Navigating Syria's new political economy: Rivalries, rising rents and an emerging elite

Scouting the old quarter of Damascus for a shop to expand his business, gold merchant Mahmoud Radwan encountered both high rents and the open hostility displayed towards Syria's emerging rural Sunni elite in a country still brimming with violence a year after civil war ended.

Mr Radwan, who is from the northern province of Idlib, said that every time he parked his car in front of shops in the capital, the owners would shout at him to move on. They would not do the same to cars bearing Damascus licence plates.

“Once, eight of them ganged up on me. When they saw that I had a gun, they backed off,” he said.

The incident underlines the social rifts in Syrian society as the emergence of a new leadership drawn from a hardline Sunni rebel group unsettles the country's many ethnic and religious minorities, including Mr Al Assad's Alawite sect, which dominated the power structure for the last six decades.

Mr Radwan's home province – the last major rebel redoubt in the civil war – was governed by Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), a hardline Islamist group whose leader formerly had ties to Al Qaeda. The group's toppling of the dictator Bashar Al Assad in December last year ended nearly 14 years of civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, displaced more than half the country's prewar population of 20 million, including about seven million who fled abroad, and left its infrastructure and economy in ruins.

The Assad regime's fall has allowed a constant stream of visitors to Damascus from rural and formerly rebel-held areas. The capital has also experienced an influx of newcomers who underpin the new bureaucracy and security apparatus, replacing the members of the Alawite sect.

The emergence of this new class has been accompanied by social tension as its members compete with established businesses and communities, particularly in Damascus and Syria's second city of Aleppo, the centre of the country's industrial heartland in the north. Businessmen like Mr Radwan, looking for opportunities in urban centres amid expectation of a post-conflict boom, have driven up rents.

Socks bearing caricatures of Bashar Al Assad on sale in a market in Damascus. AFP

Rental reform shelved

Mr Radwan, who has an Idlibi accent and many relatives who are members of HTS, said he avoided associating himself with the new authorities or boasting of his connections so as not to “be counted as one of them”, which would antagonise the Damascenes.

He finally found a shop at the Hariqa market, one of the most expensive for retail space, that was available for $2,500 a month, a huge sum given that the average monthly income in Syria is $60 to $90, and that the shop's area is only seven square metres.

Existing businesses in the old city of Damascus pay low rents due to regulations that prevent them from being raised.