A group of students and bloggers are taking supplies to the refugees caught in the crossfire in northern Lebanon.

If you can give ANYTHING, please visit this.

Labels: Lebanon, Syrian bloggers' campaign

Old Damascus has been ignored for too long. Things are starting to change now, but one plan - in the name of modernisation - could do more to harm, than conserve the city's incredible history.

The area in question is between Bab As-Salam and Bab Touma just outside the walls on the north eastern side of the Old City. It is the focus of a massive petition.

The treasured old city of Damascus is facing a battle for survival, says Lucy Fielder.

Huddled against the Barada River that flows through Syria’s capital city, lies an ancient warren of streets. Alleys twist off right and left; like traps for the uninitiated outsider they may lead only to a locked front door or yield a glimpse of an orange tree in a courtyard. Jasmine flowers tumble down the walls and the timber and plaster houses are so bowed with the weight of centuries they almost touch overhead. Take another turn and you emerge, blinking, onto a bustling main thoroughfare. Tiny Mamluk-era shops with stone arches spill their wares onto the pavement.

The above could describe any part of the old city of Damascus, perhaps the most intact ancient Arab city in existence. Yet the bulldozer threatens its houses, watermills and workshops with demolition. In their place developers want to build an eight-lane motorway flanked by high-rise blocks.

Experts fear old Damascus’s treasured listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is also in jeopardy if the plan to broaden the Al-Malik Faisal Road goes ahead. “I think you could say the city is in more danger than it has ever been since it was sacked by Timur in 1401,” said a leading conservation and heritage expert, who like several other specialists only agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of this issue.

2007 presents opportunity and risk. Conservationists are grooming the city to take the Arab Cultural Capital crown next year. Areas will receive facelifts; tourist facilities will be enhanced. But the 30-year-old road plan may come to pass as soon as this month unless lobbyists apply the brakes somehow.

Shopkeeper Ibrahim Hamzeh says all his neighbours have received notices to evict their homes, which lie just outside Bab Al-Salam - one of the seven gateways to the old city. “We’re just waiting for our turn,” he said in his shop that sells carpets and trinkets near the Umayyad Mosque. “This will destroy a community. All our friends and family live around here but if we are relocated it will be to an area 25 kilometres outside the city.”

Thousands of residents of the endangered Al-Uqaiba and Al-Amara historic suburbs, outside the walls between Bab Al-Salam and Bab Touma, say they also expect to be re-housed in the Adra industrial park and satellite town.

Proponents of the plan insist that the 40-metre-wide space to be cleared contains houses no more than 70-years-old. But Hamzeh disagrees. “It’s an old area, my house is at least two hundred years old and there’s a vegetable market that has been there for hundreds of years.” According to available information most of the buildings in the areas on either side of the city wall are roughly the same age - dating from within the past 250 years since a 1759 earthquake. The development plans will mean centuries-old communities will vanish with the clay and timber.

“Damascus’s uniqueness and value is as an intact old Arab city. That’s not confined to within the walls,” said the conservation expert. Walking through the doomed area, a restoration specialist pointed out an Ottoman watermill in Al-Amara made of timber and plaster. “Imagine what an amazing restaurant this would make,” he said. “Imagine a glass floor with the river and the workings underneath. All Damascus once ate bread from this mill.”

Damascus grew beyond its wall in the 12th century and by the 18th and 19th centuries two thirds of its historic houses lay extra-muros outside, according to a 2001 International Council on Monuments and Sites report. As a result “the status of World Cultural Heritage site has been given to the entire town,” wrote the report’s author, Stefan Weber. “But the Syrian administration has unfortunately considered only the quarters intra muros as worthy of safeguarding and has enacted laws and set up a council for protection of only these quarters.”

ICOMOS, which evaluates the state of heritage sites, is to report to the World Heritage Committee in June. Veronique Dauge, head of UNESCO for the Arab world, gave the following statement by telephone from Paris: “We’ve visited Damascus and we are in close contact with the authorities in order to present the plans to the World Heritage Committee in June.” But one expert described de-listing as “very, very likely. It’s the right thing to do.”

