Transport

The Maersk Narmada vessel recently became the last Maersk vessel to dock in Syria, ending the company's ten-year operations in the country. The company's withdrawal is reportedly due to the difficulties of navigating sanctions.

The Syrian government is negotiating to extend the contract it has with French shipping giant CMA CGM over the management of the port of Lattakia’s container terminal. The Ministry of Transport has established a committee to negotiate with the French company but that does not necessarily mean that the contract with LICT will be eventually extended.

A decision by the Syrian government to shift phosphate exports handled by the Port of Lattakia to the port of Tartous has highlighted tensions between the foreign private operators of these ports and the government. Syria holds the fourth or fifth largest rock phosphate reserves worldwide.

State sources recently announced that Syrian Airlines plans to establish a joint venture with an unknown private company to invest, manage, and operate its activities and those of the Damascus Airport.

As the regime seeks to further capitalise on the earthquake, two international airlines announced that they planned to operate commercial flights in and out of Damascus. 

The number of passengers and goods transported by the Syrian Railways Organisation, Syria’s main railway operator, increased by 127 percent and 26 percent, respectively, in 2022, compared with 2020 (data for 2021 is unavailable). 

A British company providing marine surveying and vessel cargo inspection services has opened an office in Lattakia, one of the few western companies to open in Syria since sanctions were imposed on the country in 2011.

Direct flights between Damascus and Muscat are restarting as part of closer collaboration between Syria and Oman, a country at the forefront of the Gulf’s attempt to rehabilitate the Syrian regime.

Syria’s Ministry of Local Administration and Environment announced that funding from Tehran will help it purchase hundreds of buses to transport passengers.

Flights have resumed at the Damascus Airport resumed only around two weeks after the Israeli air strikes.

The Damascus International Airport has suspended its operations after it was heavily attacked by Israeli missiles last week.

An international transportation and logistics company based in Melbourne, Australia, recently settled in court for committing 2,958 violations of multiple sanctions programmes, including that of Syria, according to the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Mahan Airlines, an Iranian private airline believed to be affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is reportedly readying to resume commercial flights to the Aleppo International Airport, as COVID-19 restrictions between the two countries were recently removed.

Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the Islamist group that controls the Idlib governorate and rural parts of the Aleppo, Hama, and Lattakia governorates, has recently inaugurated a multi-million dollar expansion of a highway between the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing and the Al-Ghazawiya crossing, which links the rural parts of northern Idlib and Aleppo.

After over twenty years of negotiations, the Iranian government has announced that work on a multi-million dollar railway connection from the Iranian town of Shalamcheh to Iraq’s Basra is set to begin within two months. The link is part of a more significant railway project to connect Iran's Imam Khomeini Port with Syria’s Lattakia Port, the country’s main commercial port.

The Israeli attack on the Lattakia Port’s container yard last week caused "significant material damage," according to state media, and is likely to depress further commercial activity at the port. Container traffic through the Lattakia Port has declined significantly since the beginning of last year, decreasing by 38 percent on a year-on-year basis.

The state-owned Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), Pakistan’s largest airline, has launched a number of special flights to Damascus for Shia citizens observing the religious holiday of Arbaeen. After over 20 years, the first PIA flight landed at the Damascus International Airport on September 18.

During the first eight months of this year, the Lattakia Port saw a significant drop in container traffic. According to data released by the Lattakia International Container Terminal LLC (LICT), by the end of August container traffic at the port decreased by 36 percent on a year-on-year basis.

The United Arab Emirates has approved the resumption of direct flights to its airports by Syria’s two airlines in a boost for the country’s aviation sector that will also ease Damascus’s isolation.