Running a Business in a Disaster Zone

(Wall Street Journal) — Think your small business had a tough year?  There were days when Farif Ali Abood had just two hours of electricity to keep his commercial sign-making shop running last year. Based in Najaf, Iraq, Mr. Abood says he relied on a generator, which burned through hundreds of dollars of fuel every month and filled his shop with smoke. “Some days the power is on for a couple of hours, others it’s not on at all,” he says through a translator. “It’s very frustrating.”  While American small-business owners continued to struggle in 2010, facing tight credit markets and weak consumer spending, many of the challenges they faced paled in comparison for entrepreneurs in the world’s more troubled regions. Hotspots such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti—all ranked at the bottom of last month’s Ease of Doing Business report from the World Bank—dealt with violence, civil unrest, natural disasters and other calamities.

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