Adonis Diaries

Syria’s small and medium-size businesses — collectively worth billions of dollars — has left its economy shattered.

Jordan, Syria’s resource-poor neighbor to the south, has opened one of the few avenues available to Syrians for starting over. Jordan’s Oasis500, a tech start-up accelerator at the heart of Jordan’s booming information and communications technology sector, offers Syrians with viable business ideas passage into Jordan.

Those who pass the first pitching round are welcomed for 3 months into its white stone building in the King Abdullah Business Park, a military-gated enclave overlooking Amman that houses Jordan’s tech jewels: HP, Ericsson, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung and LG.

(Disclosure: The writer’s employer, Wamda, has an investment arm that partners with Oasis500, but its news division covers technology in the region independently of the investment side.)

For Judy Samakie, whose father’s factory produced furniture textiles and curtains, the idea sounded too good to be true. After looters had threatened to bomb and burn the factory to the ground, the Samakies paid to have it protected.

Safety was a new cottage industry; mercenaries had kidnapped her brother and threatened to cut off the hands of her family’s factory manager unless ransom was delivered.