Demography Is Destiny in Syria

Excerpt: http://www.meforum.org/3170/syria-demography

“Among the second wave of Arab Spring uprisings that followed Tunisia, Syria was the most spectacular “out of the blue” that suddenly arose in the face of the media and analytic community. Just days before Deraa exploded with protests last March, some analysts were still scrutinizing Syria’s circumstances and declaring the country to be immune from the Arab Spring. Nor did reporters who visited the country spot signs of a brewing storm. In fact, throughout the Arab Spring, the media and experts repeatedly fell into the same trap of confusing the capital city with the whole country. On the eve of the Islamist landslide in Egypt’s elections various polls and informed individuals were putting the popularity of radical Salafis at between 5% and 10%. The Salafis have indeed won about 10% of the vote… but only in Cairo. Nationwide they took almost 30%, beating even those unrepentant pessimists who were betting on a Muslim Brotherhood spring. In some provinces they grabbed all of 50%…”

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“In some respects, the seeds of the current disaster were planted as far back as 1956, when Youssef Helbaoui — head of economic analysis in Syria’s Planning Department — famously declared: “A birth control policy has no reason for being in this country. Malthus could not find any followers among us.” Since then Syria has been living in a state of one uninterrupted demographic cataclysm. The regime was so obsessively pro-natalist that in the early 1970s, the trade and use of contraceptives in Syria were officially banned. By 1975, the birth rate reached 50 live births per 1,000 people, with Hafez al-Assad asserting that a “high population growth rate and internal migration” were responsible for stimulating “proper socio-economic improvements” within the development framework…”

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Man havde i Syrien underestimeret den totale fødselrate ganske betydeligt. Den er cirka 47 pr. 1000 pr. år i Syrien. Og den totale dødsrate i Syrien havde man estimeret til 25, den var 20. For syrere af oprindelse i Danmark har vi senest anvendt fødselsraten 38,9 og den totale dødsrate i Danmark tæt på 10 i vor seneste projektion, og så er det endog de unge og de yngre med meget højere fødselsrater end den totale i Syrien, der vandrer. Den total danske dødsrate ligger også langt over end syriske oprindelsers af samme grund (venstreskæv mod de lavere aldre). Derfor har vi formentlig underestimeret antallet af syrisk oprindelse i Danmark.