Most people believe the Syrian Government is not aware of the degree of risk. “Only the President can stop this now,” said one expert. “I think the governorate is acting with good intentions but there’s a lack of awareness,” said another. “They can’t want Damascus to be taken off the list because the World Heritage listing is such a huge economic asset, but I don’t think anyone is taking the threat seriously enough.”

UNESCO warned Damascus governorate of the danger in the last few months, according to Mouaffak Doughman - director of the old city until late last year and now a lecturer at Damascus University’s architecture faculty. He said he believed the plan was on ice for a few months - though the eviction notices suggest the contrary.

“I think the governorate has started to think in a new way. They asked me to explain the dangers to them and I said there were many: cutting the outside and inside of the old city off from each other, covering the Barada river over and the environment concerns - the extra traffic will be very bad for the old city,” he said. Although some officials insist green land would be landscaped on either side of the new road, Doughman said tower blocks were planned instead.

Where Al-Thawra road slices through Bahsa and Saruja, already run-down concrete high-rise buildings blister up between old houses and markets. Souk Al-Sarouja resembles a limb of the old city that is withering without a blood supply; three-lane highways enclose its puzzle of cobbled streets and clay and timber houses, mosques and hammams. But perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the urban development ethos of the past few decades is in Al-Marja Square, where the 1347 Yalbougha Mosque was knocked down in the 1970s to make way for the vast concrete hulk that squats there now, half-built and subsiding.

Sarouja is also at risk. Large areas have been sold off for demolition to build tower blocks. Re-privatising the land may not be simple, say experts, but compared to losing an irreplaceable medieval suburb, it may be the best option. Sarouja was known as “Little Istanbul” in Ottoman times, when Syria was ruled from the Turkish capital, because of its wealthy inhabitants and elegance. “Some of Sarouja is older than what is in the old city,” says Rajab. “Some is Mamluk, some Ayyubid. That means 800 years old!”

Officials say the expansion of the Al-Malik Faisal road will ease the traffic in the old city and expose its walls. But according to Doughman, the widening of Al-Malik Faisal road will sever the traditional roads between the ancient suburbs and close the stranglehold of highway and concrete around the old city. And with each act of demolition, the protected area within the old city becomes more like a museum.

Michel Ecochard, a French urban planner commissioned to draw up a traffic scheme for the capital, originally conceived the road in 1968. Ecochard envisaged clearing a space around Damascus’s monuments to show them off and creating large boulevards. Courtyard houses were subsequently lost to modern buildings and street-widening schemes, but public outcry blocked the highways that were to cut through the old city. In 1972, a law came in banning any demolition intra-muros. But the historic suburbs of Al-Amara, Al-Bahsa, Qanawat, Sarouja, Al-Uqaiba and Midan were left vulnerable to development.

Luna Rajab, architect and member of the Friends of Damascus residents’ body, said Ecochard did not take Arab architectural influences into account. “In France buildings have exterior elevation. There’s something to see. With Arab architecture the beauty is on the inside. The city wall wasn’t built to be seen, so it was always covered with houses.”

Between Bab Touma and Bab Sharki the old walls are exposed but largely unremarkable. “They’ve done nothing here. There is no lighting or plaques to tell you of the historic events that happened here,” said one architectural expert. “Is it really so important to have the whole wall showing?”

A jumble of old houses cling to the Barada River outside Bab El-Faradis, which means ‘Paradise Gate’. A litter-strewn wasteland behind them forms an island between two branches of the Barada. “It really was a paradise here - a garden. People used to come for picnics,” the expert said. He produced an old photograph, which shows the houses in a better state of repair and surrounded by luxuriant plants dipping their tendrils into the river. “When this area is destroyed we’ll lose an historic opportunity to restore it, boost tourism and provide different investment opportunities - hotels, restaurants, cultural centres. Nobody’s interested in new buildings.”

He estimated that around 300 craftsmen would be sent away when the area falls and at least 300 attractive old courtyard houses will be lost. “I say to the them (the developers), don’t come to the old city if you find it ugly. Build your dream elsewhere. We’re happy with our ugly old houses,” he added.

A metro, a ring-road, moving public buildings outside the centre and providing a car park and banning parking along the existing Al-Malik Faisal road to free up an extra couple of lanes are among the solutions conservationists say should be investigated before the demolition ball starts swinging.

