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War Was Easier than this, Says Lebanese Entrepreneur Hit by Economic Collapse

Suzanne Mouawad, a Lebanese entrepreneur, sits at her home in Mazraat Yachouh, Lebanon April 15, 2021. (Reuters)
Suzanne Mouawad, a Lebanese entrepreneur, sits at her home in Mazraat Yachouh, Lebanon April 15, 2021. (Reuters)
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War Was Easier than this, Says Lebanese Entrepreneur Hit by Economic Collapse

Suzanne Mouawad, a Lebanese entrepreneur, sits at her home in Mazraat Yachouh, Lebanon April 15, 2021. (Reuters)
Suzanne Mouawad, a Lebanese entrepreneur, sits at her home in Mazraat Yachouh, Lebanon April 15, 2021. (Reuters)

Suzanne Mouawad lived through Lebanon's civil war and built a successful advertising business in the hopeful days after the fighting ended, but she says her country's economic collapse is breaking her in a way that even missiles did not.

Mouawad, 56, comes from a well-to-do background and previously led a privileged life, running her agency as well as a family-owned paper manufacturing business, taking frequent holidays abroad and receiving rent from properties she owns.

Now, both the advertising and paper businesses have all but dried up, the tenants can no longer pay the rent, and she finds herself pondering the price of items in the supermarket during her weekly grocery shop.

"I didn't let Lebanon down. It let me down and it hurt me," she said.

With no end in sight to economic and financial paralysis, Mouawad feels a hopelessness that was not there during the war, which broke out when she was 12 and lasted 15 years.

"With war you get a couple of missiles falling one day and then the next day you pick up and you go back to school or back to work and you start producing and making money," she said.

"Now the money is being held at the banks and there is no work."

Stricken Lebanese banks, the biggest creditors to the bankrupt state, have locked customers out of their deposits under informal capital controls imposed without legislation since late 2019 when the country's financial meltdown started.

Any savings people had in Lebanese pounds have lost most of their value, while dollar deposits are inaccessible.

The crisis is driving a brain drain, with professionals such as doctors, academics, designers and entrepreneurs emigrating in large numbers, which in turn has a knock-on effect on the local economy, further depressing investments and demand for services.

When Mouawad set up her advertising agency in 1992, the long war was drawing to a close and hopes were high for Lebanon's future. A few years later, feeling optimistic, she sold a property she owned in Greece to re-invest back home.

But with her retail clients cash-strapped, her business has shrunk by about three quarters in the economic crisis. Mouawad herself is facing daily financial pressures.

"It's become like an obsession with living conditions," she said.

"All the time I'm thinking what will I do? Do I pay municipality fees or my mechanic fees or my electricity? I am under pressure and I never used to think like that before."

Instead of a busy work schedule, she works barely an hour a day online. At the large warehouse where the paper business is based, activity has dwindled and deliveries of raw materials have spaced out.

"In the normal days we used to re-stock every four days, now this is all for three weeks," she said, gesturing at some stacks of materials.

In spite of everything, she is not contemplating emigration. Having lived in the United States for six months in the 1990s and struggled to get used to it, she still wants to live in her home country.

"Everything I fought for is here and then I just leave it for someone else? No."

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In Assad's Hometown, Few Shared in His Family's Fortune. They Hope they Won't Share in His Downfall

A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
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In Assad's Hometown, Few Shared in His Family's Fortune. They Hope they Won't Share in His Downfall

A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)
A defaced portrait of ousted president Bashar al-Assad hangs on the wall of a building in the capital Damascus on December 17, 2024. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)

