In less than a year, the country once seen as a diplomatic pariah, strangled by sanctions and numbed by fifty years of the Assad’s dynasty’s dictatorship, reinvented itself as the “Eden of capital.”
At its helm stands Ahmad al-Sharaa, a young former insurgent turned interim president whose motto is simple: “I will do what it takes.” Driven by a desire for control and international recognition, Al-Sharaa is looking to rescue the shattered economy of a ruined and divided nation. Under his watch, Damascus is staging its political rebirth through handshakes and contracts, leaving the scars of war behind with promises of reconstruction. Yesterday’s enemies have become today’s business partners.
At Riyadh’s Future Investment Initiative, Syria’s strongman spoke of “immense opportunities” and declared the country “open to all.” The message landed. Over $28 billion in deals were reportedly signed in ten months – buoyed by Gulf enthusiasm, the easing of sanctions by the U.S., and a renewed Western appetite for bargain-priced assets. Yet this windfall remains a drop in the ocean compared to the $226 billion the World Bank estimates will be needed to rebuild Syria.[i]
Beneath the surface of promised recovery lies a harsher truth: a bankrupt state, a fractured society, shattered infrastructure, a mafia-like war economy, and an ongoing political transition, complete with a parliament elected by “grand electors,” one-third of whom are personally appointed by al-Sharaa to artificially “correct” the under-representation of minorities and women.[ii]
Thus begins Syria’s new chapter.
Red carpet in Washington
Al-Sharaa, the first Syrian president ever received at the White House and the IMF, and the only former jihadist to set foot in the Oval Office[iii], appears in a viral, Trump-style video.[iv] He is seen playing basketball alongside two of the U.S. military’s top Middle East commanders, Admiral Cooper (head of CENTCOM) and General Lambert (chief of the anti-ISIS coalition), two men who, not long ago, considered him a threat.
The irony is hard to miss. Just months earlier, former CIA Director David Petraeus had told the audience at Davos that he had become “one of Sharaa’s fans” – the same man he once visited in an Iraqi prison on terrorism charges.[v]
In these images, politics yields to show. Syria becomes palatable again, repackaged through realpolitik and strategic storytelling. A true “Syria is open for business.”
Washington, for its part, is betting on Damascus’s rehabilitation as a way to curb Iranian influence and reopen a large market. In return, Syria will join the anti-ISIS coalition, authorize a U.S. air base to be built in Damascus, and, above all, open up its reconstruction efforts for American investors.[vi]
For al-Sharaa, now a president-entrepreneur, it is a moment of triumph: persuading Congress to fully repeal the Caesar Act, already partially suspended, and securing international loans to relaunch the economy.
Riyadh and the return of foreign capital
Riyadh now leads where Ankara was once expected to. In just a few months, Saudi Arabia has become the driving force behind Syria’s reconstruction, turning petrodollar diplomacy into a regional strategy of influence.
In July, Damascus and Riyadh announced $6.4 billion in agreements: $3 billion devoted to infrastructure (including the construction of three new cement plants) and $1 billion to telecommunications and cybersecurity.[vii] Agriculture, services, and airport modernization complete a portfolio aimed squarely at sovereign sectors with immediate profitability. Yet behind the impressive numbers, the reality is that not a single dollar has yet been disbursed.
For Saudi Arabia, investing in the “new Syria” is no act of philanthropy. It is a calculated geopolitical maneuver to push Iranian influence out of Damascus for good, secure a corridor to the Mediterranean, and claim a central role in a reshaped Middle East. Syria, for its part, is selling its survival to the highest bidder.
And in the Middle East, business never happens in isolation. Where Riyadh moves, Abu Dhabi and even Doha follow, applying the same formula already tested in Egypt. In Tartus, Emirati giant DP World has signed a $800 million, thirty-year concession to modernize the strategic port long managed by Moscow, which reportedly still keeps about 400 personnel on-site.[viii] Further north in Latakia, Damascus has handed over its main Mediterranean terminal to French shipping powerhouse CMA CGM, led by the Saadé family, returning to its Syrian roots with a $260 million investment in exchange for 40 percent of the port’s revenues.[ix]
France’s comeback was underscored last month when 44 French companies, including Airbus, Accor, Suez, and TotalEnergies, took part in a mission to Damascus and Beirut under MEDEF International.[x] A cautious yet deliberate return: Europe, seizing on the partial U.S. relaxation of sanctions on banking and energy, is re-entering a field it once abandoned.
