Syrian media reform: a glass half full or half empty?

Special to The Daily Star

The Syrian media have not shown any serious signs of change since the Baath Party assumed power in a 1963 coup. Indeed, Syria’s media sector is one of the most tightly controlled in the Arab world. Most publications are state-owned, and rarely express nonconformist opinions. The coming to power of young President Bashar Assad in 2000 raised hopes that the regime would loosen the reigns significantly. But after a brief period of decompression in 2001 known as the “Damascus spring,” Assad enacted a publications law that consolidated government control; he allowed the licensing of just one “independent” political magazine, owned by the son of the minister of defense; and he cracked down hard on dissent. Continue reading “Syrian media reform: a glass half full or half empty?” →

In Syria, Building a Civil Society Book by Book

The Chronicle of Higher Education
BYLINE: KATHERINE ZOEPF

Damascus, Syria

Leave it to others to devise grand programs for bringing democracy to the Middle East: Ammar Abdulhamid wants to lay the intellectual foundations of citizenship one book at a time.

Two years ago, with a small group of Syrian writers and academics here, Mr. Abdulhamid, a 38-year-old American-educated historian and novelist, founded DarEmar, a nonprofit publishing house dedicated to making canonical works of Western philosophy, social science, and literature available in Arabic. His goal, he says, is to print books that will foster “debate on a broad range of issues pertaining to civil society and democratization.” Continue reading “In Syria, Building a Civil Society Book by Book” →

Why ignoring Syria is misguided

Ammar Abdulhamid & Moshe Maoz / Special to The Daily Star

It is time for U.S. President George W. Bush, following his re-election victory and the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, to reconsider his Middle East policy. The Palestinian-Israeli problem is not going to be settled soon, even under Arafat’s successors. That’s why the second Bush administration should start by encouraging Israel and Syria to resume peace negotiations. Continue reading “Why ignoring Syria is misguided” →

Letter from Damascus: Superhighway to Damascus

BookForum – Jan/Dec 2005

One of the most significant deficits in the Arab world today—and one which the highly publicized United Nations Arab Human Development Reports have so far failed to mention—is the staggering absence of young voices on the intellectual scene and in the public debate concerning societal and political reform. This is perhaps the starkest manifestation of the “knowledge gap or deficit” referred to in the reports, issued annually by the United Nations Development Program to monitor socioeconomic and political conditions in the Arab states. Arab countries, it seems, have somehow ceased to produce intellectuals—artists, novelists, poets, and political and social analysts—who could navigate new courses and harness popular sentiment to help lift their countries out of the morass in which they are mired. Continue reading “Letter from Damascus: Superhighway to Damascus” →