A House in Damascus - Before the Fall Page 14
Father, Son and Holy Ghost
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One early foggy morning in January 1994, Basel al-Assad relegated his chauffeur to the back seat of the Mercedes, and drove himself to Damascus airport. At high speed in poor conditions he careered through a traffic circle and flipped the car several times. He died, the chauffeur and another passenger survived, and life changed dramatically for his brother Bashar, then a young doctor specialising in ophthalmology.
Something that struck all visitors to Syria immediately before the troubles was the ever-present symbolism of leadership, principally in the persons of President Bashar, his late father Hafez, and late brother Basel. Hafez shaped the new Syrian Arab Republic following the coup that brought him to power in 1970, Basel was his heir apparent, Bashar became the unexpected successor.
Bashar appeared in picture or profile on the windows of probably three in every five cars in Syria, if not more. This was certainly so in Alawite-predominant areas like Lattakia whence came the Assad family, but the images were also strongly visible elsewhere, and in Damascus. There was the military leader version, all combat fatigues and aviator shades with the general's determined look. The international statesman in Savile Row suit look had the engaging smile. Then there was the guide, the man looking forward confidently to the future. Sometimes Bashar was paired with Hafez, a reminder of the leadership continuity. Sometimes the two of them appeared with Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, a pointer to the complex regional role Syria had assumed in its ever present desire to see Lebanon disappear and the "true" boundaries of earlier times be restored. Hafez himself appeared in military image frequently, and sometimes the "lost" son and heir apparent appeared as well. These photographs, outlines, prints and other images adorned every prominent building and even apartment blocks. Photographs of Bashar appeared in every room of every official building and in the corridors. A favourite trick for every new consultant come to the office was to have a photograph taken sitting at work under the gaze of the President. There was a continuity, too—the "Bashar waving" photograph was identical to that of his father, even if the "wave" now had unfortunate reflections of the Saddam Hussein imagery that emerged from the Iraq war.
Some commentators had compared this phenomenon to that of the North Korean leadership cult, suggesting even that Hafez might have modelled the practice from there. Likenesses certainly flourished throughout Syria, and must have kept many artisans employed: statues huge and small dominated traffic circles and elsewhere, busts appeared outside buildings. On the way to Homs, two huge statues of present leader and father occupied prominent sites, and there was an even larger edifice between Homs and Tartous on the way to Lattakia. The "wave" was a favourite pose for these. It was suggested, however, that even then Bashar had already begun quietly discouraging the indiscriminate proliferation of statues, and that said something interesting about his perception of a necessarily changing role and associated "image".
When Bashar al-Assad came to power in 2000 at his father's death, then, it was an accident caused by an accident. Following his brother's death, Bashar the aspirant ophthalmologist returned from London for military training to gain not only the skills but also the network of military influence he needed as leader and politician. In particular, Bashar had to cement his social networks inside the minority Alawite community of which he was part, and which his father had delivered into power by co-opting other minorities like the Christians and the Druze, along with the urban Sunni Muslim merchants. This coalition ran Syria, with social and intermarriage networks further cementing the bonds. Bashar had little time to learn all this and to make the career switch, just six years before his father succumbed to cancer.
Many thought Bashar would not last when he assumed control, suggesting he lacked the "killer streak" and some early commentators, especially Israeli ones, depicted him as weak, impulsive, and dangerous.41 His father had become President in 1971 as leader of a more moderate wing following the Baath party split in 1966, the more radically conservative elements ending up in Iraq under Saddam's version of the ideology. For the first couple of years under Bashar, observers discerned him leading a liberating "Damascus Spring" in such things as open political dialogues, but those disappeared quickly. The suggestion was that the older generation, his father's contemporaries and colleagues, reined in the younger man whom many considered merely a transitional arrangement. Bashar then began carefully opening the country to development by encouraging wider use of technology, and moving towards a market economy.
