In Syria today, a pervasive sense of struggle touches nearly every corner of daily life. Citizens across all social classes and backgrounds find themselves barely able to afford food, rent, utilities, and the basic necessities required for a dignified existence. The country is currently attempting a monumental political shift, trying to leave behind half a century of brutal tyranny and 14 years of devastating civil war to forge a new and freer political order. At the same time, the nation is laboring to recover from an economic collapse so precipitous and severe that it ultimately helped topple the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
However, as the country has proceeded with its political transition under President Ahmed al-Shara, living conditions for the vast majority of Syrians have only deteriorated. Costs have soared dramatically, and a promised post-Assad economic boom has conspicuously failed to materialize. Syria’s new government has offered its citizens some notable symbolic victories, including a successful end to international isolation, but for most everyday people, the administration has failed to deliver materially. In fact, a number of its key policy choices have actively made their daily lives significantly harder.
Of all the complex and overlapping problems Syria now faces, including the constant threat of intercommunal violence and the lingering possibility of national fragmentation, the economy remains by far the biggest challenge. Yet, despite this stark reality, the country’s new leadership has insisted on implementing harsh austerity measures that have driven the cost of living to unbearable heights for the average Syrian.
Syria is certainly not the only nation in the world currently experiencing a painful affordability crisis. However, it remains one of the world’s most politically fragile states, deeply scarred by nearly a decade and a half of conflict. If the new government proves fundamentally unable to provide for ordinary Syrians, it risks igniting widespread civil unrest that could completely derail the country’s delicate post-Assad transition.
Biting Costs
Syrian rebels led by the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham successfully ousted the Assad government in December 2024. Shara, the group’s prominent leader, eventually assumed the presidency and has since overseen the consolidation of the country’s new political institutions alongside its fragile postwar recovery efforts.
His administration has unquestionably scored some real victories. After decades of crushing political isolation, Syria has regained the political and diplomatic support of major regional and global powers, including the United States, and successfully secured the removal of most international economic sanctions. Furthermore, Shara’s government has, for the time being, successfully kept the country from breaking apart. After defeating Kurdish-led forces in Syria’s northeast earlier this year, the administration is now actively working to reintegrate that formerly semiautonomous region back into the national fold. The government has also largely reined in revenge attacks and sectarian killings, although pro-government partisans did perpetrate two isolated massacres of minority Alawites and Druze last year. Additionally, Shara has managed to largely shield Syria from the dangerous spillover effects of the broader U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, even as that conflict has raged elsewhere throughout the wider Middle East.
Where the new Syrian government has fallen desperately short is in its ongoing management of the economy. Reviving commerce, trade, and industry was always going to be a formidable and monumental challenge for any post-Assad administration. Fourteen years of relentless civil war displaced more than half the country’s entire population and caused the national economy to contract by a staggering 50 percent. The World Bank has estimated that the war caused more than $108 billion in direct physical damage, concentrated largely in and around three economically vital urban centers: Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs. Furthermore, the World Bank reckons that two-thirds of Syrians now live in stark poverty, surviving on an income well below $3.65 per person per day. Meanwhile, the UN Development Program paints an even more alarming picture, asserting that 90 percent of Syrians are currently living in poverty, with a staggering 66 percent trapped in extreme poverty.
By the final several years of Assad’s iron-fisted rule, domestic conditions had already grown thoroughly miserable. In fact, this deep economic collapse directly contributed to the sudden implosion of the regime in December 2024, as half-starved Syrian soldiers simply abandoned the front lines when confronted by the advancing rebel forces. Under these crushing historical circumstances, even an amply resourced government led by top-tier economic experts would struggle immensely to restart the national machinery. The Shara government, unfortunately, is neither particularly well-resourced nor packed with traditional economic experts.
Ordinary Syrians, deeply impoverished by decades of economic mismanagement and a catastrophic war, simply cannot afford even the bare necessities of survival. The soaring cost of living far exceeds the average citizen’s meager income. Based on current unofficial exchange rates, World Food Program estimates indicate that the basic monthly needs for a Syrian household of five—comprising food, water, and utilities—cost about $197. Meanwhile, the Syrian Center for Policy Research, a respected Damascus-based think tank, places the monthly abject poverty line at roughly $255. Yet, in stark contrast, the official monthly minimum wage is equivalent to a mere $95. Consequently, a vast number of Syrians must depend heavily on remittances sent by relatives working abroad just to get by.
