Post-war hero

Azizi Investments recently made its debut on the Dubai real estate scene. But there's a lot more to this property developer than meets the eye, as Diana Milne finds out when she meets its founder Merwiss Azizi.

Interviewing Merwiss Azizi is an experience in itself. A softly spoken and unassuming looking man, he is in fact one of post-war Afghanistan's most successful entrepreneurs, who drops his achievements casually into our conversation just like they are everyday occurrences.

"At the time president Bush started to make plans for war in Afghanistan, I started to make plans for businesses in Afghanistan," he says.

Azizi Investments is another name in the growing list of companies hoping to make a quick billion or so from the UAE's booming real estate market, having unveiled its 15 million sq ft property development portfolio in the country.

But dig a little deeper and there's a lot more to this particular property developer than meets the eye.

For a start it is the first Afghan property developer to enter the UAE's real estate market - an achievement itself given the economic turbulence in its own war-torn backyard.

Then there's the founder of the company, Merwiss Azizi - one of the richest and most high-profile businessmen in his native Afghanistan, founder of one of the country's first commercial banks Azizi Bank and a petroleum trader who supplies around 90% of Afghanistan's oil supplies.

Despite having amassed a multimillion dollar fortune he claims: "Money is not important.

"For me the most important thing is that I can walk with my head held high but I am not ashamed of anything I've ever done in my life.

On the contrary, Azizi has a lot to be proud of, for he is no ordinary oil tycoon.

After fleeing the Soviet war in Afghanistan in 1987 with just US$700 in his pocket and the clothes he was wearing, he began dealing in textiles in Uzbekistan and quickly realised his own flare for the hard sell.

"I left with the suit I was wearing and US$700 and that was it. It started when I visited a friend in Bulgaria who was making textiles. I said to him ‘give me one container of textiles to sell'. He said ‘okay but come back with the money in one month'.

I sold the container in one day and made a profit of US$1,000. Next he gave me five containers to sell in two months.

I sold the containers in two days and made a profit of US$1,500 on each one. Then a lot of people began to say ‘Azizi is very good at selling these containers'. Some of them gave me five containers, some of them 10, 20 or 30 to sell at once."

Azizi's reputation soon spread and he claims that within six months, he had turned his US$700 into US$1m.

He quickly turned his selling talents to the cigarette business, trading Bulgarian cigarettes in Eastern Europe.

His business ambition was driven, he says, by a determination not to become dependent on state handouts and not to emigrate to Western Europe or to the US.

"When the Russians invaded Afghanistan I had a choice. I could either start a business close to home or I could emigrate. I graduated from the legal faculty of my university and none of my family was in business.

But I didn't like the idea of going somewhere like Canada or the UK and relying on state allowances so I started my business."

16 years after leaving Afghanistan, with millions of dollars in the bank and businesses spanning everything from petroleum and cigarettes to textiles, Azizi returned home - to find a country that had changed, he says, beyond all recognition.