Every fall, when farmers throughout the rolling, crimson dust hills of Idlib Province in northern Syria harvest their olive crops, they routinely discover at the least one consultant of the native tax authority stationed at any oil press.
The tax collector takes at the least 5 % of the oil, and farmers grouse that there are not any exceptions, even in lean harvest years.
The collectors work for the civilian authorities established underneath Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the insurgent motion that simply spearheaded the swift overthrow of the 54-year Assad dynasty. The Islamist group has administered a lot of opposition-held Idlib Province since 2017.
Measures just like the olive oil tax, launched in 2019, have prompted protests and even occasional armed clashes and arrests.
Yet the Syrian Salvation Government, because the Idlib administration was recognized, persevered. It taxed items coming into its territory and generated income by promoting gas and operating a telecom firm. It additionally managed the native financial system by means of licensing regulation applications that regarded quite a bit like a standard authorities’s and proved that it was pretty adept at managing these funds to construct up its navy operations and supply civil providers.
The portrait of the insurgent group detailed on this article was gleaned from interviews with specialists, representatives of humanitarian or different organizations working within the territory underneath its management, native residents and experiences by the United Nations or suppose tanks.
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