ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the conflict impacts of businesses operating in Iraq and Syria in the period during the Syrian Civil War and its associated violent conflicts. From 2015 to 2018, the author conducted over 150 interviews with individuals representing 73 for-profit organizations operating in Iraq and/or Syria. The individuals had each self-identified as doing business in areas directly impacted by the violent conflicts in these countries at some point since the onset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. After detailing the existing literature in the business for peace field, the chapter reviews the relevant conflict context in Syria and Iraq during the time of the study. Next we detail the methodology and our findings on company activities. The findings were split between those impacts that multinational companies (MNCs) had and can have and those impacts that local companies had and can have. MNCs were viewed as peace promoting when they enhanced the rule of law, invested in local capacity building, and provided funding for initiatives aimed at social cohesion. MNCs were viewed as contributing to violence when they worked with non-state armed groups, made corrupt payments of any kind to government officials, hired local private security firms, and did not have conflict-party aware practices in hiring employees and contractors. Local firms were viewed as peace promoting when they continued to operate their businesses through paying employees and providing necessary goods and services. Importantly, local businesses perceived that peace-promotion must include cooperation with all parties to the conflict including non-state armed groups. Our findings support portions of the existing business and peace categories related to multinationals, but undermines the theory with respect to local companies. We conclude by noting the limitations of the research, principally the limited ability to generalize the findings to other active conflict settings without further research.
