“Necessary” Tatics!

If the President is to emerge as the Man of the Hour during the upcoming Baath conference, at least in the eyes of other members of the regime as well as his own inner circle, he has no choice to act tough at this stage. It is primarily in this light indeed that we should see the current crackdown against the Islamists, the recent arrest of the Atassi Forum Board Members and of human rights activist Muhammad Raadoun, and the recent announcement that Syria has ceased any security cooperation with the US. Continue reading →

Syria Squeezed: Are We Free Yet?

Dispatches by Elisabeth Eaves

… What is going on now is a lot of testing of “red lines,” as everyone in Damascus seems to call them. People are saying things and publishing things. But many of them, like al-Bounni and Ammar Abdulhamid, who heads the minority-rights Tharwa Project, are engaged in a harrowing pas de deux with the government. Al-Bounni and Abdulhamid are both barred from leaving the country. Intelligence officials have interrogated Abdulhamid three times since January. Al-Bounni has seen his siblings and friends thrown in jail for peaceful political speech. No one testing the limits knows when the next crackdown might come or what will provoke it. Continue reading “Syria Squeezed: Are We Free Yet?” →

A Liberal in Damascus

The New York Times Magazine – Encounter
By LEE SMITH

When I first met Ammar Abdulhamid in Washington in the fall, the 38-year-old Syrian novelist, poet and liberal dissident had Damascus on his mind. He had received word from his wife back in Syria that the political situation at home was becoming more precarious for rights activists like himself. As a fellow at the Brookings Institution, he’d been meeting with leading figures in the Bush administration and writing articles in the Arab and Western presses that were sharply critical of the Syrian government; he simply didn’t know what to expect on his return. Now, sitting here in a Damascus coffeehouse in late January a week after his return, he is telling me that he had found reason for optimism about the country’s future in the least likely of places. Continue reading “A Liberal in Damascus” →

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” →