There has to be some sympathy for the position in which he found himself. Here was an educated and intelligent man, with a background in the West and a naturally liberal outlook, thrust into leadership. Despite that profile, however, even before 2011 he endured such lurid headlines as being named one of the world's four most dangerous leaders by Reader's Digest, of all things, in 2008—because he allegedly aided jihadists, supported Iran because of the Shia dominance there, was close to Hassan Nasrallah, and was reckoned to be developing nerve gas and biological weapons.42 That latter issue recurred in commentary throughout his tenure, and as his regime seemed poised to fall in mid-2012, the Western powers raised the fear he would use such weapons.
Yet, despite the provocative Axis of Evil provisions, he reframed relations with important powers like France, and won the tentative appointment of a US Ambassador to Syria after a long absence. By 2010 as a result, a BBC report suggested that despite the odds, he had survived and would most likely last, having by now placed many of his own people into influential positions.43 There was still, however, the murk surrounding the 2008 car bomb death of Rafik Hariri, the former Prime Minister of and revered figure in Lebanon. From the outset, the Americans led suggestions that this was down to Syria as part of its design on Lebanon. The Syrians denied it vigorously but it was a blight, the slowly emerging United Nations investigations and mainstream media reports pulling back from full accusations of guilt, but leaving heavy implications. Alongside that, Bashar and Syria had to balance a position with Iran, little admired but unquestionably influential in the region, even more so under the post-Bush rise of the Shia in Iraq that changed much of the entire regional balance. Given all that, on balance, Bashar might have been reckoned to have done "alright".
When it comes to assessing all this, the mythical "average person" is at a complete disadvantage because, in our daily lives, we readily ascribe easy labels to actions taken in, say, "Canberra" or "Whitehall" or "Washington" or, of course, "Damascus". From there it is an easy transference to "Australians" (are all sports mad, for example), the "English" (all anti-Europe), "Americans" (all evangelical right wingers) and "Syrians" (all terrorists). Looked at like that, we as individuals immediately recognise the absurdity of such ascriptions, yet they have an abiding power, especially when repeated daily through modern communication means. Following 9/11 the word "terrorist" became the short hand marker between "them" and "us": "we" are fighting to spread freedom, "they" are terrorists who oppose us. In all this fog, the dilemmas facing someone like Bashar—a young, inexperienced but willing reformer—were subordinated to a need to demonise him as the worst person on earth bar just a few. The obvious question is, then, how does someone like Bashar deal with that as a person? Might things have been different had the White House and State Department zealots adopted an alternative discourse? Could the man who was already discouraging statues in his honour perhaps have constructed a different dialogue with the West, given more encouragement? Things might well have been very different.
Bashar's wife played a large part here, too. He, an Alawite, had married the similarly reformist-minded Asma, born in London to distinguished Sunni parents from Homs, and gone on to a career in merchant banking. Asma al-Assad became one of the "smart glamour" wives of the world, joining her southern neighbour Queen Rania of Jordan. She supported the development of many NGOs, and was said to have toured the country incognito to get a real sense of living conditions. When their children arrived, Bashar and Asma were known to tu
rn up unannounced, with the kids, at city restaurants where they played at being just ordinary citizens. There is always an act in some of this, of course, but Bashar was thought to be working hard at cultivating an approachable "man of the people" persona.
This all petered out, and especially so once the 2011 disturbances began, when his image transmogrified from well-intentioned leader to cynical butcher. That switch was swift and substantial, as demonstrated by what happened to Asma. As the Kofi Annan/United nations peace plan to settle Syria petered out and the shelling of places like Hama and Homs resumed in early 2012, the international focus on Syria focused momentarily on a sideshow, the mysterious disappearance from the Vogue website of a flattering March 2011 profile on Asma al-Assad, along with a similarly flattering view of her husband and the future of Syria.
