This week marked the 70th anniversary of the United Nations. It is one that will likely be remembered for back door bickering and the absence of decision making on Syria.

A new coalition has been formed consisting of Russia, Iran, Syria and, now, Iraq, with its willingness to share intelligence on Daesh. This cooperation seems to have caught the western powers, especially the US, Britain and France, flat-footed.

Vladimir Putin is working his way squarely to the Centre of Middle East diplomacy and Hassan Rouhani is leveraging his new found clout as a result of the July 14 nuclear agreement with the P5+1 powers.

None of this jockeying however is helping the Syrian people — nearly five million have fled to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey — or for that matter the Syrian economy.

I have been living in the Middle East long enough to say, it certainly did not have to turn out this way. Syria was in the recent past a real destination for regional investment. But nearly five years of civil war have taken a massive toll on the people who have remained: 80 per cent live in poverty, with unemployment rising to 57 per cent.

Adnan Yousif, CEO of Saudi Arabia based Al Baraka Banking Group, knows of this experience first-hand. He invested in Syria six months before the uprising against Bashar Al Assad broke out and witnessed the impact of the brain drain.

“In the Gulf we have Syrian doctors, we have engineers, we have bankers, we have businessmen. Yes the Syrians have lost a lot and this what I call the major capital, the major assets for any country,” said Yousif.

Research group Benchmark described Syria as the region’s biggest humanitarian and economic disaster of the past quarter century and talks of 11 million Syrians as either refugees or internally displaced.

At the end of 2014, the UN calculated economic losses of $202 billion, with estimates of that hitting $237 billion by the end of this year. That is three times the country’s GDP in 2010.

Five years ago, it was a far different story. With $100 a barrel oil boosting revenues, Middle East investors were eager to tap Syria’s rich history and educated workforce. Here’s an often forgotten fact, Syria was actually expanding nearly 6 per cent, which means the lost economic opportunity is enormous.

According to FDI magazine, foreign direct investment was flowing in: nearly $2 billion in 2010, over $1.5 billion in 2012 and a severe drop the following two years, to zero. In his last five-year plan, Assad had planned to launch projects worth $10.3 billion.

Gulf developers had established four major developments that were pegged at over $6 billion and they were sizeable players with the likes of Emaar, Majid Al-Futtaim and Qatar Diar. All came to a screeching halt.

Syria is not known as an oil producer, but 380,000 barrels a day was nothing to sneeze at. In the first quarter of this year, it was less than 10,000 a day.

Al Baraka opened 10 branches in Syria; they have not been shuttered, but the chief executive admits survival has not been easy. The focus has been on trade finance for the companies importing products in a desperate climate. No new capital has gone in.

“Right now we are trying to keep the institution operating to do it in the normal way. But it is very difficult ... things are not easy but we are trying our best,” Yousif said during our interview in Dubai.

A great deal has been broadcast around the globe about the plight of Syrians making their way to the heart of Europe, especially into Germany, which may have been the trigger for the attempted reengagement with Syria.

Dubai based Jumeriah Group was all set to manage its first hotel in Damascus, with a Syrian financed property but it too never happened.

Executive Chairman Gerald Lawless told me, “Damascus in peace time is a fantastic city,” adding that back then it fit their brand pledge “to stay different”. That or course is no longer the case.

But one thing is crystal clear after the dozens of speeches during the UN General Assembly this week — we are no closer to a solution to end the atrocities, bring back the Syrian people and the investors who knew that the risk of survival was much greater than the potential reward.

The writer is CNN’s emerging markets editor.