In data: Syria after the war

Seven million displaced people, half a million casualties of war, hunger and poverty — after 14 years of civil war, Syria is in ruins. The cost of rebuilding the country will be massive. DW has compiled some key data on the situation in Syria.

With an area of about 185,000 square kilometers, Syria is roughly half the size of Germany. Around 24 million people live in the country, two-thirds of whom are dependent on humanitarian aid. Western Syria in particular is densely populated, but there are entire metropolitan areas around cities like Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, and Homs that are now in ruins.

At least 140,000 buildings, including 3,000 schools, have been either completely destroyed or severely damaged. The healthcare system has also been heavily impacted across much of the country. During the war, several human rights organizations reported that Russian and Syrian forces had deliberately bombed numerous hospitals.

Estimates vary as to what it will cost to rebuild the country, but it is clear that the total will be huge — potentially as high as one trillion US dollars. Reconstruction efforts may be further complicated because Syria is heavily contaminated with landmines, and the full extent of the problem is not known. Of the more than half a million people who were killed in the war, 12,000 were killed by mines or unexploded ordnance. For years now, Syria has been one of the three countries in the world that are most seriously affected by landmines.

Millions of refugees

Around 7 million Syrians are living as displaced persons in their own country. The northwestern province of Idlib, in particular, became a place of refuge for millions fleeing the Assad regime's forces. At least 6 million more Syrians fled abroad, the majority to the neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Germany has also taken in almost 800,000 refugees from the war.

In Lebanon above all, the true number of Syrian refugees is likely to be far higher than the official figure. The United Nations estimates that there are between 1 and 2 million Syrians in the country. The population of Lebanon itself is only just over 5 million.

Returning to a shattered country

Many of these people would like to return to their homeland, but the future is still uncertain. After 14 years of war, Syria's economy is shattered.

The country's GDP has essentially collapsed. Unemployment is high, and those who do have work earn only a fraction of their pre-war income. Meanwhile, inflation has skyrocketed: It is now almost 30 times higher than in 2011. Today, almost all Syrians live below the poverty line defined by the World Bank. The German Red Cross reports that two-thirds of them live in extreme poverty.

Syria is fragmented

These problems are compounded by the current political uncertainty. It remains unclear how the country is going to evolve. After toppling the Assad regime, the Islamist HTS militia has taken control in Damascus and begun to form a transitional government.

The group's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, presents himself as a moderate. However, his organization is still classified as a terrorist group by many countries, including the EU.

Foreign powers will continue to jostle for influence in Syria. Turkey and the militias it supports are fighting against the Kurds in the north. The United States maintains a military base in the southeast, from which it is able to target positions of the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in the sparsely-populated east of the country. The aim is to prevent an IS resurgence.

Meanwhile, Israel has occupied some areas of the demilitarized buffer zone near the Golan Heights in the southwest, and has carried out strategic bombings in Syria, partly out of concern that chemical weapons stockpiles might fall into the wrong hands.

Until recently, Russia maintained two strategically important military bases in the west of the country. It is unclear what will happen with them now. Iran, the biggest supporter of the Assad regime, is also trying to maintain its influence in the country as best as it can.

Religious minorities are afraid

During the long rule of Bashar Assad, Syria was considered part of the so-called "Shia Crescent" region, dominated by Iran — even though three-quarters of the Syrian population are Sunni, not Shia, Muslims. Assad himself belongs to the Alawite sect, a separate offshoot of Shia Islam.

There are some 2 to 3 million Alawites in Syria, many of whom are now afraid they may be branded beneficiaries of the Assad regime, and persecuted as a result. Officially, Syria also has more than 2 million Christians, although many are likely to have fled the country in recent years. They too are concerned about the potential for religious persecution.

What will happen to the Kurds?

During the war, the Kurds were able to establish an effectively autonomous, self-administered area in northeastern Syria, as they did in northern Iraq. Syria has almost 3 million Kurds. In neighboring Turkey, they are believed to number as many as 15 million.

Ankara is determined to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state. One of the main reasons it gives for opposing this is that "fighters from Kurdish terrorist militias" might carry out attacks in Turkey, and take refuge in northern Syria. This is why both the Turkish military and the Syrian militias it supports have continued to attack Kurdish regions in northeastern Syria, even after the fall of Assad.

At the very least, Turkey wants to establish a buffer zone controlled by its own military along the Syrian border. Ankara is presumably afraid that Kurds in Turkey may call for autonomy, or even an independent state, if they manage to achieve this in the neighboring countries.

With an estimated 25 to 30 million people worldwide, the Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups without a state of their own. Their traditional homeland spans parts of modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The conflicts in this region have simmered for more than a century, since the restructuring of the Middle East that followed the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. It is therefore doubtful that the political reorganization in Syria will bring lasting peace to the northeast of the country.

This article has been translated from German.