Syria is seeing promising signs of revival nine months after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime and the end of a 14-year civil war.
The country recently exported its first official crude oil shipment since 2010: It had sold 380,000 barrels per day until the war began, and while the first shipment of 600,000 barrels is relatively small, the dispatch marks the return of a key driver of its economy.
The sense of optimism has made its way into the Syrian diaspora. Half the country’s 23 million population fled during the war, but the United Nations said 850,000 have returned from neighboring countries and that figure could reach 1 million in the coming weeks.
