By David Bender

    “Ninety percent of the Syrian economy is corruption,” one Syrian told me.

    While this is statement is perhaps more hyperbole than a precise statistic, it may not be far off.  A vast amount of the economy is linked to corruption.  When Syrians need almost anything done at a government office, a bribe is involved.  However, those taking the bribes are not taking them to get rich.  The basic salary of a Syrian civil servant is around $200 a month; and given the small size of Syria’s private sector, many people work for the government.  Given that women often do not work (though there are more women in the workforce in Syria than in other Arab countries) and families have many more children than in the West, there is simply no way to support a family on a civil servant salary.  Bribes form a vital supplement to people’s salary.  

    Westerners are generally immune from this system of bribery.  In all of my experiences in Syrian government offices I have never given a bribe, nor have I even been asked for one, even when I had a potentially serious visa/residency issue that could probably have been fixed far faster for a fee.  However, all foreigners are not treated equally.  I was speaking with a Bangladeshi woman a couple of years ago and we were talking about the general chaos and disorder at the Immigration and Passport Office, a place that non-Syrians have to spend a lot of time.

    “At least we don’t have to bribe them, though,” I said.

    “What?  Yes we do,” she countered.

    As it turns out, foreigners from Europe and North America are not asked for bribes, but foreigners from other parts of the world where bribery is an accepted part of life (like Bangladesh, no doubt), a bribe (usually only a dollar) is needed to get anything done.  Perhaps Syrian officials are nervous about getting complaints from Western embassies, but I think it may be that they know that Westerners generally do not know how to give a bribe.  Personally, I have no idea how it should be done.

    But for Syrians, bribes feed bribes.  One of the more profitable jobs is to be a traffic cop.  Vehicular violations are generally taken care of on the spot. Traffic laws seem to be only followed if there happens to be a traffic cop standing at the corner.  Often, drivers will only stop at a red light if there is a cop there (as such all of the main intersections in Damascus do have a traffic cop).  About a year ago I was in a car with a Syrian friend.  Not seeing that there was a cop at the corner, he went through a red light and was pulled over.  The usual ticket would be about $60, but for a dollar or two bribe, the cop will let you off with a “warning.”  For the cop, these bribes add up over the months.  As a result, to get a job as a traffic cop, one has to pay bribes of hundreds or even thousands of dollars to the police department.  The idea is that one can “earn” it all back taking bribes from drivers and if there are not enough moving violations, there are instances of police stopping all taxis and minibuses to demand 50 cents from each.  If one doesn’t then pay, the cop will invariably find some other violation that you are guilty of and then demand far more.

    The culture of bribery goes far beyond people’s everyday interactions with agents of the state.  If you are an importer, when you go to the customs office to clear a new shipment, there is all the usual paperwork, but in the end, it is not the papers that are the most important thing.  You must go to the office with envelops of money for each official and hand them out.  It can literally cost thousands of dollars to clear a shipment.

    I met another Syrian who is a successful businessman in Syria.  He runs a factory that produces an impact resistant type of plastic used for making dishes.  He prints all sorts of cartoon characters ranging from Mickey Mouse to Barbie to Pokemon on the dishes.  I asked him where he got the images and he said off of CD-ROM’s.  Copyright is never an issue in Syria.

    We talked about bribery and its negative impact on business in Syria.

    “What can be done?” he asked me.  “What can a person do to improve the situation?”

    “I’m not sure that any single person can do anything,” I said.  “For example, you’re a factory owner, what would happen if one day you decided that bribes are bad for the economy so you’re going to stop giving them?”

    My friend just smiled and said, “Inspectors would suddenly find massive violations in my factory.”

    Eventually he would probably go out of business as the fines and regulatory orders mounted.

    Reducing bribes and corruption when it has become such an ingrained part of life is notoriously difficult.  Syria is not unique; other Middle Eastern countries, to say nothing of most African countries, and various places in Asia and Latin America suffer in much the same way.  But the cost to society is huge.  Corruption constitutes wasted capital; it adds to the cost of living and the cost of good without adding any value.  Schemes to fight corruption have failed throughout the world.

    It is especially difficult in a place like Syria in which many people do rely on bribes to live.  What about a doubling of civil servants’ wages, in combination with a presidential address in which Bashar al-Asad announced that bribery would no longer be tolerated at any level, from the traffic cops to high government officials?  Anyone giving or receiving a bribe would be subject to harsh penalties.  Syrians I’ve proposed this to shrug their shoulders and say that it wouldn’t make a difference.  The people charged with enforcing the law would simply get a cut of the bribes they were supposed to be stopping.