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Viewing all posts tagged "syria"
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Syria makes it into the New York Times top 10 destinations
Damascus ranks number 7 in the top places to visit in 2010, mainly on the basis of its new boutique hotels. Thank you, Don Duncan, former correspondent for the Global Post Beirut, for your insightful review of a city in which you don’t even reside. Forget the great mosques, markets, museums, and mausoleums: you can travel halfway across the world and stay in a luxury hotel with an “inviting courtyard”!
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Dissidents Shift Discussion to Web
Yet another example of how communications technologies are enabling individuals to connect regardless of the physical distance and political barriers which separate them.
A Syrian pro-democracy forum that was shut down by the authorities in 2005 has found a new life in cyberspace and discussion is thriving. The Atassi forum has rallied more than 250 members to its Facebook group to share views on civic issues that are not aired in the state-controlled and state-monitored media. The police state bars intellectuals and dissidents from holding that kind of discussion face to face. Now pro-democracy groups are hoping that social networks like Facebook will help give vigour to their cause and connect opponents inside and outside the country, despite official attempts to block them.
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Aleppo may also boast the Arab world’s most impressive souk. For the past seven centuries, every kind of spice, sweet, soap, silk, dried fruit, carpet, metal, jewelry and water pipe imaginable has been sold here.
A Mix of the Old and New in Aleppo, Syria - The New York Times
(via findlilyhere)
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Why so Syria? A new start to relations with America
Rafiq Hariri was the Prime Minister of Lebanon from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2000 to 2004. As politician and business tycoon, Hariri was responsible for reconstructing Beirut after the 15-year civil war, but in so doing he created a climate of corruption that crippled the Lebanese economy, with public debt rising 16 times as growth slowed to a halt. He resigned his post as Prime Minister in October 2004.
On 14 February 2005, Hariri was blown up, along with 21 others, when a bomb struck his motorcade as it traveled through Beirut. Fact-finding missions carried out that year implicated both Lebanese and Syrian officials, and while the Syrian government repeatedly claimed it had no knowledge of the bombing, President George W. Bush, as a result of the bombing, called home the American Ambassador from Damascus. The position has been left vacant ever since.
So it was a welcome surprise last week when President Barack Obama announced the nomination of William Ford to fill the job of Ambassador to Damascus, and arranged a meeting between William Burns, a senior US diplomat, and Syrian President al-Assad. Affairs in the Middle East, much like US foreign policy in general, are not always what they seem. So why the (seemingly) sudden change of strategy? Simple Intelligence offers a simple explanation:
A Damascus wooed away from Tehran, party to peace talks with Israel, and supportive of counter-terrorism and anti-Islamist campaigns throughout the Middle East would be a boon to American foreign policy. It could also, provided enough economic results for Syrian citizens, be a welcome infusion of economic and political rewards to Syria as a whole and Assad’s government in particular.
Add to this the fact that a Syria properly allied with the United States would be a Syria much less vulnerable to an Israeli military strike, threats of which have been spewing from Netanyahu government officials in recent weeks. Granted, there are cases where Israel has gone ahead and done whatever it wants without explicit or tacit approval from the United States. But to bomb Damascus at a time when President Obama is trying to normalize relations with the Syrian government would be strategically next to impossible. Much more difficult than, say, strikes against Gaza, which do not seem to bother Washington.
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50 days until Syria
The plans for moving from London to Damascus are in full swing. Jennifer and I have created a “get ‘er done” board with all the things we have to do prior to leaving. These include boring bureaucratic tasks like sorting out visas and canceling subscriptions, but also London things-to-do that I just haven’t done in the last 5 years of living here. For example, the National Gallery and Portrait Gallery — how haven’t I been there yet?? Anyway, the board is on the wall now. Items items keep getting added and nothing is getting checked off yet. Time to get into gear.
