Syrian losses as a result of the conflict over the last 30 months have exceeded $350 billion, France-based head of the National Coordination Committee (NCC) Haytham Manna said on Monday.
Manna also said he expected it would take a decade for the Syrian people to overcome the tragedy.
Manna told Italian news agency AKI that unemployment now stands at over 50% and that 45% of those who do work still cannot earn their monthly living.
He said 45% of all industrial infrastructure in Syria had “crashed”, adding that most pharmaceutical factories were destroyed either by the regime or by the armed opposition.
“We also have exclusive lists of 110,000 of injured victims and 600,000 people disabled, as a result of the armed confrontation,” Manna said.
“This is not to mention the 2.5 million refugees outside the country and the 4 million people displaced within the country.”
“Syria has lost nearly $350 billion dollars in this tragedy," he said.
Manna added that the "enemies are many and the battle is very difficult, but I think that the majority of Syrians have lost their voice since the militarization of the revolution, when the weapon became a substitute for reason and wisdom.”
“Syria is now facing an existential threat," he said.
Regarding the duration of the conflict and the required reconstruction costs if a solution to end the conflict were reached, Manna said:
"Reconstruction cannot be independent from the nature of the political solution, which will lay the foundations for a civil state of law, democratic institutions and transparent monitoring systems.”
The success of the reconstruction process, Manna said, “is not to move from East or West, but with both, in order to stabilize construction and institution-building,” he said, adding that “the experience of the European Union is informative while in terms of infrastructure, BRICS opens significant economic horizons with acceptable costs. We also certainly need Japan and the United States in advancing new technologies in Syria.”
“We need a flexible mind, a mind free from economic ideologies, a mind that links economic and social rights with the pressures of a cowardly global economy in crisis,” Manna said.
“The Syrian mentality knows that market economy and state's economy that has been able to restore itself for over 5000 years. There is no doubt that the Syrian diaspora will play a creative role in this process,” Manna said.
As for whether the international community and the Arab world will support the process of reconstruction when the war is over, the Syrian dissident they “know very well that Syria is not the West Bank, that the economy of aid and assistance does not achieve stability, neither in the country nor in the region.”
“Here there they have one of two choices, either to leave the Syrian people dependent on themselves or to participate in the reconstruction, which is of great benefit,” Manna said.
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
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