Diana Darke, Middle East expert and author of Bradt’s Syria, returns from Damascus with an update on the situation in Syria and her travels there.
© Diana Darke 29 November 2011
The Tragedy of Syria
Flying into Damascus last week felt like it might be the last time in a long while – ominously true, as it turned out. Two days after my return, the Arab League, strongly backed by Turkey, announced it will soon ban all commercial flights to and from Syria, the first time the League has ever imposed such sanctions against one of its own member countries. For now, the travel ban applies only to key regime figures.
Few enough flights have been going to Damascus in recent months, with BMI slashing its previous daily programme (average £441 return) of direct flights from Heathrow’s Terminal 2 to just once or twice a week due to lack of custom. The FCO travel advice issued on 18 June 2011 calling for all British citizens to leave the country immediately while commercial means were still available, had a devastating effect on numbers, effectively rendering all tourist travel to the country impossible - travel insurance is automatically void if you choose to go somewhere against the advice of your government. Alitalia announced last week it was only flying to Damascus three times in the whole of December.
Syrian Air, as the national carrier, has been, and no doubt will continue to be after the sanctions come into force, the only airline to keep its flights, though even it has been forced by economic necessity to cancel some flights and amalgamate them with others. My own Syrian Air flight (£320 return) from Heathrow’s Terminal 4 on 17 November was the only one they ran from the UK that week, and the return on 24 November was their only flight to return, the flights on both 20 and 27 November having been cancelled and passengers transferred to these dates. Even so, the Airbus still had 96 available seats. Ironically the effect of the sanctions will probably be to fill these flights, maybe even increase them back to their old frequency of three times a week. As one of only a handful of westerners on board, I was treated by the other passengers on the flight with the usual kindness and friendliness that all visitors to Syria experience. Normal Syrians like and welcome foreign visitors, but all of them are now gripped with fear for their country and its future – they wanted to talk about little else. Throughout my stay I was able to travel without restriction, openly and legally, on a six-month multiple entry tourist visa.
Damascus airport, in another irony, has just had a facelift, freshly painted in yellow and with attractively styled tables and chairs in its restaurant, to receive the visitors it may not now get for a long time. Photos of Bashar planting trees are the new theme. Never, in the numerous times I have visited over the last six years, have I seen it looking so smart, and with so many new shops offering locally made souvenirs and the famous sticky pastries so beloved of all those with a sweet tooth. But now, with all credit card transactions in Syria blocked due to EU and US sanctions, even I didn’t have the cash to buy them. Everything was open, with eager sales staff, but devoid of custom.
A City on the brink?
In the city too, I found a Damascus changed by the events of the last months since my June visit, not in its outward appearance, but in its people’s faces. It was more than just uncertainty about the future – it was fear. All my friends and contacts looked drawn and haggard from sleepless nights, thanks to the economic stagnation that has taken away their livelihoods. They now spend their days indoors watching the endless TV news broadcasts with their conflicting stories about the reality on the ground. Few, beyond the opportunistic merchant hoarders who are always one step ahead and who somehow thrive on the misfortune of others, have much to keep them busy apart from improving the security of their homes. They fear a descent into lawlessness that will come, as it did in Egypt, when criminal elements take advantage of a collapse in the system.
For now, the streets and shops of central Damascus are busy, with people stocking up on non-perishable provisions. The Souq Al-Hamadiye is packed with local shoppers, plus a sprinkling of the usual Iranian pilgrims, the women instantly recognisable by their long black all-concealing robes. Food is plentiful, but bottled gas and mazout, the diesel fuel used for heating, are in short supply, with daily random electricity power cuts. Sitting in the cold and the dark is miserable and rather frightening, unless you are rich enough to have a generator. The restaurants of the Old City are busier than they were in the summer, about half full with a mix of young and old, men and women, almost with a sense of ‘let’s enjoy life while we can.’ The ‘hot’ areas where trouble can erupt at a moment’s notice are in the outlying suburbs, and local Damascenes avoid them. They also avoid travel outside the city, worried that the jumpy checkpoints might arrest them on a case of mistaken identity – it happened to a friend of mine, who then experienced a terrifying night in prison, before he was released the next day, with no apology and even having to bribe the guard to get back his personal possessions.
High in the mountains - the churches of Homs
Wanting to see for myself how the Christian communities are bearing up, I decided, against the advice of Syrian friends, to make a day trip by car to Mar Musa, an ecumenical monastery, high in the bare mountains near Nabak, about 100km north of Damascus. My original plan had been to make a three day circuit of the Christian churches and monasteries of Seydnaya, Ma’aloula, and Qara, but that seemed a bit foolhardy. The churches of Homs (ancient Emessa in Roman times), still the seat of an important bishopric, just 60km further north on the same main highway, were obviously not an option. Contrary to what I had been told, there were no checkpoints or tanks on the way, something of a relief since it was not a good day to have a British passport, the satellite news channels having carried reports the day before of William Hague meeting Syrian opposition figures in London. Interestingly a young British tour guide travelled by bus the following day from Aleppo to Damascus and told me there were no checkpoints on the entire main highway – though she did see 10 tanks near Homs, as opposed to the 55 she had seen a few months back.
Revived from a ruin by Father Paolo, an Italian Jesuit priest, the monastery of Mar Musa welcomes all and received over 50,000 visitors in 2010. He has made it his life’s mission to bring religions together, with Muslims and Christians of all denominations, including many Iraqi refugees, invited to attend mass, stay the night and be fed free of charge. The monastery is self-sufficient, with goats’ milk arriving in buckets from the herd higher up in the mountains via an ingenious teleferique cable system, to be made into cheese in their own immaculate factory. A fluent Arabic speaker who has lived in the country now for some 30 years, he is fighting valiantly to bring a solution through peaceful means, putting forward his idea of a ‘Democracy of Consensus’, explained on his website www.deirmarmusa.org. He is doing all in his power to avoid sectarianism, but fears the worst. I fear for him. His open criticism of the regime risks martyrdom. A few days later a friend drew my attention to a Le Monde blog – le-regime-syrien-expulse-le-pere-paolo...
Back in central Damascus the Christian areas were just as busy as the Muslim ones. Unlike in Homs, where both communities live side by side and are genuinely mixed, Damascus’ Old City has distinct quarters, and at the well-attended Sunday mass in the Greek Catholic cathedral, seat of the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch (now Antakya, in Turkey), I was struck again, as always, by the strong sense of community and by how heavily male the congregation is. The prayers all talked of national unity and reconciliation in ‘dangerous times’.
Leaving from the airport, I had enough Syrian cash left on me to buy some fridge magnets from the eager shops in the departure lounge. In particular my sense of the absurd led me to buy one of Bashar sitting discussing a book (probably the Koran) with Pope John Paul, and another of Bashar riding his bike in trainers, T-shirt and tracksuit, with one of his children in a baby seat behind him. They may become museum pieces.