“The secularists and Islamists are talking to each other,” says Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian analyst. “The whole discourse is about organizing ourselves and putting on more pressure.”
Month: June 2005
Syria to ease state of emergency
“Most opposition groups have been calling for much more,” analyst Ammar Abdulhamid told the Associated Press news agency.
“For instance, we want the emergency law to be completely removed.”
Mr Abdulhamid, who used to work for the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think-tank, added that the Baath party, which has been in power in Syria since 1963, would not introduce changes that might jeopardise its supremacy.
M’enfin Oui, C’est Fini!
While mice were busy pretending they were lions in Damascus, Arabs and Kurds were at each other’s throats in Qamishly, and kidnappings of businessmen continued in Aleppo, where Islamists have made sure that alcohol is effectively banned.
Is there any doubt left that something is indeed boiling in the country? Continue reading “M’enfin Oui, C’est Fini!”
Syria’s Baath Party Urged on Economy
Quoted by the Associated Press
“We will know in the next few days whether this regime is committing suicide or whether it still has some survival instincts left,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, an analyst who returned recently from a six-month fellowship at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
Michel Kilo, a pro-democracy activist, said Assad’s focus on the economy shows he is a proponent of the “Chinese model,” a reference to that country’s policy of liberalizing the economy while resisting political change.
Abdulhamid said the conference will likely aim to give Syrians a socio-economic package that will appeal to the grass roots.
“It’s the strategy of somebody desperately clinging to power,” he said. “There is so much lack of skill and know-how and so much corruption that they really cannot implement a good package.”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 