The piece appeared in Vogue as the Syrian troubles started assuming ominous lines.44 Asma al-Assad was portrayed as a glamorous, smart woman intent on doing good things for her country. The later criticism, leading to the article's disappearance, focused on the paradox between this "illusion" and the "fact" of her husband's apparent crack down on the citizenry in ways reminiscent of his father, Hafez al-Assad. The article was predominantly about Asma's clothes, and spectacular items like the Christian Louboutin shoes she was wearing at the time of the interview. That latter item is a wonderful weapon in attack journalism—in the uptown stores in New York a cheap pair will go for around $US600, while most are over $1,000 heading towards $2,000. By definition, any stylish wife of an identified dictator must be wearing these off the back of an oppressed people. Never mind the fact that Asma al-Assad herself made a lot of money as an investment banker before her marriage, and had independent means. She was guilty by association, in other words.
Critics, in hindsight, considered the piece ill-conceived, so Vogue management was considered sensible when the article suddenly disappeared from public gaze. Opprobrium was distributed all around, consciences salved, mainstream political views satisfied.
This little frisson highlighted one of the enduring problems in dealing with the Syrian condition, and in getting a balanced and sensible view about Bashar and Asma. When media attention turned more fully upon Syria as the strife escalated so, too, did the superficiality of coverage and analysis. In part that was because of the difficulties of getting into Syria (which later cost the wonderful Anthony Shadid of the New York Times his life), and partly because, frankly, many of those providing coverage had clearly read little and perhaps thought even less. From the outset, a highly complex and specific social structure and political condition were regarded as simply the latest domino in the "Arab Spring" set to fall, and for a long time it was reported that way. At the same time, Bashar was cast as the evil monster, and Asma the fatuous consort.
Never mind that the article was developed then appeared during a period when the United States had reinstated its Embassy in Damascus on the grounds that Syria, under Bashar al-Assad, was showing clear signs of wanting to return to the global mainstream by way of a more market-oriented economy and more political interaction. French President Sarkozy and other Western leaders were taking the same view. The disturbances in Syria were in their infancy, and few if any noted international analysts of Syria and the region really thought that the situation there would develop to what it had become a year later.
When the controversy arose the author of the Vogue article, Joan Juliet Block, was quick to say she now thought she should not have "gone near the Assads," and that it was "horrifying to have been near people like that".45 In a derogatory rather than complimentary way, she described Asma al-Assad as speaking "like a banker with a degree in computer science", and implied that Asma had no real interest in the Syrian people. That was very different from the tone of the original piece, and close to the strident views of Andrew Tabler who, once having worked closely with Asma on some of her NGOs, was by now in the Washington hawk camp on Syria.46
Asma al-Assad conveniently became "the Marie Antoinette of the Arab Spring", her husband the "Demon of Damascus". That became accentuated when a cache of their e-mails became public, apparently showing them carefree while Syria raged, him downloading music from iTunes and her ordering thousands of dollars worth of jewellery online. There was further accentuation when Wikileaks released another set of e-mails, with Bashar pilloried as "sexist" and a "misogynist" for having passed on jokes of the kind traded daily by millions of people in offices all over the world.
This is important, because the later media descriptions of the pair, that have a big influence on public perception, were so far from removed from earlier ones that they must be assessed carefully. In all the recent portrayals of Bashar the cynical, almost megalomaniacal despot, for example, few if any journalists paused to wonder about that gulf between now and before. The man remains an enigma, and it is clear that what has happened on his watch, especially of late, has been terrible. A mystery remains, though, about who he is and what he was thinking. Was he, perhaps, really just a puppet with the show run by ruthless brother Maher at the head of the feared Republican Guards? Patrick Seale, long-time observer of both father and son, thought that Bashar gained a taste for control that clouded his understanding of the growing desire for freedom arising within the country. Seale also suggested that Perhaps Bashar was not strong enough to rise above the myriad of self-interests and fears and create a new way.47 Perhaps we will never know the real state of affairs, but the chasm between the ophthalmologist and proto-reformer of 2000, and the "fight to the end, hardline Alawite" of 2011-12 is unbridgeable.