The expanded Al-Malik Faisal road would narrow into two-lanes on either side of the centre “so it will be a bottleneck,” said one critic of the plan. “At least this should be studied. If they can prove this will ease the traffic, fine. But experience elsewhere shows that more roads equals more cars,” he added. Rajab argues that an urban masterplan for all of Damascus is crucial. “The old city is not an oasis in the desert,” she said.

Since the first courtyard houses were converted to restaurants in the 1990s, the old quarters - which the middle classes abandoned in favour of mod cons and wide streets - are enjoying a renaissance. Young people stroll through the streets of a weekend evening; jazz bands entertain crowds in Mar Mar - a popular bar in Bab Touma; the wealthy dine on mezze in Elissar Restaurant; and on a Friday morning, students, tourists and Damascenes have breakfast beneath the orange trees in Beit Jabri’s courtyard.

But some say development needs to be more organised. “Damascus is the oldest inhabited city in the world and we need to keep it like that, not turn it into a museum,” Rajab says. “Old buildings must be given new functions at times, but the restaurants and hotels should be confined to certain areas to preserve the residential nature of the city.”

Many who renovate their houses do so with little expertise and even less taste. Columns, painted “Mamluk” stripes and fantastical, pseudo-oriental details abound. Owners need financial help to buy traditional materials cheaply says Beshr Al-Barry, an architect at the directorate of the old city. The directorate in Maktab Anbar Palace does its best to regulate the work, but there are too many houses and too few staff. About 5,000 traditional courtyard houses lie within the walls, he says, and a 1997 survey found 90 percent needed urgent repair.

After the French audit of the Old City in 1936 until 1996 families were banned from doing any internal restructuring work to their homes, even building a new bathroom. “So people would go around the rules, and build at night,” Al-Barry said. The 1970s stand out as a disastrous decade. Faced with disintegrating old houses that were hard to renovate and low in value, owners sold their painted wood panelling, tiles and fountains to antiquity sharks.

“For the past three or four years it has been getting better because there are new graduates in restoration and the level of technical training has improved,” Al-Barry added. A new generation of craftsmen must learn the old techniques and a pilot scheme to give cheap, long-term loans to owners to restore their houses has worked well in Aleppo, experts say. Al-Barry said such a plan was in the pipeline for Damascus.

But even old houses within the old city walls are not as safe as they should be. Near Bab Al-Salam, inside the walls, a vast modern mosque takes the space of perhaps 20 houses and a bulky concrete extension is being added. “If we’re not careful, in another 20 years there’ll be hardly any old houses left,” the architectural expert said.

In spite of this, welcome plans to tart up the old city are underway, starting with Souk Medhat Pasha. An EU-Syrian project aims to put the jungle of electric cables that swing overhead underfoot and remove the clutter of plastic signs and air-conditioning units from the Ottoman arched shop fronts.

Most importantly the Roman sewage system that overflows and damages walls and foundations is to be upgraded, starting with Straight Street. “We need to preserve this as a living city, and the best way is by improving the quality of life and services for residents and reducing the problems they face everyday,” Al-Barry said.

EU-Syrian projects to boost sustainable tourism in the old city include picture maps with routes through the city and plaques on the khans, madrassas and bimaristans. An “old houses” route will give tourists a peep behind the doors of a number of Damascene buildings and religious, bazaar and handicraft tours are being drawn up. A sound and light show on Salah Ad-Din Square by the Umayyad Mosque will also teach tourists about Damascus’s old city. “I’m aware of a change in thinking towards the old city of Damascus, it’s now seen as a potential area of investment,” said the project’s director, Ersan Ali.

But renovation within the walls is unlikely to save Damascus if homes and shops are destroyed outside them. If the old city of Damascus is listed as a heritage site “in danger” in June, the loss of its World Heritage designation altogether could follow as soon as six months later, experts say. It would be a sad irony if the city were to fall from grace just months after it was crowned Arab Cultural Capital for 2008.

Issue: Mars 2007

Labels: Old City, Syrian bloggers' campaign, Syrian blogosphere

We've all got different views. And we don't hesitate in battling it out in the comments section of eachother's blogs, and by challenging eachother in sharp-tongued blog posts.

