Educated expatriates resist the call to come home

For Fadi Ghawi, a 25-year-old Syrian IT engineer, living and working in China just makes more sense than returning to the land of his birth. “Why would I come back and waste two years of my life in military service?” asked the young man, who left his country in 1998 and now works at the Qatari embassy in Beijing. “I'd rather stay in China for 10 years and pay the waiver fee of $15,000 dollars to avoid going into the military. I am happy there. I have my independence, and the country appreciates the job I do and the certificate I have." Compulsory military service, low wages, corruption, a poor investment climate and hassles at the airport from Syrian security officials, are just a few of the reasons given by members of Syria’s 15 million strong expatriate community for staying abroad. One year ago exactly, a conference in Damascus promised to find ways to lure back this “second Syria”, a nation of doctors, scientists and teachers, numbering only a few million less than their countrymen at home. Syria’s educated elite has been leaving the country in large numbers since the 1970s to escape poverty and the constraints of living under an authoritarian government. The 2005 National Human Development report, published jointly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the State Planning Commission, said only 20 percent of Syrians who gained a Phd at a foreign university returned home afterwards. But many, the government included, believe that the future lies in wooing back the expatriate elite so that Syria can benefit from its expertise, ideas and spending power. Last year’s conference in Damascus adopted 38 resolutions designed to reach out to wealthy or educated expatriates and persuade them to come home. Its recommendations ranged from the organisation of Syrian media centres in key foreign countries to the establishment of an Expatriates’ Fund, audited by UNDP, through which Syrians living abroad could safely invest in development projects back home. The conference also recommended reducing the waiver fee for expatriates who, like Ghawi, want to avoid military service. Minister for Expatriates, Bouthaina Sha'aban, said at the time that it was important to act on these recommendations quickly. Not much progress But 12 months later little progress has been achieved. The waiver fee for avoiding compulsory military service has been slashed from US $15,000 to US $2,000. But UNDP Resident Coordinator Ali Zatari said the Expatriates Fund remains just an idea on paper. No statistics are available on the numbers of expatriates who have invested in Syria since the October 2004 conference or how much capital they have brought into the country. However, the government insists that harnessing their skills and wealth remains a top priority. Hassana Mardam Bey, UNDP’s project director working inside the Ministry of Expatriates, said gaining the trust of the expatriate community had been the main focus over the past year. "We are developing the work of the Expatriates Ministry and we are trying to encourage the expatriates to support their country through bringing their skills and investments to Syria," she said. Projects initiated by Syrian expatriates since the conference include the establishment of two private universities in the western cities of Homs and Tartous, the construction on an animal feed factory in the northern province of Hassake and a scheme to help disabled Syrians launched by a doctor based in Sweden. "We have just started building a database of the number of Syrian expatriates," said Wael Badin, a senior official at the Ministry of Expatriates. “There is a Syrian association in every country where Syrian expatriates live and they are contacting people there, asking them to register with our database,” he added. Thousands of doctors and teachers Statistics on the number of Syrians living abroad are rather vague. Many of those included in the global estimate of 15 million are simply the descendents of Syrian emigrants two or three generations back According to information published at last year’s conference, Brazil hosts about five million people of Syrian descent, while Argentina has a further 1.5 million. There are also thought to be about 750,000 Syrian expatriates in the United States. However, it is abundantly clear that the expatriate community has valuable skills to offer. Of the 59,000 Syrians living in Germany, around 18,000 are doctors, according to the delegation of Syrians from Germany which attended the Damascus conference. In the Middle East, it is estimated that as many as two thirds of the teachers in Gulf States such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Dubai are of Syrian origin. The expatriate community also commands heavy financial firepower. Syria’s al-Thawra newspaper recently reported that expatriate Syrians have enough capital between them to invest US $80 billion. This is widely seen as an important resource that should be exploited to help the country push forward its development programmes.

Adel Nasser is investing $20 million in a brewery that will create 500 jobs.

Building a new brewery One expatriate entrepreneur who has decided to take the plunge is Adel Nasser, a Syrian businessman who has lived in Germany since 1984. Impressed by what he heard at the conference last year, Nasser decided to build Syria’s first privately owned brewery in the port city of Tartous. Construction work on the $20 million plant began during the summer. When fully operational in two years time it will put an end to the state monopoly on beer making. Nasser’s factory will also create around 500 jobs, a much needed boost to the economy in a country where the official unemployment rate stood at 11.7 percent in 2003, the last year for which statistics have been published. The unemployment figure rises to 16.2 percent, or about 812,000 people, when the “underemployed” – those who work for two days or less a week – are included. And according to the 2005 National Human Development Report, 80 percent of Syria’s unemployed are under 30. "When I started my business here, I wanted to contribute to combating unemployment in Syria,” said Nasser. He told IRIN that the process of setting up the new brewery had gone smoothly. The license for the project came through “quickly” and “the new decrees and laws make me feel safe to be investing in my home”. Nasser also explained that emotional ties that bind him to his homeland. "However long you are away from your country you'll come back in the end,” said the 43-year-old businessman. “I am married to a Syrian woman and I have three children. I am teaching them Arabic because I want to improve their relations with their country.” Oil is running out The government is now actively encouraging private investment in a country that relied for decades on inefficient state-run institutions supported by revenues from oil exports. The oil boom will soon end and the government of President Bashar al-Assad has realised that Syria must create new sources of income for the future. Oil production peaked at 604,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 1996, but has fallen back to 470,000 bpd as reserves have been depleted. Oil still accounts for 75 percent of Syria’s exports, but that proportion is expected to fall to just 10 percent by 2010, so the government is trying to modernise and diversify the economy with the help of private capital. But for those expatriates who rely on paid employment, there are few economic incentives to come home. “The salaries in Syria are too low,” said Kousai Abu Diab, a 39-year old engineer who emigrated to Russia in 1985. “I could not come back to make a living from 6,000 pounds (US $115) a month,” he said. “It would take me forever to buy a house." "There is a difference between the people who can return to set up a business with a lot of capital and people like me...for whom it is better to work abroad,” he added. Abu Diab says family ties may eventually bring him back to Syria, but only once his working life has ended. "I might think about coming back to retire,” he said. "I know in Syria, there will always be people who will remember me after I am gone. In Russia I don’t have that.” Ghawi, the IT engineer working in China, reckons he too will eventually come back to live in Syria, but he wants to see political as well economic change in the country before that happens. "In the end we all belong to Syria and I will come back one day. But not now, it is absolutely impossible,” he said. “Certain VIPs are holding onto everything in this country and they don't give others a chance to start. I want to feel that I have a role in this society and that its development is for all of us, not only for certain people."