When the ophthalmologist becomes king
In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk's epic tome about the formation and disintegration of Lebanon, Fisk recalls reading a faded 1950s newspaper story in which a European visitor writes of being wowed by the typical allures of the "Switzerland of the Middle East," while he glosses over a deadly anti-government protest - the beginning of Lebanon's first civil war - as the birth pangs of a young democracy.
National Geographic writer Don Belt, who has penned a knowing portrait of Syria for the magazine's November issue, seems determined to avoid missing such a historical boat. His wide-ranging story about the precariously perched Bashar al-Assad regime has impressed even Syria News Wire - never happy with carpetbagging foreign correspondents - which has called it "the best article on Syria in a decade."
Belt's prose is compact and efficient, as it must be if he wants to make an attempt at putting Syria's past and present into about 4,000 words. But the style lends itself to his mostly unflinching account of Assad's unlikely rise to power, his attempts at modernization and the important ways in which he's falling short.
The access Belt got to Assad himself creates a few moments in the article, such as when Belt recounts fuzzy memories of the ruling family, where I felt like I was being treated to some pro-Assad spinning at a time when many are critical of him. But Belt's a journalist; he's compelled to tell both sides of the story and, after all, Bashar al-Assad is just a man like everyone else.
We're left with a Syria that seems stuck, economically and politically, in a mindset that's at least 40 decades old. The manager of a government-owned cotton plant, oblivious to or concealing any knowledge of the workplace dangers there, stares at Belt in seeming confusion when asked if he's ever made a profit. Academics and activists still fear the intelligence services created many years ago by Assad's father to destroy the opposition when his famed political wiliness wouldn't work.
"Living here is something like a phobia," says a nervous human rights activist who Belt does not identify. "You always feel like someone's watching. You look around and there's no one there. So you think, I shouldn't have this feeling, but I do. I must be crazy. This is what they want."
Like Syria News Wire, I won't give away Belt's inspired ending, except to say that it draws a conclusion about Syria that speaks to many Middle Eastern societies, where the lack of seemingly mundane necessities, and not ancient history or modern conspiracies, is what's truly important.
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Categories: Life and Culture, Media, Regional News, Syria
Tags: Bashar al-Assad, Don Belt, Hafez al-Assad, Lebanon, National Geographic, Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk, Syria, Syria News Wire
3 Comments
I really don't think the article, and your comment about the govt cotton plant, does justice to how much Syria has modernized (maybe captalized/liberalized commerce policy is better) its banking and economic system since Assad came to power. I mean 10-15 years ago there really was no modern banking system in Syria where you could use ATMs and you had to travel to Lebanon if you wanted to easily withdraw money and do international transactions. Tariffs and custom taxes have been greatly reduced to encourage trade with Turkey and Europe. Damascus even know has these big sweet green buses instead of just relying on the little micro vans and taxis system. There're even plans to put a subway system in Damascus albeit probably anywhere from 15 to 100 years from now and God only knows what they'll do to the Old City to install the lines. And sure the public universities in Syria may stifle learning in social science and be not quite current in their teaching of medicine or science but there has been a huge increase in private universities and schools a bit removed (of course not fully) from the Syria govt.
Now political/press freedoms are quite another issue....
And this seems a bit absurd to me
"It's also a place where you can dine out with friends at a trendy café, and then, while waiting for a night bus, hear blood-chilling screams coming from a second-floor window of the Bab Touma police station. In the street, Syrians cast each other knowing glances, but no one says a word. Someone might be listening."
I lived in Syria for almost two years and spent quite a bit of time waiting outside the police station and I never heard any blood-chilling screams. Lots of taxi drivers yelling and honking at each other but nothing from the police station. I'm pretty sure they take those types of prisoners elsewhere (like MI buildings or sedneya).... I remember after the bombing of the Syrian military intelligence building on the airport road last year the one of the accused shown on syrian tv after "the confession" who obviously just got the shit beaten out of him.
At any rate, I like the blog and both your commentary. Keep it coming.
Tom -
I appreciate the comments, thanks for reading. You've got valid points about some aspects of Syrian modernization that Belt and I missed, and they're nothing to be sniffed at. Also, I too was confused by Belt's police station anecdote; he didn't go anywhere with it, nor did he explain it. It was a bit of shoddy journalism in what I thought was, overall, a good article.
But I think the conclusion I drew from Belt's article still stands: Syria, economically and politically, is still stuck in the 1960s/1970s. Particularly when we speak of politics. The comparisons with Egypt are obvious: decades of emergency law, an essentially one-party system, an authoritarian strongman ruler who wants to pass on power to his son (or in Syria's case, did so in 2000).
The economic advancements, while they do make life better for people who, say, want to get money from an ATM, seem somewhat cosmetic to me. Now, I'm not an economist and I don't know much about what it would take to improve the Egyptian or Syrian financial systems. I'm just saying that both countries remain mired in the age of government subsidies and government-owned business. Advancements are coming, to be sure, just at a glacial pace.
Sorry it took a little bit to reply. Fair points but what are Syria's alternatives to the slow, plodding economic reform? If Syria liberalizes its economy rapidly it exposes itself to being much harder hit when the global economy hits and Syria being a political pariah means the IMF or World Bank (ie EU or US) isn't going to bail it out without restructuring their economy and by extension their country. Right now Syria is looking to strengthen economic and political ties with Turkey and is looking to join the EU-Med partnership. Syria's economic choices are constrained by it's international political status. It can't do much if the US imposes economic sanctions.
And as for personal banking and other things being just cosmetic (and in my opinion the import duty and tax structure changes are much more than cosmetic), what's the point of any economic system or progress if it doesn't help ordinary people? Access to easy capital is one of America's reasons for having such a dynamic economy. You have to start somewhere and it should be at the bottom rung. Look at Iraq and the US government attempts to restructure the economy. I mean there were sections of the CPA trying to set up an advanced Iraqi stock market or dismantaling all the govt-run factories and businesses before tackling basic infrastructure problems. Syria still needs to improve its basic infrastructure.
This is all not to say that there aren't major problems with Syria's econ and political system. And I think you're spot on when you talk about the political stagnation of Syria.
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