The reason we’re moving to Syria is to learn Arabic. We’ve been taking part-time night classes for the past couple years and have accumulated a strange collection of stuff in Arabic: children’s books, board games, airplane sick bags, instruction manuals, newspapers and magazines. This has all been well and good, and I’m sure our basic knowledge will prove to be super helpful once we’ve touched down in Damascus, but being fully immersed in the language and the culture is, surely, incomparable. The goal is to leave next summer confident in our ability to fully express our thoughts and opinions in Arabic, to read and understand Arabic newspapers, essays, novels and websites, and even to make informed, logical arguments in Arabic. Is this possible?
I’m hoping at the very least that our current skill level will enable us to get a taxi from Damascus airport to the city center, where lies our temporary abode. Upon arrival we’ll also be needing some breakfast and coffee — Syrian style! At the moment, I can say things like this pretty confidently:
صباح الخير يا سيدي. أريد فنجان قهوة والإفطار من فضلك
الجبن والحمص والخبز من فضلك
Sabah al-khayr ya sayyid. Urid finjan qahwa wa iftar min fudlak.
Jubna wa humus wa khubz min fudlak.That’s “Good morning, sir. I want a cup of coffee and breakfast please. Cheese, humus and bread please.”
I’m quite sure our language learning speed will increase dramatically once we’re there, and with intensive classes 5 hours a day, plus people and signs and television and radio all around us, all the time, all in Arabic, we will definitely be fully immersed. And we’ll need to learn more common food orders quickly, lest we become stuffed full of cheese, humus and bread.
Food and drink is an important part of my life wherever I am. I often use food as a barometer of culture and national psyche when I travel to foreign countries. The politics of food? Is that altogether fair? Maybe not. But I think you can learn a lot about society by what they feed themselves and how they treat dinner guests. From what I’ve read and heard, the Syrians do both of these things right, so it should be a lot of tasty fun!
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43 days until Syria
I’ve informed all of my work colleagues that I’m leaving my job at the end of this month. This was sad. It’s been an amazing four years at Travelfusion during which I’ve grown personally and professionally. Most importantly, I’ve made so many good friends who I’ll stay in contact with for years to come. I’m so proud of our achievements and with all the work underway I’m sure the successes will keep on coming.
Some may know that I moved to London in 2005 to pursue a Masters degree in Politics and Society of the Middle East. My dissertation explored social and political aspects of journalism and media in transitional democracies. Specifically I compared post-2003 Iraq to other instances of “media space management” by intervening powers within conflict zones, for example when Yugoslavia was breaking up in the 1990s. I tried to explain the rapid diversification of Iraqi media into highly polarized, unmistakably partisan media outlets, as one of many predictable outcomes of the American policy of de-Baathification. I didn’t really touch on the impact this policy had on the insurgency — nice job, Bremer, that one reaaaaally worked out — but instead focused on the problems you see when the development of a nation’s public sphere is driven by interventionist policy.
Anyway, since SOAS I’ve been working at an internet software company doing things like product development, communications, project management, writing and editing content — all sorts of things not related to the Middle East at all. I’ve always liked technology and making things, and I really enjoy the role I play at my company, but it’s been a nagging desire of mine to continue along my academic track by working with some kind of international organization that deals with new media in emerging markets. Specifically in Arabic speaking countries, since digital media is all still relatively new to the region and growing very quickly. To land a job like this, I’ll need to learn more Arabic; and to learn a new language properly, you really need to live somewhere that speaks it. So that’s what I’m going to do.
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Obama’s Middle East policy: progressive or merely cross-mogination?
My first job after undergrad was as a paralegal at a law firm, where I met some attorneys who had come up with a term that embodied their daily existence: cross-moginating. This farcical verb referred to the act of shuffling documents back and forth but not really achieving anything.
Insanity, is it often said, is repeating the same action over and over and expecting different results, and today the Obama administration is being criticized for once again misunderstanding the balance of power in the Middle East.
In dividing the protagonists in the style of former President Bush — that is, into pro-American moderates who must be supported vs. anti-progress fanatics who must be wiped out — President Obama risks repeating the same mistakes of times past.
