'It was a mafia': Syrian businesses hope for revival after Assad

• Small business owners say bribes ate away at profits
• Government's new free market policy sparks optimism
• Hope for better economic prospects after decades of misery

DAMASCUS - Behind his desk in a bright marble-floored shop in the heart of the Syrian capital, Saeed has a stack of envelopes he used to stuff with cash whenever a government official stopped by.

Now the former president, Bashar al-Assad, has been overthrown, Saeed hopes he will have no more use for them.

Saeed said bribes cost his business selling pots and pans around $40 per month, a hefty sum in a country where almost a quarter of the population lives in extreme poverty after more than 13 years of conflict.

"The Finance Ministry was a partner in this store," said the 23-year-old shopkeeper, who wanted to give only his first name. "Whenever an official walks in and says hello, I give him an envelope."

Saeed said he also had to pay for licences and permits to stay open - fees that business owners and analysts said were designed to enrich Assad loyalists.

Syria's new caretaker government, put in place by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that ousted Assad in early December, has told business leaders it will adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy.

Assad's administration imposed strict controls on trade, using an arcane system that required traders to get permission for imports and then deposit Syrian pounds at the Central Bank in exchange for dollars.

Saeed said he constantly had to break the law because he was forced to sell his wares above the price set by the state.    

He pointed to a bronze cooking pot hanging above his head.

"They force me to sell it at 300,000 Syrian pounds ($23) and it costs me 350,000 Syrian pounds to get it here," he said.

In the days after Assad's downfall, the Syrian pound strengthened against the U.S. dollar by at least 20% due to an influx of Syrians from neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan, and an end to foreign exchange controls.

Syrian economist Samir Aita said small and medium enterprises (SMEs) had big hopes for the future of their country.

"SMEs were favourably reassured by the new authorities and encouraged to develop their economic activities," he said.

'That which has earned god's wrath'

That is a far cry from Assad's Syria where even uttering the word "dollar," was enough to land people in jail.

Whenever shopkeeper Ayman Wadouh wanted to know the latest dollar exchange rate, he would phone a friend and tell him a man wearing green was heading his way.

"How much will you give him?" the 41-year-old shopkeeper would ask. The answer he got would be the latest value of the Syrian pound against the dollar.

Syrians came up with a litany of nicknames for the greenback. It became known as 'peppermint' or 'that which has earned (God's) wrath,' a phrase from the first chapter of the Koran.

"My life was for eating and paying bribes," Wadouh said from his dimly lit, sparsely stocked corner shop not far from Saeed's store.

He said he paid almost a third of his revenue in bribes to around four government officials who came to his shop every month. He called it extortion and said he was gripped with fear whenever one of them showed up.

"I was worried I would go to jail for selling a Mars bar," he said. An official once accused him of giving children cancer because he was selling goods that came from neighbouring Turkey, which backed rebels opposed to Assad.

"They make you feel like you are a drug dealer," he said.

'It was a mafia'

In the Christian neighbourhood of Bab Touma, Adnan said he now planned to try to turn his dreams into reality.

"I am 28 and this is the first time in my life I feel like I am working for myself," he told Context sitting in his clothing store, bathed in a yellow light from a window overlooking the grimy street.

Fashion was not his first choice. Adnan once owned a small shop that sold mobile phones. But when a company backed by Syria's rulers monopolised the market in 2018, he quit.

"You were only allowed to buy from them, and we would only make a dollar or two in profits," he explained.

He could have bought smuggled phones, but he said the risk was too great and many of his friends had been jailed for such activities.

"It became crony capitalism. The relatives and friends of Bashar established private companies that generated rent and revenues directly from the population, such as mobile phones or real estate," Aita, the economist, said.

Adnan estimates he used to spend 25% of his shop's income on bribes and government fees.

"It was a mafia, and we operated with them on that basis: you were either with them, or you paid them."

Now he dreams of travelling to manufacturing hubs like Turkey or China to import clothes for his shop. He said he can breathe now the economic playing field has been levelled.

"Before we were weak and only the people with the regime were strong," he said. "Now we are all equal."

($1 = 13,000.0000 Syrian pounds) 

(Reporting by Nazih Osseiran; Editing by Jon Hemming.)