To make matters significantly worse, the cost of living in Syria has been climbing at an alarming and steady pace. The World Food Program calculates that the cost of essential goods increased by an astonishing 34 percent between July 2025 and July 2026. The purchasing power of ordinary Syrians has been further diminished by a weakening national currency, which initially experienced a brief surge in strength following the events of December 2024 but has since steadily declined, approaching near-record lows reminiscent of the dark days of the Assad era.
Today, more than 80 percent of Syrians lack reliable access to sufficient food. A joint assessment conducted by the government and the World Food Program found some marginal improvements on this front between 2024 and 2025, but only to the extent that the proportion of genuinely food-secure Syrians increased from a meager 11.1 percent to 18.4 percent. Following a severe regional drought that severely limited domestic agricultural production in 2025, ample rainfall this year is expected to improve the availability of domestically grown food. However, it remains entirely unclear whether everyday Syrians will actually possess the financial means to purchase these goods from local markets.
Housing costs have similarly skyrocketed across the country. According to data from the Syrian Center for Policy Research, residential rents increased by nearly 66 percent between May 2025 and May 2026. After trying to live elsewhere, many displaced people have felt forced to return to homes and neighborhoods that were heavily shattered by the war simply because they found themselves completely unable to afford the exorbitant rents demanded in less damaged areas. These punishing costs are biting hard even for middle-class and upper-middle-class Syrians, who now must contend with rents that have doubled or tripled, alongside rapidly escalating school and university tuitions.
Half-Baked Policies
Although a vast portion of Syria’s current hardship can be fairly chalked up to the physical devastation of war and decades of severe Assad-era mismanagement, a significant share of the country’s ongoing problems are the direct product of the Shara government’s own policy choices. The country’s new leaders have undertaken an aggressive "shock therapy" program of rapid economic liberalization without appearing to fully account for the acute vulnerability and deep poverty facing the majority of Syrians.
During the Assad government’s final and most threadbare years, the regime had already slashed sweeping state subsidies that it could no longer afford to maintain. Alarmingly, the Shara government has gone even further. Just months after taking power, it increased the price of state-subsidized bread—the absolute staple of the traditional Syrian diet—by nearly 1,400 percent. Although the state has since managed to hold the cash price of a standard bread bundle relatively steady, it has repeatedly shrunk the actual physical amount of bread provided per bundle. Early this year, the government also massively increased electricity tariffs, in some cases driving up rates by as much as 800 percent. This new pricing structure effectively shifted the immense financial burden of restoring the country’s shattered power infrastructure directly onto individual consumers and cash-strapped businesses; as a result, many citizens have simply stopped paying bills they find impossibly high.
Furthermore, Syria’s new authorities rushed to bring domestic fuel prices entirely in line with global market averages early on, sharply increasing operating costs for farming, commercial transportation, and a wide array of other crucial sectors. On September 13, the government ratcheted fuel prices up yet again—hiking diesel costs by 40 percent—while citing volatile global energy markets and ongoing, prolonged repairs at a key Syrian oil refinery. In immediate response to this latest punishing price hike, large-scale protests erupted organically across various parts of the country. These demonstrations represent the largest and most widespread public displays of discontent seen since the ouster of Assad.
The Shara government has attempted to partially compensate for rampant inflation by periodically increasing public-sector salaries; in March alone, the administration approved a notable 50 percent wage raise. However, the tangible benefits of these higher wages are continually eroded by ongoing inflation, and the financial relief has not been distributed equally. The government laid off hundreds of thousands of legacy Assad-era civil servants last year, even as it aggressively hired its own loyalist cadres, including onboarding significant numbers into the newly reconstituted military and domestic security services.