Granted, Obama has reached out to some Middle Eastern countries in ways not seen in some decades, and indeed, the United States shares many strategic goals with other culturally, politically and economically significant powers in the region, i.e. Syria, Egypt and Turkey.
But how different is Obama’s Middle East Policy? He’s withdrawing many but not all US troops from Iraq, but 50,000 troops can hardly be considered an end to the occupation. Still, it’s a good development, and the same logic could have been applied to Afghanistan as well. But meanwhile, he has escalated the war there with his troop surge plus regular drone attacks within territorial Pakistan. And on Israel-Palestine, well, Ussama Makdisa says it best:
The same dynamic that was at work during the failed Camp David Summit of 2000 is again evident: an Israeli leadership openly unwilling to make peace on the basis of genuine reciprocity, let alone justice or equality is meeting a Palestinian leadership utterly dependent on an American ability to pressure Israel into significant concessions, under the aegis of an American administration with the same kind of pro-Israel mentality and frame of reference that oversaw the last failed round.
The Obama administrate has been cross-moginating: shifting troops, shifting rhetoric, but not really achieving too much.
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25 days until Syria
No problems getting the visa. Well, no major problems. I wasn’t allowed to apply for a Syrian visa in any other embassy than the one in Washington, D.C., a fact that was not made clear on any website or documentation I had seen anywhere in my
weeksmonths of research into the application process. It was never made clear to me exactly why I couldn’t get the visa from the Syrian embassy in London, except that it had something to do with increased background checks needed for American citizens.Many kudos to the Syrian visa office in DC for turning over the visa application in a matter of days. Many curses to UPS who completely botched the delivery — express does not mean express. As it happens, I lost over £100 due to a flight I missed while waiting for the delivery. NOT EXPRESS!
Anyway, I have my passport with 6-month visa, though limited to a 15-day stay which can be extended as soon as I’m registered at the university in Damascus. And I crossed of 5 more items from the “get ‘er done” board, now posted on our kitchen wall.
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23 days until Syria
Me: We’re actually leaving the country soon.
British Police Officer: I don’t blame you. -
18 days until Syria
Fresh off a weekend trip to Stockholm, I resigned from my job of four years and had a great “leaving do” (as they say here in the UK) with my workmates. I’ll miss the entire Travelfusion crew, but especially the ones I worked with the closest. You know who you are. I got such a nice card from the team full of handwritten personal messages that actually meant something — not just your usual generic best of luck blah blahs. On top of that, I got a £40 gift certificate to Bodeans, the best BBQ place here in London, and a super friendly good-bye post on the Travelfusion blog.
Then the smaller group leaving dos began. Some dim sum here, a little Gordon’s Wine Bar there, and then *snap* it was off to Amsterdam for a few days’ adventure. Amsterdam is a strange place to me, very hit and miss, and the unforgivingly matter-of-fact attitude of the Dutch people takes a little getting used to. The great parts of the city are great, for example the superbly organized Van Gogh museum. The seedy parts are of course seedy, but you know what you’re getting into so it’s kind of okay. But the thing that’s usually of my favorite parts of traveling — the food — was consistently disappointing. Luckily on the last day we found this place called De Bakkerswinkel (Dutch for The Bakkerswinkle) which almost completely made up for all the other lackluster dining experiences! Amazing quiche, salad and ice tea.
Now it’s one day in London to run errands before traveling to Dublin to attend the wedding of two good friends. After that it’s just two short weeks before we leave London for Damascus. For the first time I feel it in a very real way that we are finally leaving, and it’s just more bitter and more sweet than ever.
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13 days until Syria
Taking a cue from Iona, here are the English language paperbacks I’ll take with me to Damascus. As most waking hours will be spent in Arabic, from the intensive 5-hour-a-day classes to communicating with locals and struggling with newspapers and television, I suspect I’ll need some downtime to rest my head with some light reading.
