Did you accomplish anything you wanted to?
Finally we said we are going to create manuals for everybody, first in English and in Arabic, that explain how to form a business center and how to make it sustainable -- training a board of directors, funding. And that was pretty substantial at about 450 pages and tons of examples. So then we did a manual for how to start a business in Iraq.
What shape did you find local small businesses in?
Let's make a distinction. Mom-and-pops tended to be businesses handed down, very local. A lot had to shut down, but a lot maintained some form of precarious existence.
If you moved up the ladder a bit to larger, faster-growing small businesses, $2 million to $50 million, they were injured very badly, partly by the occupation but even before the occupation, the embargo hurt them.
How so?
I used to meet with people that called themselves industrialists. One of the companies was a drug manufacturer. Well, you couldn't get any chemicals into the country because everything was suspect. So he took the labor he had and went into making stainless steel containers. That was a massive reduction in his business but he managed to stay alive. Other businesses were not so fortunate.
Iraq was a furniture-making center for a lot of the Middle East. After the first embargo they lost all of that business to China because they could not export or import. That's business they'll never get back. That was a good hunk of both manufacturing and retail.
Any lessons learned about small-business viability in Iraq that you use now?
I don't think much translates to what I do now. I learned what is very obvious, which is there are certain kinds of businesses that prosper under wartime circumstances but they are not the ones you want.
It will take restored order for small businesses to build, and that order, whether we leave tomorrow or in 10 years or 100 years, the Iraqis will have to do themselves. And they will do so in an ugly, bloody way, and when that situation resolves, there will be a chance to rebuild business and social life.
Honestly, I was skeptical when I went and cynical when I left. I was hopeful when I went and hopeless when I left.
That's not such a happy lesson.
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cyndia.zwahlen@latimes.com
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Mr. Borden goes to Baghdad
The education-by-fire of a Southern California small-business consultant
Who: Phil Borden
What: Chief executive, Active Capital, a San Bernardino nonprofit that matches entrepreneurs with sources of private equity; principal, Essergy Consulting in Long Beach
Background: Borden, an adjunct professor at University of the West and a former UCLA professor, was executive director of Women's Enterprise Development Corp. in Long Beach and Asian American Economic Development Enterprises in Monterey Park. Borden also has founded several high-tech ventures.
What's new? Borden just self-published "Shaku Maku: On the Ground in Occupied Iraq" (Outskirts Press), about his efforts to encourage small-business development in a country torn by war. When he returned to the U.S. in April 2007, Borden left behind a 400-page how-to manual and the dream that he could make a difference.
-- Cyndia Zwahlen