Compounding these domestic pressures, the Shara government has aggressively opened the country up to an influx of foreign imports, entirely dismantling the strict controls that previously served to conserve vital foreign currency reserves and protect struggling local manufacturers. As a result, domestic Syrian producers, who are already trying to operate under deeply adverse conditions, now find themselves completely unable to compete with a flood of cheap imported goods.
Amateur Hour in Damascus
The economic hurdles facing the Shara government are undeniably daunting. The administration inherited a state apparatus that was effectively bankrupt. While the government has projected recovering some much-needed revenue from customs duties and various consumption-related fees and taxes, it is also actively working to position Syria as a crucial regional trade hub by developing new road and rail links alongside ambitious pipeline projects. Additionally, the state has retaken control of the country’s northeast, a territory comparatively rich in both natural resources and fertile farmland. Yet, restoring actual oil and gas production in the northeast will require substantial, long-term capital investment, and ramping up wheat production might ultimately prove to be a net financial drain on government coffers rather than an immediate windfall.
Foreign governments, meanwhile, have not supported Syria to the full extent that Damascus likely expected. The United States has certainly helped reconnect Syria to international financial networks and encouraged private investment in the country, but Washington has refrained from making large-scale financial commitments toward national recovery or convening a formal "Friends of Syria" donor conference—a strategy utilized to mobilize international aid for Iraq, for example, back in 2016. Wealthy Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have sent modest packages of assistance, including targeted support for public-sector salaries, but they have steadfastly declined to keep the Syrian state afloat financially. Furthermore, the capacity of these Gulf powers to offer further substantial support remains in serious question as they grapple with the wider regional economic and security fallout of the ongoing war on Iran.
The World Bank has provided critical grants, but the Shara government’s conscious decision to largely eschew international loans has likely cut Syria off from vital sources of additional liquidity in the near term. The government has not explicitly spelled out its precise rationale for rejecting international borrowing, though President Shara has publicly remarked that he does not want Syria "to live on assistance, or on politicized loans." In any case, traditional humanitarian aid has sharply fallen away; earlier this year, severe cuts to donor funding—particularly from the United States—forced the World Food Program to officially end its subsidized bread program and cut general food assistance right in half.
Shara has consistently envisioned a national recovery powered primarily by private foreign investment rather than foreign aid. However, he appears to have fundamentally misjudged how quickly and readily that investment would materialize. Many of the high-profile memorandums of understanding that his government initially announced with eager prospective investors have simply failed to translate into real, binding financial commitments. Significant, structural obstacles to foreign investment stubbornly persist: the domestic security situation remains unsettled across various regions, and Syria still suffers from a lack of reliable legal and regulatory frameworks alongside a fully functional, trustworthy financial system. Moreover, the private investments that have actually been announced tend to skew heavily toward grandiose real estate megaprojects that seem entirely disconnected from the actual, pressing development needs of the broader population.
Part of the underlying problem is that the Shara government is suffering from a notable shortage of seasoned economic expertise. President Shara relies heavily on a tight-knit circle of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham veterans to act as his key policy advisers and decision-makers. Their practical experience in governance is largely limited to running a small, isolated rebel-held enclave located in northwestern Syria between 2017 and 2024. Furthermore, Shara has systematically stripped power away from traditional legacy state institutions—such as the ministries of economy and transportation—and concentrated administrative authority within a handful of newly created, opaque entities directly linked to the presidency. This includes a newly minted "sovereign fund" designed to manage a vast portfolio of state-owned assets alongside property aggressively appropriated from wealthy business figures formerly tied to the Assad regime.
This glaring lack of professional know-how is frequently on display. Major, sweeping policy announcements—such as this month’s abrupt fuel price hikes—are rolled out suddenly and appear to be made without rigorous prior study or adequate outside consultation with industry experts. And while reliable economic data has historically been difficult to come by in Syria, the Shara government has occasionally presented figures that independent observers view as highly dubious. In March, for instance, President Shara himself proudly announced that the Syrian economy had expanded by an astonishing 30 to 35 percent over the previous year. In stark contrast, the independent Syrian Center for Policy Research estimated that the actual, realistic growth rate for the entire year of 2025 was a meager 0.3 percent.
