Syria’s economy, still strangled by sanctions, is on its knees

IN A SNAKING line to use some cashpoint machines in central Damascus, patience has worn thin. Two men who have been queuing for hours in the winter chill for the chance to withdraw a maximum of $30 come to blows. “I haven’t had cash to feed my boys for two days,” shouts one. Three months after Syria’s 14-year-old civil war ended, and as the holy month of Ramadan begins, euphoria is being replaced by anger at the continuing atrophying of the economy and at the apparent inability of the new government to reverse it.