“Logistics discovers too late that the sea has no back door.”¹

In the current liminal time-space of Syria’s post-Assad governance, much remains uncertain about the future awaiting Syrian people, beyond their urgent needs to sustain themselves and rebuild their country after generations of destruction and repression. 

The material goods required for this reconstruction – and the trade logistics enabling their circulation among individuals, corporations and state entities – provide a parallel view of Syria’s political terrain and the material conditions shaping daily life. 

Analysing Syria’s material flows provides an opportunity to uncover the ongoing cycles of profiteering that have contributed to the devastation and the dispossession of Syria’s land and people. Such analysis can also help advance the pursuit of transitional justice and corporate accountability in Syria.

We move beyond inanimate and impersonal conceptions of materials, logistics and ports – instead approaching trade as a dynamic and relational process intrinsically linked to the shifting needs and capacities of people, landscapes, natural resources and the interests of political and economic actors. 

We build upon existing theoretical discussions on the necessity of an emergent human geography approach to port and port city studies², as well as Stephen Harney’s and Fred Moten’s rejection of the mainstream conceptualisation of logistics as an inherently efficient, logical and just movement of goods and material³. When logistics becomes a process through which dispossession and wealth accumulation are concealed, occasional ruptures in typically covert logistical operations can become a sensor through which unjust actions can be identified and brought to light.

Our study examines three materials as observed at key points of contact in the liminal port-city of Latakia:

• Grain
• Metal
• Tobacco

We understand Latakia as a porous membrane that regulates the flow of goods into, out of, and across Syria, its permeability shaped by networks of actors who determine what may pass. 

Building on this conception, our analysis of three incidents involving material flows in Syria employs open-source intelligence methods to uncover the often-subliminal dynamics embedded within shipments, trade deals and production processes: international grain imports; the internal-external economies of Syria related to metal in a time of reconstruction; and tobacco monopolisation, all of which are critical to everyday life in Syria.

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Background of Port Ownership

In establishing the port-city of Latakia as a liminal, membrane-like space from where actors permit the circulation of goods, we consider it essential to first outline an overview of the ownership and governance of the Port of Latakia in the timeline below. 

The port’s evolving ownership and management structures enable a dialogue between the logistical incidents being studied as they relate to the structural dynamics of control, sovereignty and economic influence that determine the port’s permeability.

Outlining the relational networks behind the ownership and operations of Latakia Port goes beyond understanding port administration. These relationships function as an epistemic backdrop for interpreting the sociopolitical processes governing the permitted logistical movement of traded materials, allowing us to highlight broader correlations between our selected case studies and the power structures that direct their movement within and outside of Syria.

1. Harney et al., The Undercommons, 2013.  ↩︎
2. Ng et al., “Port Geography at the Crossroads with Human Geography,” 2014.  ↩︎
3. Harney et al., The Undercommons, 2013.  ↩︎
4. Lattakia Port Company. n.d. “About – Lattakia Port Company.” ↩︎
5. Lattakia Port Company. n.d. “About – Lattakia Port Company.” ↩︎
6. Lattakia Port Company. n.d. “About – Lattakia Port Company.” ↩︎
7. Eqtsad, “Jamil al-Assad, the King of the Crossings,” ↩︎
8. Aldassouky, The Economic Networks of the Fourth Division, 2020.  ↩︎
9. The Syria Report. 2024. “Lattakia International Container Terminal LLC.” ↩︎
10. The Syria Report. 2024. “Lattakia International Container Terminal LLC.” ↩︎
11. The Syria Report. 2024. “CMA CGM Extends Contract to Manage Lattakia Port.” ↩︎
12. Aldassouky, The Economic Networks of the Fourth Division, 2020.  ↩︎
13. OpenSanctions. n.d. “Lattakia Port General Company (LPGC).” ↩︎
14. The Syria Report, “Iran Eyeing Control of Lattakia Port,” 2019. ↩︎
15. The Syria Report, “Iran Eyeing Control of Lattakia Port,” 2019. ↩︎
16. The Syria Report. 2024. “CMA CGM Extends Contract to Manage Lattakia Port.” ↩︎
17. The Syria Report, British Company Opens Office in Syria, 2023. ↩︎
18. The Syria Report. 2023. “Maersk Claims Sanctions Behind Decision to Withdraw from Syria.” ↩︎
19. The Syria Report. 2024. “CMA CGM Extends Contract to Manage Lattakia Port.” ↩︎
20. The Syria Report. 2025. “Explained: Free Zones in Syria.” ↩︎
21. The Syria Report. 2025. “Despite Fragile Transition, Sharaa Opens Up Syria to Foreign Companies.” ↩︎
22. The Syria Report. 2025. “Western Companies Intensify Investment Drive in Syria.” ↩︎