MIDEAST MONEY-Aleppo business leaders targeted in Syria violence
AMMAN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Top Syrian businessman Fares Shehabi says he lives in constant fear of being kidnapped by rebels fighting loyalist forces for control of his home city Aleppo. But he clings on in the city, saying it is his duty to try to keep its economy running.
"I was attacked three or four times and they tried to kidnap me many times," said Shehabi, 40, scion of a wealthy merchant family with interests ranging from pharmaceuticals and food to real estate and banking.
In one attack, assailants riddled one of his factories with gunfire and tried to plant explosives in it, he said. He now moves around with bodyguards, sometimes in disguise.
Nineteen months into the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Syria's biggest city and main industrial centre has been crippled by the fighting. Located among the olive groves and pistachio trees of northwest Syria, it has a population of about 3 million in peacetime.
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The businessmen developed Aleppo into Syria's economic engine, the focus of its export trade and the seat of its pharmaceutical, textile and plastics industries. So the damage to the merchant class bodes ill for a recovery of the Syrian economy when the fighting eventually ends.
Armed groups in Aleppo are "attacking every businessman, small or big, whether he has a factory or a workshop, if he does not want to meet their demands and buy them weapons," Shehabi said by telephone from the city.
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Although he blames the rebels for most of the damage to the city, Shehabi is now also critical of authorities' handling of the crisis, saying the government has been slow to promote political reforms and to fight organised crime.
"Aleppo is being punished by the revolution and now neglected by the state," he said.
At least 100 businessmen have been kidnapped since the start of the conflict, the chamber of industry estimates. Scores of factories have been set ablaze after their owners refused to pay extortion demands, according to several local businessmen who requested anonymity out of concern for their personal safety.
Many industrialists now pay protection money to gangs, with monthly fees ranging from $4,000 to $5,000 plus a downpayment that can go up to $100,000 depending on the size of the factory, businessmen said.
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Aleppo's industrialists say much of the violence has its roots in Syria's rural-urban divide, and the envy and antagonism which poor rebels from the countryside feel for wealthy businessmen in the city.
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But the hatreds created by the uprising may prevent a return to business as usual even when the fighting stops. Aleppo's merchant community is increasingly polarised between those who intend to stick with the regime until the end and those who clandestinely sympathise with or even support the rebels.
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In any case, the damage to the city's manufacturing facilities and infrastructure will take years to repair. Shehabi estimated Aleppo's industrial zones were now operating at only 5 to 10 percent of capacity.
Shelling and close-quarters combat have destroyed hundreds of factories and shops, filling streets with rubble. The state-of-the-art Sheikh Najjar industrial zone to the east of the city, which attracted hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, is now little more than a ghost town where guards try to protect some factories at great risk to their lives.
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What is happening is the wholesale destruction of Syria's infrastructure. The stoppage of industry is a big catastrophe - for over two months there has been total stoppage," said Fouad Jumaa, a leading furniture maker in Aleppo.
"We are bracing ourselves for a long period of disruption. This is destruction in every sense."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8LG31V20121024
20 killed in shelling of bakery in Aleppo, Syria
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