How Hormuz crisis is reshaping economic ties between Iraq and Syria
Iraq and Syria are expanding trade and energy cooperation, but security risks, economic challenges and longstanding mistrust raise questions about whether their growing partnership can endure.
AMMAN – Agreements to establish major free-trade zones at two border crossings between Iraq and Syria signal greater cooperation and trust between the two countries.
Some, however, question how long this will last amid regional instability and longstanding distrust between the current Syrian government and its Iraqi counterparts.
Benjamin Feve, a researcher who focuses on Syria’s economy and politics as well as the founder and editor of The Syria Dispatch, told Al-Monitor on Oct. 15 that “the Iraq-Syria relationship has moved much further than it had in the past few decades, and the biggest driver has been energy.”
“Damascus signed a few deals for free zones at the [border] crossings just this week,” he noted, while “at the institutional level, at the end of September the two customs authorities agreed on a set of practical measures” for crossings recently reopened between the two countries.
