DAMASCUS — Syria’s economy is in tatters after the country’s increasingly violent civil conflict has all but killed off commercial activity. Businesses have seen a steady decline in output during the Syrian uprising, but the recent intensification of violence in the country’s two main cities has practically brought it to a standstill. 

“I sit in the shop all day doing nothing,” said Ziad, a 22-year-old employee in a construction company in the hard-hit Midan neighborhood of Damascus. “There is no work because we can’t import any of the primary materials we need nor deliver any of the goods that we have.”

When I visited Marwan, a successful supplier of agriculture machinery, in early July, he had been sitting in his shop in the capital’s Baramke area all day — not to work but rather to escape the boredom and anxiety of sitting at home in Kafr Souseh listening to sporadic gunfire.

“The market is dead and has been for months now,” Marwan said.  “What is the point of importing with the currency so weak if we can’t be sure the goods will even arrive?” He added: "The only people making any money are those who had stockpiles of primary material and who have been able to sell it at an inflated price because nothing new is coming in."