Across Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Gaza, the combined bill for post-conflict reconstruction is conservatively estimated at nearly USD 500 bn — and could climb considerably higher. The rubble tells just part of the story: More than 140 mn tonnes of debris litter the four countries, with estimated clearance timelines stretching from seven years to three decades. And that’s before you throw in the war in Sudan.

A brief window of genuine investment momentum is now largely closed as the US-Israel war on Iran rages on. The window that cracked open in late 2024 and into 2025 drew in cross-border capital, multilateral frameworks, and early signs of real private-sector interest. Now, renewed conflict coupled with banking barriers and unresolved governance questions have pushed serious reconstruction in the region further into an uncertain future.

“If you look at the media, nobody is talking about reconstruction right now,” Austrian Commercial Counsellor for Lebanon and Syria Herwig Neuper told EnterpriseAM, reflecting a pivot from strategic expansion to immediate crisis management.

Costs that require diversified investment

The estimated cost of reconstruction is staggering — and with the right financing in place, an equally mammoth opportunity for the private sector. World Bank estimates range from USD 216 bn for Syria — the longest-enduring conflict of the four — to USD 11 bn for Lebanon. Rebuilding Gaza is expected to cost some USD 70 bn while Libya’s reconstruction price tag is estimated at USD 200 bn for the next decade. Basic infrastructure and development projects are the primary focus across all war-ravaged markets, with the high costs requiring a correspondingly large and diversified scale of investment from both public and private sector players.

The sectors in focus vary by market and stage of development. In Syria and Libya, electricity and water projects have been flagged as high-potential investments by European parties including Austria, which see them as important longer-term sectors — even if they are “probably not at the very start of reconstruction,” Austrian Commercial Counsellor Georg Krenn told EnterpriseAM.

In Libya, interest spans construction, roads, ports, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, Federation of Egyptian Industries member Mohamed El Bahey told EnterpriseAM. And there are important signs that appetite could be given a boost by the early return of international oil and gas players, as we reported on Friday.

Uneven investment momentum

Over the past several years, each of these four markets has seen flashes of investment interest, though the durability of that momentum has varied sharply.

Syria offered what briefly appeared to be the region’s most diverse investment play. The lifting of sanctions in 2025 provided a legal framework for re-entry, and the reconstruction drive drew a mix of capital from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, Qatar, and the US.

Saudi Arabia moved to de-risk the landscape, deploying state-owned enterprises into aviation, telecoms, and energy to create a buffer for private capital. Europe’s initial parallel track to mitigate sovereign risk saw the EBRD taking the lead, providing stability to allow for the current proposal to fully reinstate the 1978-era EU-Syria cooperation agreement, Austria’s Neuper says. With this, the path was “officially” cleared for foreign investments and Syrian-related business inquiries multiplied, he adds — but the operational reality remained high-friction.

In Lebanon, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam had attempted to signal stability and secure financial lifelines to push forward with reconstruction. This included meeting with an EBRD delegation to discuss resuming private-sector lending for industrial players, renewable energy, and SMEs — the sectors most vulnerable to the regional “highest risk” designation.

But Nawaf’s messaging isn’t enough. Many foreign investors — including the UAE’s Al Habtoor, which is literally suing the government (more on this below) — are seething at the country’s regulatory and public policy dysfunction and the government’s inability to rein in the banking sector amid mismanagement and allegations of corruption.

Even the best laid plans went awry as the war in the Gulf and Lebanon kicked off at the end of February, bringing the early investment drive to a halt. As of right now, European players (excluding Turkey) are late in making a move on Syria. For example, there are no Austrian companies involved in large-scale reconstruction projects in Syria, although some are involved in trade and retail. In Lebanon, active Israeli attacks and the destruction of critical infrastructure are making it impossible for the country to attract new businesses or secure much-needed funds from international lenders like the World Bank, despite a fragile three-week ceasefire.

Libya is a whole different game. Momentum does exist, but it comes with big caveats. The oil and gas sector receives the lion’s share of inbound, with international oil companies returning. State-backed public and private players, both Egyptian and Turkish, are also active in the Libyan market, given their ability to take on risks too big for Western companies or smaller private players. And even those are mostly focused on servicing construction and energy contracts, not building new plants or committing big capex.

And the Egypt-Turkey business competition there is real: “Our moves are very slow, and that is on the [Egyptian] private sector because it doesn’t take the initiative — we ask more questions while we should be making moves. This ultimately delays our presence, and others beat us to the market,” El Bahey says. “Turkey now has a place across every industry, including pharma, El Bahey laments. Still, big Egyptian names including Arab Contractors, El Argany (a key player born out of post-insurgency Sinai), and Wadi El Nile are active in Libya. For Al Ergany alone, investments in infrastructure and road projects extending from west Egypt to Libya to Chad amount to some USD 2 bn, El Bahey told us.

Then there’s Gaza, where there appears to be little to no movement on reconstruction. Beyond the inaugural meeting of the US-led Board of Peace (BoP) in February that saw US President Donald Trump announce a combined USD 17 bn in investment pledges for the Gaza Reconstruction Fund, the mechanisms by which the BoP is expected to function have yet to be fully announced or understood by investors. “The BoP will secure contracts via a thorough, robust, and transparent procurement process. The BoP will share further details and future announcements, when ready,” a US official said in response to EnterpriseAM’s request for comment.

The only updates out of Gaza are spectral: Reports in February suggested Gaza-based Masoud & Ali Contracting was contracted to build an Emirati-funded compound for displaced Palestinians near Rafah in partnership with two Egyptian firms. And the Financial Times reported last week that DP world might be interested in “taking over” logistics for Gaza, with options on the table apparently including the construction of a new port in Gaza or on Egypt’s coast and pairing it with a free-trade zone.

Meanwhile, there are real concerns about how a US-led push under Trump would handle reconstruction priorities in Gaza. The territory’s reconstruction needs are massive — and threaten to set up a clash between capital and community-level priorities, Nur Arafeh, fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center tells EnterpriseAM. Investments in Gaza need a governing structure that seriously reckons with “local needs and demands,” she adds.

Israel loves little more than to break a ceasefire and blame the other guy, leaving even eager backers of Gaza’s rebuilding to think twice before funneling funds. Take the GCC-based players. A mix of donor fatigue and rising fiscal constraints due to the Iran war is now a big challenge, Arafeh says.

Current pledges are not coming through as planned. Less than USD 1 bn out of a total pledge of USD 17 bn was deposited with the BoP. It’s nothing new: The funding gap has been a hallmark of Gaza’s rehabilitation since at leat 2014.

The banking barrier

Across all four countries, financial infrastructure is a persistent obstacle. In Syria, although banks’ SWIFT codes are now functional again and transactions with Europe are technically operable, European banks remain “very restrictive and hesitant” because of compliance criteria for dealing with Syrian banks, clients, companies, and government institutions, according to Neuper. There’s a continued need for intermediary banks that makes transactions more costly and complicated, he said.

SWIFT also works in Libya, but the banking sector is unreliable. “Libya doesn't have a banking system, it’s very primitive” and decoupled from the global system, Libya director at the Malta-based MedservRegis, Peter Loshi, previously told us. “If you send a payment from one institution to another, it stays a week in the bank … You cannot run a business like that.” Most transactions are carried out in cash, El Bahey adds.

And in Lebanon, the banking sector has been in a coma since its collapse in 2019. The state defaulted on sovereign debt obligations the year after. Since then, Lebanese banks have accumulated some USD 72 bn in losses and imposed informal capital controls that lock out investors from accessing their funds or transferring them abroad, especially those held in foreign currency.