Thoughts on Syria

A typical day in Damascus at a time when Syria is apparently gripped by chaotic bloody turmoil and descending quickly into sectarian civil war… or something.

What is going on in Syria?

Some have asked me what it’s like to be witnessing history — I’d say so far we haven’t exactly witnessed history, but just a lot of men driving around their cars honking horns and waving photos of the president. This is to say, the pro-government movement is a lot more vocal in Damascus, and as a result the security situation there is as stable as always. Same in Aleppo. The vast majority of Syrians — 98% by some estimates, if we believe only 400,000 or so have participated in protests — do not want to face the unknown, the uncertainty, the potential chaos that an overthrow of the government might entail.

One thing to me is clear: there is not yet a strong, uniform, nationwide movement striving for the downfall of the Assad government. Most of the anger and frustration expressed by normal Syrians is because of economic hardship, not because they are supercharged over the need for democracy, etc. The violence in Daraa was an isolated incident, but was so severe that it sparked anger not only there but in a number of Syrian cities. Syrians only have to look to neighboring Lebanon and Iraq to see what sectarian conflict can bring about — civil war — and no Syrian wants civil war. They don’t want to see their country destroyed.

In Syria political dissent is so quickly dispersed, so ruthlessly dealt with, that it’s close to impossible for an opposition political movement to take hold. It’s the specter of an opposition movement that would put ordinary folks at risk. Many Syrians might very well be frustrated with the relative slowness of political and economic reforms, but what they don’t want is civil war. Over the last few years Syrians have seen an influx of ATMs, coffee shops, shopping malls, and other entrapments of a modern economy. While there are not many wealthy people here, most everyone with a job gets by just fine with what they earn.

The CNN effect

There are problems in some parts of the country, however the manner in which these problems are being reported paints a misleading picture. Syria is a complicated story that can’t be reduced to a few sensational headlines. Clearly it’s not okay when the president sends tanks and snipers to mow down and besiege his own people. But the entire country is not on fire. And the two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, have remained mostly calm.

Many news reports do indeed look scary. But one must consume these reports in context:

• Media in general love conflict. Western media especially love conflict about the Middle East. Unrest in Syria fits in neatly with the whole “Arab Spring” narrative that’s been produced and reproduced since Tunisia blew up back in December.

• Perhaps 500 to 600 people or more have been killed in all this — all of whom are Syrian protesters. Another 1000 people or more have been arrested and detained — again all of them Syrian, all protesters and activists. As far as anyone knows no foreigners are being targeted for their foreignness; no Americans are being targeting for being American. There was that Egyptian-American who was detained and released, but he was a known activist (and it’s a fact that the Syrian bureaucracy doesn’t favor Arabs with US citizenship). There was the American kid who was detained and released, but he was an idiot who was personally inclined to witness protests for himself and was caught photographing some guys yelling anti-government slogans. The point? Non-activist non-Arabs have had nothing to worry about.

• There is no civil war in Syria. If you look at points of unrest on a map it looks like conflict is widespread across the whole country, but protests have been driven by the lower classes, since these are the people who’ve lost out the most under the Assads. Granted, there have been reports of students joining the protests; surely they are driven also by pro-democracy ideas. But the middle and upper classes are mostly happy with things the way they are, and this is the main reason why protests haven’t really touched Damascus and Aleppo. These cities have the most to lose from the economic instability which would certainly follow if the political and security situation keeps getting worse.

• Our contacts in central Damascus (not the suburbs) tell us things haven’t changed there. They say there’s more “tension in the air” but no violence, no changes to their daily routines. The road from Beirut to Damascus is confirmed open and clear. The airports in Damascus and Aleppo are running as normal. Northern border with Turkey also open as normal. Southern border with Jordan may or may not be open; there are conflicting accounts on the media and internet and it sounds like some people can go through while others can’t.

• It’s difficult to impossible for anyone to verify who is responsible for all the civilian deaths, let alone the reported deaths of security and other government servicemen. There are no independent media witnessing these events. State media continues to run specials on history and culture, long slow panning shots of centuries-old carved doors in the Old City backed with epic traditional music. Analysts of the many dozens of YouTube videos emerging from Syria are saying it’s certain that security personnel are responsible for the killings and that, without a doubt, there have been orders to fire on unarmed civilians. There might also be “armed gangs” and militant jihadists roaming the cities, as the Syrian government claims, but there’s no real way to verify that either.

Accidental refugees

Last week we found ourselves stuck in Lebanon. In short, the immigration office in Damascus gave us incorrect information about visas, and when we tried to return in Syria after a lovely week-long vacation with friends, I, as an American, was not allowed to purchase a new entry visa at the land border. Jennifer, as a Spaniard, was allowed to buy a visa and continue into Syria, but we did not want to separate from each other. So we returned to Beirut, got a hotel room, and applied for visas from the Syrian embassy here in town.

It’s very different and quite strange now to be looking on as an outsider. Llke everyone, we’ve been glued to the TV, internet and social networks, soaking in as much information as possible in order to get the best feel of current events we can. The people I trust most about what’s going on, our friends living in Damascus, real people with real lives and a real understanding of the situation, in addition to the Syrian embassy employees here in Beirut, Lebanon, are all telling us that at this point the living conditions in Damascus remain perfectly fine.

And yet, there’s great pressure on us to not go back to Syria, pressure from people who are outside of the country, who don’t understand the situation fully, who don’t know the language, who don’t have our experience of living in Damascus and traveling across Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. But what can we do? These are people who care dearly for us, our families and closest friends, and we don’t want to induce heart attacks in anyone before their times. So we’ve decided to abandon our Arabic studies and leave Syria and the Middle East. 

Why this sucks

Besides not being able to properly say goodbye to all our friends, leaving Syria prematurely is extremely frustrating because we haven’t had sufficient time to achieve our language goals. There are plenty of decent learning-Arabic books on the market, but they are written specifically for English speakers learning Arabic. Thus all the grammatical rules and terminologies are explained in English.

This is a problem because so far we have learned all of our Arabic in Arabic. Arabic grammar is very different from English; experts say a major inhibitor to people learning Arabic is trying to translate grammatical concepts into your own language, trying to understand things like “active participle” and “verbal noun” in Arabic the same way we understand them in English. Going from this point forward learning Arabic in English will be a great challenge for us, not as good a learning method, and potentially detrimental. We’ll have to try to come back in the future and complete Levels 5 through 8. 

This post is a compendium of emails sent to friends and family over the last few weeks, plus some of my latest thoughts from the couch here in our hotel room in Beirut.