The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has released a report detailing how the Syrian regime is asking the Syrian diaspora for large fees to avoid military conscription as this generates a major source of revenue for the cash-strapped government.
Ten years on since the start of the Syrian revolution, the Syrian lira is in freefall and economic sanctions from the West have hit Syria hard. Roughly 90 per cent of Syrians live below the poverty line.
In February a Syrian army official announced on Facebook that authorities would confiscate the property of service evaders and their families, leading to a “significant increase” in applications for exemption in the first half of 2021, an embassy employee said.
Almost half of Syrians are now displaced, either internally or outside the country, whilst even if men eligible for service have escaped, they may have elderly parents, spouses, or other family members left behind.
The findings are based on joint research between Siraj and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project who say that a fifth of Syria’s 17 million population are of military age, in a country where military service is mandatory for Syrian men between the ages of 18 and 42.
According to investigative journalist Ali Siraj, who wrote about the phenomenon in the Guardian, the threat of conscription is a major reason refugees fear returning.
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“The Syrian government has been able to leverage this anxiety into revenue, harvesting foreign currency from the roughly 1 million Syrians who have settled in Europe to help prop up its ailing budget after US sanctions cut the country off from the international banking system last year,” Ali wrote.
In June last year the US imposed sanctions on Syria under the Caesar Act, causing the Syrian regime extreme financial hardship.
According to Ali’s article, the cash payments return to Syria via diplomatic pouch, which under the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations should only contain diplomatic documents intended for official use.
The regime will reap revenues of up to 240 billion Syrian pounds ($190 million) this year from the military exemption fees and up to $400,000 cash on some days.
The Syrian regime has sought other ways to extort its population, including administrative fees, raising the price of passport renewal costs, forcing citizens to quarantine in government designated hotels and through border fees.
In August last year, Relief Web said that the sanctions placed on Syria by the USA, the EU and the UK have caused “dire humanitarian consequences” for Syrians living in government-controlled areas who suffer from lack of investment in basic services and infrastructure.