The Syrian Civil War hit the country devastating both its economic and demographic assets. According to data published in 2017 by Mohammad Akram al-Qash, head of the Syrian Commission for Family Affairs, in that year Syria had a population of 21 million inhabitants, in addition to 7 million Syrians refugees in other countries due to the war. At first glance, this number would appear to be consistent with that of the Syrian population before the outbreak of the conflict (but also including Iraqis and Palestinians permanently residing in Syria with refugee status) given that the birth rate in the country has meanwhile more than halved (from 500.000 births per year in 2011 to 200.000 today) while in 2016 the total fertility rate touched 2,9 children per woman for the first time in history, breaking down the previously insurmountable limit of 3 children per woman .
If even before the war the demographics showed a company in the midst of the so-called "demographic transition", the latest developments seem to confirm the very long-term forecasts made by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that, by 2100, Syria will not have a population greater than 40 million inhabitants, destined, moreover, to rapid aging (***).
The data published by official Syrian sources probably sin because of optimism since most international bodies as well as the most accredited intelligence reports estimate that the total number of Syrians currently residing in the country is no more than 17 million. The Syrian government, in fact, not being in control of the whole territory of the country (especially of the areas in possession of the Kurds and the Islamist rebels), does not have the opportunity to conduct complete and satisfactory statistical surveys, having to face a heavy humanitarian crisis even in part of the country under state control (although it is estimated that although the Syrian government now controls 66,14% of the country's territory with more than 70% of the population, more than half of this number is made up of internally displaced people).
As for the Syrian refugee population, any census attempt is simply a chimera. Despite more than 9 years since the beginning of the war, Syrian refugees have now spread to every corner of the world, to date the absolute majority of them are concentrated in the neighboring countries of Syria: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. However, it is estimated that less than half of the Syrians who fled to these countries actually registered in refugee camps managed by the governments of these states or by international organizations such as the Red Cross or the Red Crescent. Most have simply "spread across the country", further complicating a social crisis already on the verge of breaking. The war has also caused serious loss of life to Syrian society in general, now estimated at 400-600.000 people but which, once the conflict is truly over, could reach 1-2 million deaths. not to mention the hundreds of thousands of jihadists who have come from all over the world to join the militias of ISIS, Jabhat al-Nursa or other Islamist formations. Of the latter, no one really takes into account the losses since, in the eyes of the deployments in the field, they represent only cannon fodder that can be used for tactical purposes and then comfortably "buried" under two meters of land with the head facing Mecca.
On the other hand, it would be interesting to know the impact that the war is having on the Syrian minority communities, the bulwark of the regime, especially on the Alauti. Although the coastal area of Syria, the geographical and demographic heart of the Alawite community was in fact the only part of Syria to be spared from the devastation of the rest of the country, the local populations still had to endure their considerable load of pain due to the losses suffered by the Alauiti in the ranks of the army and of the various territorial militias. In fact, although the continuation of the war has over time led to the general mobilization before the various ethno-religious communities more favorable to the regime (Druze, Christians, Shiite Duodecimani, Ismailiti), then the Sunni elites of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama, and finally, after the Russian intervention, even of the majority of the Sunni population in general, in the first two years of the civil war it was mainly the Alauti who sustained the impact of the war, paying it dearly. In recent years, numerous rumors have been published regarding the losses suffered by the Alauiti in battle, with numbers that in some cases reach 150.000 units, but these are certainly exaggerations for propaganda purposes often often disseminated on purpose to create havoc and sensationalism. Nonetheless, the war inflicted a hemorrhage of losses on the various minority ethno-religious communities in the country, due both to those killed on the ground and to emigration (especially among Christians), from which they will be able to heal only after several years and with the help with a robust birth incentive policy. However, this initiative would risk on the other hand provoking the syndrome of the "war of the cradles" in the Sunni majority, affecting even the most loyalist sectors, with the result of creating a perennial fracture within society.
In any case, having to necessarily postpone an all-inclusive and timely analysis on the effects of the war on the population of Syria, some preliminary considerations can be made as of now.
Primo, the war caused a profound shock that accelerated the demographic transition process in the country. Even when peace is finally restored and the government returns to control the whole national territory, this transition will still be irreversible.
Secondo, the conflict has contributed to annihilating traditional tribal, patriarchal and patrilocal structures especially in the rural areas of the country with effects that will become truly visible in all their reach only in a couple of decades.
Thirdthe external intervention by Hezbollah, the various Iraqi Shiite militias, the Iranians and the Russian Federation alongside the government of Damascus, meant that the balance of power within the country ended up definitively leaning towards those ethno-religious communities and those sectors of Syrian society today more projected towards modernity and who will have the honor and the burden of both governing and rebuilding the country, once Syria has finally returned to peace.
Bedroom and last, the Syrian Civil War has definitively marked the decline of the Sunnis both as a political force and as an ideological-militant basin.
After the so-called "Islamist Insurgency" of 1976-1982, culminating in the "Hama Massacre", the Syrian Civil War constitutes the second attempt by the most intransigent forces of the Sunni camp, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, to subvert delicate how profound balances of power have settled in Syria in the last 100 years, since the country became a French "mandate" while at the same time starting a long journey towards its transformation into a modern national state. These attempts failed both because the structures of the Syrian "deep state" borrowed from the French and Soviet influences (the armed forces, the security apparatus, the bureaucracy and the state administration) managed to withstand the impact of history and for the anachronistic revanscist and obscurantist project of the Sunni Islamist forces, advocated the establishment of an "Islamic State" or even to restore the "Caliphate", testimony not already of an "Islamic rebirth" but of the socio-cultural disintegration of the large number of Sunni lines due to the processes of modernization and demographic transition described above.
(***) "World Population Prospects The 2017 Revision", United Nations
Photo: Giorgio Bianchi