Demystifying Syria (ed. Lawson)
This recently published collection of essays on Syrian politics, economics and diplomacy is part of a series from my Masters degree alma mater and comes recommended by Joshua Landis.A History of the Arab Peoples (Hourani)
A go-to reference I used during my history course at SOAS. Open to any page and it sucks you in.An Aesthetic Occupation: The Immediacy of Architecture and the Palestine Conflict (Monk)
I got Jennifer this for her birthday last year, though neither of us has read it yet. It’s about how monuments central to the Israel/Palestine conflict, such as Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock aka the Temple Mount, became invested over the last 60 years with conflicting values, intertwined with the identity politics of the moment, and turned into “terrible caricatures” of themselves. Sounds to me like a bold new take on an aspect of reconciliation which isn’t usually explored in the mainstream.Lonely Planet: Middle East
Basic practical stuff and some pretty decent sounding itineraries for Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Egypt.Media Arabic: An Essential Vocabulary
Okay so it’s not exactly an English language book, but it’s an extremely useful glossary of contemporary vocab that I’ve been consulting the past couple years to help familiarize myself with common buzz words and phrases that come up in the native media all the time.أستاذ سرحان (Ustadh Sirhan)
Okay so it’s not an English book at all but a children’s book, so it makes my “things that won’t make my head hurt” list. It’s an Arabic copy of Mr. Daydream from the awesome Mr. Men series. See the cover here!I’d really appreciate any other suggestions.
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10 days until Syria
A few days ago I made a reading list of books to take with me to Damascus. Since then, some others have been added. Here’s the final stack with the recently added titles below.
Sunday Stories: AGI Website Editorials 2003-2010 (Smitshuijzen)
A collection of short articles and case studies that demonstrate how graphic design has become an almost universal activity, growing ever closer links with other professions and pretty much all computer users. “Everyone with an ambition pays tribute to visual communication.”Colonialism and Neocolonialism (Satre)
Collection of Satre’s writings on French colonialism in Algeria and the West’s conduct in the Third World in general. In these essays, Satre advocates violence as a legitimate response to repression — perhaps in tune with more recent polemic which posits that nonviolence is one of the most severe roadblocks to social change today?… and an Arabic dictionary, grammar guide, and course book.
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8 days until Syria
Thanks to everyone who came to our leaving bash last night. As I sat in Bodean’s eating massive portions of BBQ so kindly bestowed to me in gift-card form by my lovely Travelfusion colleagues, I felt sad contemplating once again all the people I’ve cared about who’ve left London before me, and the ones who I’ll be leaving behind. Or maybe it was the whiskey induced headache. Either way, four of the last five years I’ve been going to other peoples’ leaving parties, and last night was finally mine and Jennifer’s.
London (population 7,500,000 / density 12,400/sq mile) is the first big city I’ve ever lived in for an extended amount of time. Hailing from Athens, GA (pop. 114,000 / density 850/sq mile), and having done my undergrad in Winston-Salem, NC (pop 230,000 / density 1400/sq mile), I can’t really speak from comparable experience of big city living.
But the top impression I’ll take away is the following: you can’t live in London forever unless you have money — lots of it. And if you don’t, then you’ve got to get out before the city eats you up.
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6 days until Syria
Contemplating my new home until next summer…
Damascus is believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It was an important commercial center under the Romans and Byzantines, and as capital of the Umayyad dynasty, A.D. 661-750, Damascus ruled over an empire stretching across the Middle East and North Africa all the way to present-day Spain. Over the centuries Damascus developed as an important stopping point for travelers making the hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca.
It’s long been known as a city of beauty, and remains today associated with an urbane, cultivated lifestyle — as the classical Arabic word mudamashaq, from Dimashq (Damascus), suggests. The city remains highly diverse — religiously, ethnically, and regionally.
Like many cities in the developing world, contemporary Damascus has experienced a steady and significant population increase, and consequently has had to face the problems and issues that typically accompany such urban growth — for example, the emergence of new social distinctions linked to place of residence. In Damascus today, where one lives is the number one marker of social status.
I paraphrased these passages from Christa Salamandra’s anthropological study, A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (2004).
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