The Enigma of Damascus

By JAMES BENNET – New York Times

Ammar Abdulhamid, 39, runs the Tharwa Project, which tracks treatment of minorities in the region. He had a fellowship at the Brookings Institution in Washington last fall, and he has decorated his Damascus office with photographs from his walk to work along Connecticut Avenue. One shows the American flag through the bare limbs of trees. When I stopped by, he called the regime ”defunct” and the Baathists ”idiots” and ”morons” while we were still settling into our seats. He saw no alternative in civil society either. ”They all want a leader or a messiah,” he said. He did not advocate ”bloody revolution,” he said. But he also said that the civil strife accompanying regime change in Iraq might be the only way forward in the region. ”Stagnation is killing our souls and our minds,” he said. ”Hopefully, this baptism by blood and mayhem will teach us to cherish the liberties.”

Brother/Sister, Where Art Thou?

This is the study that I have prepared during my first stint as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution (July-December 2004). Though completed, the study was never published by Brookings, it was simply too whimsical to pass as a policy paper, and although I had permission to publish it elsewhere while acknowledging that it was prepared at Brookings, I got too caught up with the activities of the Tharwa Project and my the interrogations I faced upon my return to Syrian to follow up on this. Continue reading “Brother/Sister, Where Art Thou?” →

For Syrian optimists, now is the time to reconsider

Special to The Daily Star

If the last five years in Syria have shown anything, it is that the country’s Baath regime cannot accommodate serious reforms – economic, political or structural. As such, the lackluster nature of the recent Baath congress and its recommendations were not surprising. If anything, the Baath simply lived up to its, by now, well-established reputation as the party of missed opportunities and disappointments. Continue reading “For Syrian optimists, now is the time to reconsider” →

The Risks of Virtual and Other Forms of Activism!

In Syria, we have several cases where people were arrested, tried in a security court and jailed for having an illegal content on their pcs, or in their emails. Still, software to circumvent the government firewall is available everywhere at a cost of less than one USD. Everybody uses this software to access forbidden sites, such as those of various opposition groups abroad. No one has so far been jailed for accessing an actual opposition site, but there was a recent arrest against a well-known dissident who read a statement from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in a public forum. He had received the statement via email.

Continue reading “The Risks of Virtual and Other Forms of Activism!” →