. Whether it does will only become clear once Hormuz reopens and the urgency is gone. Read 👇

The 1977 EEC–Syria Cooperation Agreement was signed for an unlimited period, came with EUA 60 million in financial aid, and contained no provision for political dialogue. Damascus now wants to replace it. How it was built: syriadispatch.com/p/relation…

Syria’s new oil deals give the state 60–70% of revenues. But inspectors found no genuine tanker sealing at Deir Ezzor’s loading yards, with loads estimated arbitrarily. A state that can’t verify what leaves the yard can’t verify its share. syriadispatch.com/p/spc-oil-…

“Banal evil is evil without evildoers. Radical evil is evil with evildoers.” Yassin al-Haj Saleh on why what Syrians endured was not Arendt’s banality of evil, and why the structures behind it may be outliving the regime. syriadispatch.com/p/yassin-a…

Rahaf Aldoughli interviewed men who spent years fighting Assad, and heard them talk about honor, sacrifice and manhood in the idiom the Baathist state had spent fifty years building. “The opposition inherited the political culture it was fighting.” syriadispatch.com/p/rahaf-al…

Syria’s Finance Ministry reviewed the draft 2027 budget with state companies’ finance directors this week. By law, it must reach parliament by the end of October. SANA: sana.sy/economy/syrian-econo… What to watch: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-sp…

Yassin al-Haj Saleh says there was one gathering under Assad that no regime, however tyrannical, could disband. Syrians ended up doing politics through it, and that shaped what came after. Our conversation on political poverty: syriadispatch.com/p/yassin-a…

Asked “where are the tenders?”, Syria’s energy minister told parliament: “We are buying diesel at auctions at sea.” Meant as a rebuke, it’s also an admission: spot cargoes, no term contracts, little bargaining power. syriadispatch.com/p/syria-en…

If you want to understand how Syria’s new government thinks about subsidies, the Energy Minister’s answers to Parliament last month are a good place to start. Asked again and again about the fuel price rise, Mohammad al-Bashir kept returning to one line: the Syrian Petroleum Company and the Syrian Electricity Company are “economic entities” that run on profit and loss. If Agriculture wants cheaper diesel for farmers, it buys at the set price and covers the difference with money agreed with Finance, and the same goes for Transport and bus lines. Energy sells; who gets help, and who pays for it, is decided elsewhere. In a transition to a market economy, that logic is defensible. The hearing also showed what happens when every ministry assumes another one is holding the net: an MP reported that the Minister of Social Affairs learned of the price rise “like any citizen”, although her lists of vulnerable households were ready, while the Energy Minister said the data were incomplete. Both may be true, which is exactly the problem. Full exchanges, timestamped: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-en…