Syria’s shadow rulers reshape economy

Shafaq News - Damascus

In the weeks after Damascus fell to Syria’s rebels, a leading businessman got a late-night call to come see “the sheikh.”

The address was familiar, a building where periodic shakedowns of businessmen like him occurred under Bashar al-Assad’s economic empire.

But there were new bosses in town.

With a long, dark beard and a pistol on his waist, the sheikh gave only a fighter’s pseudonym, Abu Mariam. Now the leader of a committee reshaping Syria’s economy, he asked questions in courteous Arabic with a slight Australian twang.

“He asked me about my work, how much money we made,” the businessman said. “I just kept looking at the gun.”

A Reuters investigation has found that Syria’s new leadership is secretly restructuring an economy broken by corruption and years of sanctions against Assad’s government, under the auspices of a group of men whose identities have until now been concealed under pseudonyms. The committee’s mission: decipher the legacy of the Assad-era economy, then decide what to restructure and what to retain.

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(Reuters)

Only the headline is edited by Shafaq News Agency.