Going under in Syria
January 31, 2007
An internet café.
After the intensity of discussing the notorious PPP (the Peace Park Plan) in my last post, with a slight detour to cover some of our national culinary delicacies in the comments section (falafel, mostly, if you missed it), I was surprised to find myself enjoying this piece by Guy Taylor covering Syrians’ search for freedom online in the aftermath of the Damascus Spring. It’s chatty and - unlike many articles on Syria - it is also mostly correct; but there are a few slips in Taylor’s piece, notions that have been repeated often in the past few years, and with which I’ve disagreed equally often.
For instance, Taylor repeats the tale that the Damascus Spring started with the death of Hafez Assad; that is not true. Not to be finicky, but it’s a very important point; the relative relaxation of the regime, the so-called Damascus Spring, began earlier, while he was still alive in the late 90s, comfortable in the knowledge that nothing could shake his regime anymore – comfortable enough to allow for more criticism of the government (remember, there’s a difference between the state and the regime). While things certainly continued to flourish after his death, in the period dubbed the Damascus Spring, it was actually only because civil society activists were openly encouraged to speak … only so they could fall harder, as we all witnessed. In my opinion, this distinction is essential in understanding the current regime’s actions and attitude.
Taylor’s claim that the new freedoms were crushed when it became clear the US would be invading Iraq is obviously wrong. The first wave of arrests of our brave civil society activists, including the removal of parliamentary immunity and arrest of Riad Seif and Mamoun Homsi, started over the summer of 2001, with Dr. Aref Dalila being arrested in August 2001, before 9/11, and way before the "war on terror" and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq became a sorry part of our reality.
I smiled at Taylor’s analysis as to why a night club would play a pop song that was “pro-Syria, pro-Assad” (aren't the two terms redundant in this context, given there couldn't possibly be a variation with "anti" no matter where you put it?) at 3 AM; one of the possibilities, in his opinion, was that “the song may also have been a way for the nightclub’s owner to stay open late while avoiding trouble with the authorities.” Very cute, and in line with the school of thought followed by every little shop prominently displaying the inevitable official and unofficial photos.
The description of his first meeting with the founder of Champress was also funny: ”I was taken aback when he suddenly swerved up to the curb in a black Mercedes 600 with tinted windows, the sort of car that seemed more likely to be driven by a secret security agent than by a man who spends his time breaking down barriers to free speech.” Well, most secret security agents actually drive other types of cars (remember the countless white Peugeots?) but Taylor clearly wasn't buying the idea that Syrians could make it big in the media sector - at least not exclusively. (Not just in Syria, by the way: few journalists could afford similar cars.)
His revelation of Mohsen Bilal’s daily phone calls to Champress reminded me of Ali Ferzat and his ill-fated Ad-Domari, when he was hounded by the-then Minister of “Information” Adnan Omran. On the subject of freedom, I maintain that the best material written so far on the Damascus Spring is "Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom” by Alan George. When I passed it on to my husband after I finished it, I remember he would interrupt his reading every few pages, rather worryingly asking me: “Are you sure you didn’t write this yourself? Does Alan George really exist?” But I digress (what a surprise).
So, when you’re done reading about online media in Syria, make sure you get the latest on key indicators of Syrian character and socio-political attitudes: the manufacture of lingerie! Really, journalists must be running out of subject ideas (go figure) because this is all the rage. Yossi Sarid explains in Haaretz that “The future is in underwear,” basing his entire article on another article in Time Magazine by a Lydia Wilson called “Undercover in Damascus.”
But besides being apparently out of ideas, Haaretz is way too late and Time is not quite timely, the former in particular speaking volumes about the supposed expertise of Israelis on Syria. That’s because the subject, about which a book has now been written, believe it or not (“The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie”) was already covered last year in a rather weird article by the author of that same book, who at the time was still researching, in a British weekly called The New Statesman.
Being a more attentive follower of Syrian society, if not lingerie, than Haaretz and Time, I had already covered that coverage in my blog at the time, reporting amongst other things the basic, essential “fact” that Gulf money made Syrian bras possible in 1973. Intrigued? Then do please read it to understand the significance of Syrian underwear, and its impact on politics - or was it the other way around? I know there’s so much to say about home, but I really didn't expect we would be discussing underwear twice in this blog!