Meanwhile, Beirut’s port, once the commercial center of the Levant, risks being eclipsed by a Tartus-Latakia axis, modernized and secured by foreign players.
To lure investors, Damascus has rolled out the fiscal red carpet: full dividend exemptions, the abolition of “war levies,” a 10 percent cap on interest tax, and a unified tax code meant to simplify business.[xi] The objective appears to be the offsetting of political fragility with high financial returns.
Geopolitical opportunism: Peace with Israel
The purest expression of al-Sharaa’s opportunism lies in his direct negotiations with Israel. In September, he confirmed that talks toward a security agreement could be concluded “soon.”[xii] In the new Middle East of transactional politics, even sworn enemies are now trading concessions.
The deal, reportedly supervised by U.S. “business diplomats”, aims to end Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory and coordinate the withdrawal of Israeli forces stationed in the south since Assad’s fall. Modeled loosely on the 1974 disengagement accord, it remains stalled over Israel’s insistence on retaining control of several strategic positions, notably on the Syrian slope of Mount Hermon.
As analyst Fabrice Balanche points out, “this Syrian parliament was elected for one purpose – to sign one treaty.” Behind the institutional façade, pragmatism borders on cynicism: Tel Aviv stabilizes its northern frontier, Damascus buys international legitimacy.[xiii]
Western capitals, for their part, are already linking the full lifting of sanctions to this new security normalization. The new Syrian leadership is willing to monetize stability, even with its historical enemy, as long as it reassures investors.
The economic abyss
Behind the photo ops and investment pledges lies an unchanging reality, that of a country drastically weakened by its economic, social, and communal fractures.[xiv]
GDP losses exceed $320 billion, the equivalent of fifteen years of growth.[xv] Salaries cover barely 20 percent of household needs; unemployment tops 50 percent, and four out of five Syrians live below the poverty line.[xvi] The Central Bank’s reserves, emptied by Assad before his flight, have long since run dry.
As in Lebanon, the survival of the Syrian population now depends largely on the $5-6 billion in annual remittances sent by its diaspora from across the Arab world and Europe.[xvii]
In an effort to contain public discontent, al-Sharaa’s government has turned to populist quick fixes, such as allowing unrestricted imports of used cars, a move meant to appease the streets but which has already triggered $3 billion in capital flight. Worse still, agriculture, once the backbone of the economy, lies in ruins.[xviii] Years of drought, abandoned farmlands, and the exhaustion of aquifers have left the countryside on the brink of famine.
Official “governance praise” verge on the absurd in a state where everything must be rebuilt. In August, the Minister of Energy proudly announced that electricity would now run for six hours a day instead of four in major cities[xix] – a hollow “victory” made possible only by imported Azeri gas via Turkey.[xx] Meanwhile, water remains scarce and often undrinkable for lack of fuel to power the pumps. A state reduced to managing mere survival, that is the reality behind Damascus’s triumphant communiqués.
Sectarian fracture: A country under trusteeship
Syria’s peril today is no longer merely economic, it is demographic and social. Post-Assad Syria is no longer a state, but a patchwork map of overlapping protectorates; Turkish-Saudi, Qatari, Kurdish, and semi-Israeli.[xxi]
In the west, al-Sharaa’s Sunni core controls the country’s main cities (Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Latakia).[xxii] To the east, the Kurds hold roughly a quarter of the territory, along with 90 percent of Syria’s modest oil production. Despite repeated talks, the government refuses to grant them genuine autonomy, constrained by Ankara’s veto over any federal arrangement. In the north, Turkish- and Qatari-backed Islamist militias dominate the frontier zones. Further south, the Druze still maintain their bastion in Jabal al-Druze, tacitly protected by Israel, becoming the only community left with a measure of regional self-rule.
