Earlier Sunday morning, Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar offered this headline: “Assad charts escape to Russia via Tartus to Lebanon. Uhhh…great if that happens before Syria strike decisions become irreversible. Before the G-20 Summit, Syria was not at the top of the agenda. Then it was– in part because of a war of words (or let’s see who will cancel meetings first) between the United States & Russia. Then many started learning where Syria was on the map again. Then the U.S. decided to evacuate most of its diplomats from Lebanon due to more “sectarian and unpredictable” activity. That sums up the politics…but looks take a look beyond the Politics and review the “PIDE” side of Syria: Impact, Development, and Economics…
…As for the economics of the Syria crisis — mind you, not Syria, because crisis implies that neighboring countries are “deeply affected” as well–oil pops up into the discussion, of course?! (So who will own the conflict and related responsibilities…Turkey, Jordan, Iran…Oman–as Meir Javendafar suggests in Time magazine.) Al Jazeera America’s Massoud Hayoun reported one forecast of Syria’s economic state: “Market analysts say spillover from any military action could present a formidable risk to international oil supply.”
Syria ‘powder keg’ could provoke oil crisis
On Wednesday, PITAPOLICY expressed frustration with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Syria. In that time period, we had a chance to chat with some other Huffington Post bloggers, and Mehrunisa Qayyum (PITAPOLICY Founder) got some feedback from Nabil Ouchagour from Al Huffington Post – Maghreb…here are her thoughts…the rest may be read on her Huffington Post Blog.
Arab Bloggers Mirror “It’s Complicated” View
When I started blogging on The Huffington Post site on Middle East and North Africa’s political economy challenges, I committed a “punditry” error: I stopped practicing other languages, like Arabic, or trying to learn new ones, like French. Luckily, The Huffington Post community has grown so much that I can rectify some of that as I’ve had an opportunity to exchange points with Ouchagour who also blogs for Al Huffington Post (Magreb version) from Morocco… in Arabic AND French. Both of these languages operate as the conversational languages in Syria. So it may be helpful to identify common ground in these parallel conversations. Lately, we, as Americans, share more sentiments with Britain’s general population (and many Arab populations as shown below) than we do with most of our elected leaders — remember how Cameron’s Syria intervention faced defeat by his own public? Click here to continue…