On the walls of the palatial mausoleum built to house the remains of former Syrian President Hafez Assad, vandals have sprayed variations of the phrase, “Damn your soul, Hafez.”
Nearly two weeks after the ouster of his son, Bashar Assad, people streamed in to take photos next to the burned-out hollow where the elder Assad’s grave used to be. It was torched by opposition fighters after a lightning offensive overthrew Assad's government, bringing more than a half-century rule by the Assad dynasty to an end, The Associated Press said.
The mausoleum's sprawling grounds — and the surrounding area, where the ousted president and other relatives had villas — were until recently off limits to residents of Qardaha, the former presidential dynasty's hometown in the mountains overlooking the coastal city of Latakia.
Nearby, Bashar Assad’s house was emptied by looters, who left the water taps running to flood it. At a villa belonging to three of his cousins, a father and his two young sons were removing pipes to sell the scrap metal. A gutted piano was tipped over on the floor.
While the Assads lived in luxury, most Qardaha residents — many, like Assad, members of the Alawite minority sect — survived on manual labor, low-level civil service jobs and farming to eke out a living. Many sent their sons to serve in the army, not out of loyalty to the government but because they had no other option.
“The situation was not what the rest of the Syrian society thought,” said Deeb Dayoub, an Alawite sheikh. “Everyone thought Qardaha was a city built on a marble rock and a square of aquamarine in every house," he said, referring to the trappings of wealth enjoyed by Assad's family.
In the city’s main street, a modest strip of small grocery stores and clothing shops, Ali Youssef, stood next to a coffee cart, gesturing with disdain. “This street is the best market and the best street in Qardaha and it’s full of potholes.”
Families resorted to eating bread dipped in oil and salt because they could not afford meat or vegetables, he said. Youssef said he dodged mandatory military service for two years, but eventually was forced to go.
“Our salary was 300,000 Syrian pounds,” a month, he said — just over $20. “We used to send it to our families to pay the rent or live and eat with it" while working jobs on the side to cover their own expenses.
"Very few people benefited from the former deposed regime,” Youssef said.
So far, residents said, the security forces made up of fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the main group in the coalition that unseated Assad, and which is now ruling the country — have been respectful toward them.
“The security situation is fine so far, it’s acceptable, no major issues,” said Mariam al-Ali, who was in the market with her daughter. “There were a few abuses ... but it was fixed.” She did not elaborate, but others said there had been scattered incidents of robberies and looting or threats and insults.
Al-Ali called Assad a “traitor,” but she remained circumspect about her Alawite community's position in the new Syria.
“The most important thing is that there should be no sectarianism, so there will be no more blood spilled,” she said.
Dayoub, the Alawite sheikh, described “a state of anticipation and caution among all citizens in this area, and in general among Alawites,” although he said fears have started to ease.
At the town’s municipal building, dozens of notables sat on bleachers discussing the country' s new reality and what they hoped to convey to the new leadership.
Much was centered around economic woes — retired public servants' salaries had not been paid, the price of fuel had risen, there was no public transportation in the area.
But others had larger concerns.
“We hope that in the next government or the new Syria, we will have rights and duties like any Syrian citizen — we are not asking for any more or less,” said Jaafar Ahmed, a doctoral student and community activist. “We don’t accept the curtailment of our rights because the regime was part of this component.”
Questions also loomed about the fate of the area's sons who had served in Assad's army.
Since the army's collapse in the face of the opposition advance, residents said several thousand young army recruits from Qardaha have gone missing. Some later turned up on lists of former soldiers being held at a detention center in Hama.
“These are young guys who are 22 or 23 and they never took part" in active combat, said Qais Ibrahim, whose nephews were among the missing. Over the past few years, active combat was largely frozen in the country's civil war. “We send our children to the army because we don’t have any other source of income.”
Um Jaafar, who gave only her nickname out of fear of reprisals, said the family had no information about the fate of her two sons, stationed with the army in Raqqa and Deir Ezzour, though one son's name later turned up on the list of those imprisoned in Hama.
“My children got the best grades in school, but I didn’t have the ability to send them to the university,” she said. “They went to the army just for a salary that was barely enough to cover their transportation costs.”
Syria's new authorities have set up “reconciliation centers” around the country where former soldiers can register, hand over their weapons and receive a “reconciliation ID” allowing them to move freely and safely in Syria for three months.
But Ahmed, the doctoral student, said he wants more. As the country attempts to unify and move on after nearly 14 years of civil war, he said, “We want either forgiveness for all or accountability for all.”
Ahmed acknowledged that during the war, “rural Latakia was responsible for some radical groups,” referring to pro-Assad militias accused of widespread abuses against civilians. But, he said, opposition groups also committed abuses.
“We hope that there will be either an open process of reconciliation ... or transitional justice in which all will be held accountable for their mistakes, from all parties," he said.
"We can’t talk about holding accountable one ... group but not another.”