Building a Tech Industry in Syria From Scratch
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It's been more than three months since the Assad dictatorship fell in Syria, and the country is struggling to rebuild itself. But there are glimmers of hope. NPR's Greg Myrie recently attended a conference in Damascus focused on jump-starting the country's tech industry, which was virtually non-existent during Syria's long civil war. There, he met a young man who fled the war as a teenager. He returned as a Stanford graduate and a budding entrepreneur.

and he helped Greg understand the possibilities and challenges that lie ahead for Syria. Just a warning, we will hear brief descriptions of torture and abuse.

Some 700 people, most from Syria and some from the U.S., filled a ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus for the tech conference dubbed Silicon Valley and Syria. Everyone was here and everyone is excited. Everyone, like, you know, this excitement of, like, hey, we want to build, we want to do something for our country. We're so happy. Abdul Wahab Omeira is a young Syrian-American who took a break from his master's program at Stanford to attend. Like

Like everyone at the conference, he acknowledged the staggering challenges after 14 years of civil war. There's no infrastructure. There is no electricity. There is no water. There is no internet. Showering is an event. Omeira says his own experience taught him resilience, and he believes many Syrians have learned the same lesson. As a teenager in Damascus, he studied the high cancer rates in an area where the Syrian government disposed of nuclear waste.

He proposed a new method and was awarded a patent at age 14 and was supposed to be honored at the presidential palace. But before that happened, he was stopped one day by the security forces. They found documents related to the nuclear program and O'Meara was tossed in prison. The experience was harrowing. They start bringing people in, killing them under torture, showing me how they kill them. And each room has a different theme of killing.

So many herbal stuff, like

Room number three, for example, they killed people with like a chainsaw. Omiro was not physically harmed, but he was warned that if he was arrested again... You will choose one of those rooms to die in. Omiro was released after two months, and his family decided it was time to leave Syria. They went from a prosperous life in Damascus to a tent in a refugee camp in neighboring Turkey. Eventually, they made it to the U.S., landing in Chicago.

But O'Meara didn't speak English or have a valid high school diploma. He kept studying until he got a perfect score on the college entrance exam and admission to Stanford University.

He graduated with a computer science degree last year. He's now in the master's program working on artificial intelligence. He also runs a tech startup designed to help farmers in Syria. And he's meeting with tech students throughout the country. We went to seven universities across Syria.

where we give workshops for the students. Still, the obstacles in Syria can seem endless. U.S. sanctions remain. They were imposed against Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and though he was ousted three months ago, the sanctions have not been lifted. This was a recurring theme at the tech conference.

Organizer Rama Shikaki is a Syrian-American and a tech investor from California. So the sanctions now are quite prohibitive. I mean, the banking system is disconnected from the rest of the world. And so folks like me can never invest in Syria until these sanctions are lifted.

For now, the goal is to connect Syria's tech community, which was so isolated during the war. One thing about Syrians is we're very socially interconnected. All of us having been in the diaspora feeling very displaced.

couldn't wait for that chance to get together. So my 12,000 connections on LinkedIn worked really well for me. When Abdul Wahab Omira returned to Syria, he visited his old family home. I went to my room. I was digging out my memories.

And then I found my first CS book, computer science, a book that I got in seventh grade. They were explaining what the Internet is, how to use the keyboard, how to turn off the PC. Omer has come a long way since then. He summed up his journey from refugee to Stanford student to tech entrepreneur this way. The U.S. was definitely the land of opportunity because if you put 100%, you get 100%.

In Turkey, if you put 100%, you probably get 10%. Here, if you put 100%, you get 10%. He's hoping to write a new formula for a new Syria. Greg Myrie, NPR News, Damascus. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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