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Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues05/jul05/pdf/syria.pdf
Syria at a Crossroads
(Smithsonian Magazine) Stephen Glain - The Syrian economy is stagnating even as the population (now at 18.4 million) is expanding rapidly. Petroleum, long the leading resource, is being depleted at such a rate that Syria will be a net importer of oil in only a few years. And when oil income dwindles, so, too, may the government subsidies with which the regime has curried public favor. The most charitable assessment of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, 39, is that he is the Syrian everyman's fellow inmate. Syria today remains a garrisoned state. Human rights organizations estimate that thousands remain in Syrian jails, and there have been many reports of systematic torture. A Western diplomat in Damascus told me that Syria is playing poker when everyone else is playing chess. It is an apt characterization of a regime that is too insular and backward-looking to realize it is waging a war abandoned long ago by its allies, peddling the remains of the pan-Arab dream.