Since protests against Assad, 50, descended into war in March 2011, at least 280,000 people have died, half the Syrian population have fled their homes and about $80 billion of wealth has been erased, according to a World Bank report in April. Assad said last week that he “will liberate every inch of Syria.”

More deadlines for reaching an initial agreement this summer look less and less likely to be met and Assad is more likely to remain in power in some form. But every time there’s a hint of a possible settlement -- most recently the negotiations in Geneva started with a lot of promise and a cease-fire before stalling -- talk turns to the massive rebuilding effort that will be needed.

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Asfari said the only solution in Syria is a long transitional period, one without Assad in power. In a BBC interview dated Dec. 18, he called his country “a patient today that is bleeding and dying” and unless people see “a credible transition, then things won’t come to an end.”

He hasn’t, however, aligned himself with the fragmented opposition group. He said at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace conference two months earlier in October that neither the “regime” nor “people in the opposition” have any political legitimacy.

Goodwill Store

The son of a diplomat, Asfari was raised mostly outside Syria. Educated in the U.S., he started working as an engineer for a contractor in Oman after graduating. The next Omani company he worked for partnered with Petrofac in 1986 and Asfari worked his way up, amassing a personal fortune valued at $1 billion in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Petrofac has built gas plants in Syria.

Though he doesn’t expect "paradise" after Assad goes, "there is a tremendous amount of goodwill by the Syrians outside and they would want to go back and invest in their country and I’ll be the first to do that," Asfari said at the Carnegie conference. He said there was a Syrian arrest warrant for him in 2013 over claims he funded Assad’s opponents, for "supporting, you know, so-called terrorists."

Kuzbari, by contrast, has remained more neutral, according to Rashad al-Kattan, a political and security risk analyst and a fellow at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Kuzbari, whose wealth stands at $300 million based on the Bloomberg index, lives in Vienna and said he would reinvest in his home country.

“Syria needs trailblazing and fearless entrepreneurs who are willing to take the necessary calculated risks to rebuild the country,” Kuzbari said last week by e-mail in response to questions. Return on investment “will be high, both in terms of finances as well as doing something inherently positive and constructive. I still believe that one can do good, and profit at the same time,” he said.