The man in the images on the back of those car windows ended up a very long way from the one in the international newspapers, and from the loved figure depicted in the thousands of Bashar souvenirs displayed in the specialist shop near the Roman Arch on Straight Street. Perhaps it was symbolic that, shortly after I bought it, my "map of Syria" key ring broke into several small pieces.
Al Midan
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Because the house lay in the heart of the oldest inhabited capital in the world, it was sometimes easy to forget about other areas outside the walls that are as ancient and have their own histories, charm and attraction.
One walk was through to the Gate Al Jabiye, dodging the traffic across Al Beit Street then disappearing down what looked like a narrow lane left, marked by some nargileh shops, then reaching the top of Al-Midan street that winds down through Yarmouk Square and under the Hafez al-Assad Street motorway to eventually peter out near Al Kawakbi Street. The most important stretch was from Yarmouk Square, dominated by the huge and modern Abdulla Ibn Rawaha Mosque, down to just past the motorway, because this was the core of the Midan. Centuries ago, this had begun as a racecourse for the early Muslim rulers, then later developed as an identifiable quarter.
In earlier days the area got a mixed press from visitors, at best. By the mid-nineteenth century it was the largest Damascus suburb according to the John Murray guide. Around the same period, Mrs Mackintosh reported that it was badly paved or not even paved at all, so that it practically impassable in winter—and was full of corn dealers. She clearly believed them an evil to be tolerated. A decade earlier, the Thomas Cook guide suggested that the people in the Midan were more interesting than their surrounds. Baedeker was more generous: it was newer [relatively, of course] and poorer than the Old City proper, and while it was full of corn dealers and blacksmiths, it had the very great attraction of the massive camel caravans that carried goods and pilgrims all over the region.
For many of those travellers, the only reason to go to the Midan was to watch the Haj departure. For the month prior, the area was crowded and a bustling centre of commerce as pilgrims prepared for the arduous journey. When the time came, there could be as many as four thousand horses and eight thousand camels setting out for Mecca, carrying many thousands of the devoted. It was still one of the great migrations to be seen anywhere in the world, and it was one of the most arduous.48
The eminent scholar of Syria,
Philip Khoury, provides a deeper analysis of the Midan's profile.49 He argues that throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries the Midan was one of the least coherent quarters in the city. Because it was on the edge of the Hawran grain growing plains, it hosted a mixture of very wealthy Muslim grain dealers who doubled up as moneylenders, Druze highlanders, peasants from the Hawran, a small Christian community of merchants and moneylenders, and desert tribes who came in for the winter. Its main trade was certainly based around the Haj, but by the turn of the twentieth century it was largely poor, itinerant and with a low rate of property owning. It also had a higher crime rate than other quarters. In short, this was a largely dispossessed and rather misunderstood section of Damascus. Those patterns would have an impact in the 1920s, and recur well into the twenty first century.
The Midan nowadays seems to have been described by the same person in almost all contemporary Damascene guidebooks and travel stories: the Midan is very conservative. That may be so, but it is also extremely friendly. Asking to take a photograph would almost always elicit a "yes" with a smile, and frequently an invitation to tea. Despite its reputation, the Midan has always been at the centre of change. On the one occasion when it seemed the Crusaders might breach the defences in 1126, Ibn Al Qalinisi reported that men and youths from the area, and from the neighbouring Shaghour, banded together to see off the Franks.
In late October 1925, the Great Syrian revolt reached Damascus via the Midan and the area now divided from it by Al Beit Street, the Shaghour, which spills over from its heartland inside the walls. Generally speaking, these two southern quarters immediately outside the walls of the Old City were at the heart of the resistance to French rule.50 Two rebel raiding parties came in through these areas, gathered supporters and headed towards the Azem Palace, just around from the house and then the home of the French Governor. Merchants and others, led by the quarter bosses who really had quite organised networks, supported the rebels who reached and entered the Palace where a fire broke out. The Governor escaped and the French sent troops into the Old City, separating it from the rest of Damascus. The French troops then entered the Hamidiyeh where fierce fighting broke out involving local leaders and gangs loyal to the revolt.