The exception to Syria's job-related woes in the booming, so to speak, field of runway repair.
Damascus, September 15 - Employment prospects under the rule of Basher Assad have seen better days since a civil war broke out in the country ten years ago, with one outlying profession in high demand: people skilled at rapidly fixing tarmac that frequent Israeli airstrikes damage on missions to disrupt the supply of Iranian weapons to Hezbollah.
Economists noted the exception to Syria's job-related woes in the booming, so to speak, field of runway repair, in several articles and interviews via SANA, the government's official news agency. The Islamic Republic of Iran keeps a near-constant stream of supply, mostly by truck and air, to arm its Shiite proxies in Lebanon, with the supply route of necessity going through Syria. Those proxies, chiefly Hezbollah, exert effective control over Lebanon and continually make noises about attacking Israel with weapons of increasing range and sophistication. Israel Air Force missions make almost weekly sorties to impede that flow of weaponry by disabling Syrian air defenses and then cratering the runways where Iranian supply aircraft aim to land. The most recent such operation took place last week.
"If not for Israeli strikes I'd be out of a job," acknowledged Mustafa Halabi, of a south Damascus suburb. "Normal airport and military airbase maintenance staff aren't enough to keep the facilities operating when bombs or air-to-ground missiles hit with such frequency. There might even have been some Israeli cruise missiles in the mix over the last year. Thank Allah, now I have plenty of work, and two of my neighbors work a different shift on the same job. It's keeping our families fed."
Poor performance by both Syrian antiaircraft batteries and the much-touted Russian S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missiles have made little difference in the frequency or accuracy of the Israeli strikes. Israel has maintained delicate relations with Russia, which asserted a military role in the region, to afford freedom of movement in Lebanese and Syrian airspace despite the Russian Air Force and air defense batteries scattered about Syria. Experts differ on which factor plays the most decisive role: Israeli tactics, techniques, and equipment to avoid detection; Russia avoiding confrontation with Israel in the skies of the Middle East; or just that Russian systems, despite tremendous hype, often prove underwhelming in combat. Whichever the dominant reason, runway repair personnel in Syria have only positive words for the perfect storm of Russian hesitation, Israeli persistence, Iranian stubbornness, and Syrian incompetence that keeps a roof over their families' heads.