This fragmentation extends the legacy of Baathist clientelism, which long structured the country along sectarian lines. The al-Sharaa administration, despite succeeding Assad, appears to be repeating the exclusionary reflexes of the past, while Islamizing power. The interim president holds both the titles of head of state and prime minister, yet real authority lies within a dual religious structure, where each ministry is overseen by a sheikh (a loyalist cleric from al-Sharaa’s old Islamist networks) who must validate decisions according to the principles of sharia. The state is becoming religious to survive, and citizenship has turned confessional.[xxiii]
Syria’s sectarian fissures now threaten to ignite a latent civil war. In March, the suppression of an Alawite coastal uprising reportedly killed up to 5,000 civilians, seen as “collective punishment”. The Alawites no longer trust the central government; many now advocate a “taxim”, a territorial partition along the Mediterranean coast. Similarly in July, intertribal clashes in Suwayda province left around 2,000 Druze dead, prompting a “preventive” Israeli incursion near Damascus, shaking the very stability promised to investors.[xxiv]
The country’s Christian minority, now reduced to barely 1 percent, lives in fear or in exile after the bombing of a Damascus church. The Alawites, down to 7 percent, have retreated to “their” coastal enclaves. Syria’s population has shrunk to 20 million, following the forced exodus of those who fled the Assad regime’s brutality. What remains is a rural Sunni proletariat, the social backbone of al-Sharaa’s power.[xxv] Rampant illiteracy, child marriage, and chaotic urbanization have created a social and demographic time bomb, one whose explosion could drive new migration waves toward an economically struggling Lebanon, already hosting 1.5 million Syrian refugees and hoping to repatriate 350,000 people for lack of jobs back home.[xxvi]
Conclusion
Syria of the al-Sharaa era embodies a glaring paradox – a leader willing to twist and bend in every direction to lift his people from hunger and his country from isolation. A nation sold in the name of its own reconstruction. The billions flow, the contracts pile up, yet the lights still shine only six hours a day on a fractured state.
And yet, beneath the rubble, an obstinate memory persists, that of a resilient population whom Nizar Qabbani once called “born to begin again.” The stability of Damascus will not be bought by opportunistic capital chasing lucrative infrastructure projects. It will have to be rebuilt through inclusion and the restored dignity of its communities.[xxvii]
Without such a structural renewal, the mirage of recovery will only lay the groundwork for the next conflict, one that may outlast al-Sharaa’s designs and push the Levant toward an uncontrollable fracture.
[i] 21 News (2025). “Syrie : 28 milliards de dollars d’investissements depuis la chute d’Assad. 216 milliards nécessaires à la reconstruction”, 30 October 2025, retrieved from: https://www.21news.be/syrie-28-milliards-de-dollars-dinvestissements-depuis-la-chute-dassad-216-milliards-necessaires-a-la-reconstruction/.
[ii] Salih, M.A. (2025). “Syria’s Fragile Transition and the Enduring Minority Question”, 10 November 2025, retrieved from: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/11/syrias-fragile-transition-and-the-enduring-minority-question/.
[iii] Al Jazeera (2025). “Trump hosts Syria’s al-Sharaa at White House as US extends sanctions relief”, 10 November 2025, retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/10/ahmed-al-sharaa-meets-trump-as-us-extends-syria-sanctions-relief.
[iv] Sky News (2025). “Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa plays basketball with top US military officials”, 9 November 2025, retrieved from: https://news.sky.com/video/syrian-president-ahmed-al-sharaa-plays-basketball-with-top-us-military-officials-13467111.
[v] Al Jazeera (2025). “Syrian President al-Sharaa sits down with US general who arrested him”, 23 September 2025, retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/23/syrian-president-al-sharaa-sits-down-with-us-general-who-arrested-him.
[vi] Al Jazeera (2025). “Trump hosts Syria’s al-Sharaa at White House”.
[vii] L’Orient Le Jour (2025). “Damas et Riyad signent des accords d’investissement majeurs de 6,4 milliards de dollars”, 24 July 2025, retrieved from: https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1470765/damas-et-ryad-signent-des-accords-dinvestissement-majeurs-de-64-milliards-de-dollars.html.
[viii] Uddin, R. (2025). “UAE-based DP World takes control of Syria’s Tartus port in $800m deal”, 13 November 2025, retrieved from: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-based-dp-world-takes-control-syrias-tartus-port-800m-deal.
[ix] Lloyd’s List (2025). “CMA CGM expands management agreement for Syria’s Latakia box terminal”, 2 May 2025, retrieved from: https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1153351/CMA-CGM-expands-management-agreement-for-Syria%E2%80%99s-Latakia-box-terminal.
[x] Convin, A. (2025). “CMA-CGM, Accor, Airbus, Suez… Une délégation de 42 entreprises françaises accueillie en Syrie”, Le Figaro, 3 October 2025, retrieved from: https://www.lefigaro.fr/conjoncture/cma-cgm-thales-accor-airbus-une-delegation-de-42-entreprises-francaises-accueillie-en-syrie-20251002#:~:text=Une%20délégation%20de%2042%20entreprises%20françaises%20accueillie%20en%20Syrie,-Par%20Apolline%20Convain&text=REPORTAGE%20%2D%20Lors%20de%20cette%20visite,discuté%20concrètement%20de%20futurs%20investissements.
