Rahaf Aldoughli interviewed men who spent years fighting Assad, and heard them talk about honor, sacrifice and manhood in the idiom the Baathist state had spent fifty years building. “The opposition inherited the political culture it was fighting.” syriadispatch.com/p/rahaf-al…

Syria’s Finance Ministry reviewed the draft 2027 budget with state companies’ finance directors this week. By law, it must reach parliament by the end of October. SANA: sana.sy/economy/syrian-econo… What to watch: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-sp…

Yassin al-Haj Saleh says there was one gathering under Assad that no regime, however tyrannical, could disband. Syrians ended up doing politics through it, and that shaped what came after. Our conversation on political poverty: syriadispatch.com/p/yassin-a…

Asked “where are the tenders?”, Syria’s energy minister told parliament: “We are buying diesel at auctions at sea.” Meant as a rebuke, it’s also an admission: spot cargoes, no term contracts, little bargaining power. syriadispatch.com/p/syria-en…

If you want to understand how Syria’s new government thinks about subsidies, the Energy Minister’s answers to Parliament last month are a good place to start. Asked again and again about the fuel price rise, Mohammad al-Bashir kept returning to one line: the Syrian Petroleum Company and the Syrian Electricity Company are “economic entities” that run on profit and loss. If Agriculture wants cheaper diesel for farmers, it buys at the set price and covers the difference with money agreed with Finance, and the same goes for Transport and bus lines. Energy sells; who gets help, and who pays for it, is decided elsewhere. In a transition to a market economy, that logic is defensible. The hearing also showed what happens when every ministry assumes another one is holding the net: an MP reported that the Minister of Social Affairs learned of the price rise “like any citizen”, although her lists of vulnerable households were ready, while the Energy Minister said the data were incomplete. Both may be true, which is exactly the problem. Full exchanges, timestamped: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-en…

Raqqa had picked 8% of its cotton by early October. There is still no official marketing channel, and the directorate puts costs at ~$700/t, above the state’s ~$610 price. SANA: sana.sy/economy/syrian-econo… Our piece: syriadispatch.com/p/syria-co…

In Raqqa, used trousers sell for about USD 1.5 and locally made ones for about USD 10. Syria has banned used clothing, and one trader was asked for ~USD 7,500 in fines on goods worth ~USD 700. syriadispatch.com/p/second-h…