This analysis first appeared in Le Monde
In Syria, it's business as usual.
Despite the desolate landscape of destruction that loyalist troops leave behind and the sanctions imposed by Western countries, a few entrepreneurs in the power's sphere of influence are still amassing profits, say experts of the Syrian regime. They are lifting the veil on part of this occult and predatory system that allows President Bashar al-Assad to keep the allegiance of his followers and to finance his war against the opposition.
Just as the government-controlled parts of the country took part in a pseudo-presidential election that have given al-Assad his third term in office, the systematic bleed of the country and Damascus' dependency on its allies, particularly Iran, have never been so severe.
"There's almost not a single dollar legally going into the state's coffers," says a former close friend of the al-Assad clan. "The oil wells are now under the control of the rebels or of the Kurds. People don't pay their taxes anymore, nor their water or electricity bills. All the regime has left to pay the civil servants' wages are its schemes and direct aid from Iran and Iraq."
In terms of scheming, the master is still Rami Makhlouf. A cousin of Bashar al-Assad's, he controls large sections of the Syrian economy, including the country's main mobile network Syriatel. With Ayman Jaber and Abdel Kader Sabra, two businessmen from the coast, and Samir Hassan, a former employee at Nestlé, he invested in imports of food supplies, in particular wheat, rice, sugar and tea. This new market appeared after the previous year's bad harvests and after the rebels took control of vast rural areas. And unlike oil, food supplies do not fall under the European embargo.
Another godsend created by the crisis was the importation of oil, which was handed over to the private sector after the state lost its grip on the extraction sites of Deir ez-Zor and al-Hasakah. This market is all the more attractive since Iran awarded Syria a $3.6 billion credit for the purchase of crude oil and other petroleum products last year. The lucky winners get their supplies from Iran and Iraq, but also from rebel groups who had taken hold of the wells. At the beginning of the year, Western chancelleries were already saying that regime envoys had bought oil from the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group present in Deir ez-Zor.
"From an economic point of view, the conflict has reshuffled the cards," says the International Crisis Group's Peter Harling. "It forced large families to exile or to shut their businesses down and allowed a new generation of wheeler-dealers to emerge." One of the middlemen on the wheat market is the Foz family, from Latakia, which works for General Dhu al-Himma Shalish, a cousin of Bashar al-Assad's who heads presidential security and is targeted by Western sanctions.
To avoid international sanctions, those who profit from the war work under cover. "Rami Makhlouf has a group of lawyers working for him who spend their time creating shell companies," claims a member of Damascus' financial elite. Some of these smoke screens have been identified by sleuths from the U.S. Treasury and the European Commission. An investments fund in the Cayman Islands and a Drex Technologies holding in Luxembourg were added in 2012 to the black list of companies and entrepreneurs accused of financing the al-Assad regime.
Insidious connections
But according to a well-informed Syrian businessman, Assad's cousin Rami managed to shield most of his wealth, part of it in Dubai. The Gulf emirate, where the Syrian president's sister Bushra al-Assad lives, boasts of having received many assets of Middle East elite since the beginning of the Arab Spring. "Since 2011, Dubai has been playing in our region the same role that Switzerland played in Europe during World War II," the Syrian source explains.
Via his father Mohammed, who lives between Damascus and Moscow, the owner of Syriatel also has access to facilities in Russia. It is there that Syrian money is printed, since Austria was forced to give up that contract because of the European sanctions decided in the fall of 2011. In December of that year, the Kremlin, an unfailing protector of Damascus, authorized Syria's central bank to open accounts in rubles in Russian banks, a ploy intended to get around Western sanctions, which forbid Syrians from doing business in dollars.
The Makhlouf empire also has branches in Romania, where Rami's father-in-law Walid Othman is ambassador. "His son's activities in Europe, particularly in Vienna and Bucharest, generate millions of dollars in cash, which are sent back to Syria," says Ayman Abdel Nour, editor of news website All4Syria and a former advisor to Bashar al-Assad who is now on the opposition's side.
The gang of Syrian oligarchs also includes Maher al-Assad, the president's brother, and his servants Mohamed Hamsho, Samer Debs and Khalid Qaddur. The first, who owns the very profitable market of VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) towards Syria, is about to be awarded a permit by the country's Tourism Ministry to develop an artificial island project near Tartus.
In exchange for the state's contribution, these industrialists transfer back part of their benefits. Syriatel's hoard evidently pays for civil servant wages, and possibly for the Shabiha, the pro-regime militias. According to economist Jihad Yazigi, who wrote a report on Syria's war economy, bus companies put their fleet at the army's disposal. Another sign of this caste's resiliency is that almost none of the businessmen whose names appear of the black list have joined the opposition. A few people have managed to have their names erased from the list, after having invoked a case of mistaken identity in front of American and European courts.
But let us not be mistaken: For the immense majority of Syrian entrepreneurs, the conflict is a disaster. United Nations experts calculated that even with a annual growth of 5%, Syria will need 30 years before its GDP recovers to its pre-war level.