Patience Running Thin
Although the specific policy decisions enacted by the Shara government have not entirely foreclosed the possibility of an eventual economic recovery, they have undeniably delayed it and made daily life significantly harder for ordinary citizens. If basic human needs are not addressed and met soon, the public could rapidly lose faith in the legitimacy of the country’s fragile post-Assad political order.
According to recent polling conducted by the publication Syria in Transition, a striking 52 percent of Syrians openly disapproved of their government’s overall performance in June—a notable jump from 44 percent just a couple of months prior in April. A clear majority of respondents across both polling cycles reported struggling to cover their basic living expenses at least once a month. Furthermore, in April—the latest month for which detailed data is available—66 percent of polled citizens explicitly stated that the government was simply not doing nearly enough to curb skyrocketing prices. Between April and June, the proportion of respondents who expressed deep pessimism regarding the country’s future trajectory surged dramatically from 30 percent to 46 percent.
Immediately following the dramatic fall of the Assad regime, ordinary Syrians were remarkably willing to exercise patience and excuse their new government’s early shortcomings. Nearly two years later, however, that reservoir of goodwill is evaporating, and citizens are increasingly ready to voice their mounting frustration. Because the population is, on the whole, deeply exhausted by more than a decade of horrific warfare, this discontent is unlikely to manifest as a renewed armed struggle. Instead, everyday people are expressing their anger through increasingly frequent smaller-scale protests, labor strikes, and public demonstrations demanding immediate economic relief and vastly improved public services.
This lingering economic hardship also adds a dangerous layer of general combustibility to the nation, making a host of other complex political and sectarian flashpoints potentially explosive. The Shara government is currently attempting the delicate process of reintegrating the Kurdish-led northeast, which includes trying to smoothly fold local Kurdish militias into the official national military. At the exact same time, however, the central government is abruptly removing long-standing subsidies in that formerly semiautonomous region—which maintained its own distinct economic regime for years—thereby massively increasing the cost of fuel and other essentials for the civilians living there.
Meanwhile, along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, authorities are struggling to establish a functional, trusting relationship with the local Alawite community amid a climate of acute economic stress. Alawites not only face the exact same punishing cost-of-living pressures as their fellow citizens across the country, but they have also suffered disproportionately from mass public-sector layoffs and the formal dissolution of Assad-era military and security apparatuses. Many community members remain terrified to leave their home villages due to lingering safety concerns. Across the Mediterranean coast and throughout the rest of the country, soaring consumer prices combined with rampant unemployment create a volatile recipe for widespread social instability.
A Syria that remains trapped in poverty and prone to violence is clearly in no one’s interest. After years of unspeakable misery and bloodshed, the country desperately needs a genuine chance to finally recover and rebuild. As the Shara government continues its attempts to revitalize the national economy, it must do so with social stability and the welfare of the public front and center in its planning.
Authorities must urgently prioritize affordability to ensure that the country’s most vulnerable populations do not become casualties of rapid, uncalculated liberalizing reforms. Specifically, the government should consider developing new, targeted subsidies for staple goods such as bread, electricity, transport, farming, and industrial production while the nation slowly emerges from the depths of economic collapse. Simultaneously, its international partners need to step up by providing Damascus with the financial resources required to deliver meaningfully for ordinary citizens, helping to construct a vital social safety net as structural economic reforms are pursued. Relying solely on speculative investments in high-end energy projects and real estate will simply not be enough to resurrect Syria.
Furthermore, the government urgently needs to open wider, more honest channels of communication with the public to build foundational trust and actively manage inevitable discontent as Syrians endure what was always destined to be a painful and difficult transitional period. This requires communicating frankly, clearly, and transparently about the genuine rationale behind its economic decision-making, consulting closely with domestic Syrian businesses, and empowering the newly formed parliament to play a robust, meaningful oversight role in governance.
Syrians were undeniably relieved to finally witness the downfall of the Assad regime, but they do not possess endless reserves of patience for the Shara administration. The country’s new leaders must act decisively to improve the material conditions of ordinary citizens immediately, or they risk permanently squandering the trust of the people they vowed to protect.