[xi] Daher, J. (2025). “Syria’s new draft tax law: capital over social equity?”, Al Majalla,22 September 2025, retrieved from: https://en.majalla.com/node/327501/business-economy/syria%E2%80%99s-new-draft-tax-law-capital-over-social-equity.
[xii] The Times of Israel (2025). “Les négociations avec Israël pourraient aboutir “dans les prochains”, 18 September 2025, retrieved from: https://fr.timesofisrael.com/les-negociations-avec-israel-pourraient-aboutir-dans-les-prochains-jours-sharaa/.
[xiii] Balanche, F. (2019). Selected publications, accessed on 11 November 2025, retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fabrice-Balanche.
[xiv] United Nations (2025). “Syrie: un mois après la chute du régime Al-Assad, l’Envoyé spécial Geir Pedersen appelle à éviter les faux pas pour ne pas mettre en danger l’avenir du pays | Couverture des réunions & communiqués de presse”, 8 January 2025, retrieved from: https://press.un.org/fr/2025/cs15961.doc.htm.
[xv] Direction generale du Tresor (2025). “Syrie”, 5 August 2025,retrieved from: https://www.tresor.economie.gouv.fr/services-aux-entreprises/sanctions-economiques/syrie.
[xvi] The Syrian Observers (2020). “Syrian Economy Lost 442 Billion Dollars over Eight Years”, 25 September 2020, retrieved from: https://syrianobserver.com/society/syrian-economy-lost-442-billion-dollars-over-eight-years.html.
[xvii] Directions generale du Tresor (2024). “Liban”, 12 September 2024, retrieved from: https://www.tresor.economie.gouv.fr/Pays/LB/notes-sectorielles.
[xviii] The Syrian Observer (2025). “Syria Bans Import of Used Cars, Sparking Public Outcry and Government Justification”, 1 July 2025, retrieved from: https://syrianobserver.com/society/syria-bans-import-of-used-cars-sparking-public-outcry-and-government-justification.html.
[xix] Granville, S. (2025). “Syria’s worst drought in decades pushes millions to the brink”, BBC, 17 September 2025, retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70x500lkdno.
[xx] Enab Baladi (2025). “Syria’s Energy Ministry says electricity supply to rise as Azerbaijani gas deliveries stabilize”, 20 August 2025, retrieved from: https://english.enabbaladi.net/archives/2025/08/syrias-energy-ministry-says-electricity-supply-to-rise-as-azerbaijani-gas-deliveries-stabilize/.
[xxi] Lund, A. (2015). “La géographie politique de la guerre en Syrie, par Fabrice Balanche – Les Crises”, Les Crises, 30 January 2015, retrieved from: https://www.les-crises.fr/la-geographie-politique-de-la-guerre-en-syrie-par-fabrice-balanche/.
[xxii] Balance, F. (2009). “Clientélisme, communautarisme et fragmentation territoriale en Syrie”, June 2009, accessible via: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337340474_Clientelisme_communautarisme_et_fragmentation_territoriale_en_Syrie.
[xxiii] Balanche, F. (2025). “En Syrie, le sentiment séparatiste domine chez les minorités, fabrice Balance”, Conflits, 29 October 2025, retrieved from: https://www.revueconflits.com/en-syrie-le-sentiment-separatiste-domine-chez-les-minorites/.
[xxiv] Balance (2009). “Clientélisme, communautarisme et fragmentation territoriale en Syrie”.
[xxv] Balanche, F. (2024). “Syria Divided: Patterns of Violence in a Complex Civil War”, Cairn Info, accessible via: https://shs.cairn.info/revue-politique-etrangere-2024-1-page-218?lang=fr.
[xxvi] Seifeddine, W.S. and Shamala, R.A. (2025). “Lebanon says 320,000 Syrian refugees returned home since July”, AA, 31 October 2025, retrieved from: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/lebanon-says-320-000-syrian-refugees-returned-home-since-july/3731215.
[xxvii] Lund, A. (2015). “La géographie politique de la guerre en Syrie, par Fabrice Balanche”, Les Crises, 2 March 2015, retrieved from: https://www.les-crises.fr/la-geographie-politique-de-la-guerre-en-syrie-par-fabrice-balanche/.