But for the third time in a year, Syria's bloggers have united to put their names to a joint post challenging Egypt's decision to jail a blogger who insulted the president.

In February last year, we complained at rioters who damaged foreign embassies in Damascus during the cartoon protests. And then in July we condemned Israel's war on Lebanon.

Before that, there were barely enough bloggers in Syria to mount such a campaign.

Syria's blogosphere is growing in size - and power.

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign, Syrian blogosphere

This is a united call by Syria's bloggers. We are demanding Egypt release imprisoned blogger Kareem. [Updated with more signatures.]

We, as a community of Syrian bloggers, condemn the arrest and sentencing of Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman for the peaceful expression of his dissenting views. We ask the Egyptian government to reconsider its decision to arrest and prosecute Abdel Kareem. The stated reasons for their action include the preservation of the public peace and state security, and the prevention of incitement against Islam. We contend that his arrest will achieve neither. Silencing such dissenting voices as Abdel Kareem’s, serves only to strengthen the hands of extremists who will not shy away from violence to achieve their goals. Moreover, we remind the Egyptian government that his arrest and prosecution violates at least two articles (see below) of the 1948 United Nations universal declaration of human rights to which Egypt was a signatory.

Relevant United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights articles:

Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Such rights for freedom of expression are also enshrined in the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam and the 2003 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's religions.

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign, Syrian blogosphere

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign

At 2.50pm on Saturday I posted this:

10 Lebanese civilians killed fleeing border

Israeli jets have attacked a van driving AWAY from the border area. Ten civilians dead, many more injured.

There seems to be a clear attempt to injure people trying to escape the danger areas. There is no escape by sea or air, and the land borders are blocked. I hope Amnesty and Human Rights Watch are taking note.

Israeli Army says 'get out of Southern Lebanon'

The Israeli Army has issued an incredible warning to the millions of Lebanese in the south of the country: GET OUT.

They gave people two hours to leave or face the consequences. Anyone remaining would pay the price, and civilian casualties would not be the Israelis' fault.

But leaving is difficult - as the Israelis well know. They have bombed roads, bridges and petrol stations across the south specifically to STOP people leaving.

Getting out - let alone getting out in two hours - is almost impossible. Even in normal conditions driving from the south to the centre would take about two hours.

Israeli Brigadier General Udi Adam: "We have now released a warning, an alert to Lebanon, to the residents of south Lebanon, that in two hours we recommend they leave their homes in some of the areas and move north because within a few hours we are going to attack that area, using all our military means."

On Saturday, a number of families fled the southern Lebanese village of Marwahin after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned them to evacuate ahead of a threatened attack. On the road leading to the coast through Chamaa, however, Israeli missiles struck a convoy of the civilians. Maps of southern Lebanon show this road to be the only direct route for escaping the dangerous border area.

Having warned civilians to evacuate their village, Israeli forces should have been aware that civilians would be using this road and should have taken great care to avoid harming them.

Based on information provided by relatives, news sources identified the victims of the attack on the convoy as:

`Ali Kamil Abdullah and his son `Ali, Sana’ Muhammad Abdullah, Subha Abdullah and the children: Hadi Muhammad Abdullah, Rym Ibrahim Abdullah, Kamil Abdullah, Hassan Kamil Abdullah, Muhammad Kamil Abdullah, Hussain Kamil Abdullah, Zahra Faris Abdullah
Muhammad Musa Ghannam, his wife Suha, and their children: Qassim, Mustapha, Hussain, Zaynab, Da`a’, Amina `Ali Ghannam.

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign

Today, we are all Lebanese.

Lebanon has been sentenced to death. On Wednesday 12 July, she was put in prison, and now she's being tortured.

Israel's war is with Lebanon's civilians, not Hizbollah. Nearly every person killed has been a civilian. Power stations, bridges and petrol stations have been targeted. Israel has warned residents to get out of certain villages, but bombed roads make it difficult - and refugee convoys have been picked out for deadly air raids.

And getting out of the country is impossible now too. The airport has been destroyed, the sea ports are blockaded, and the border posts and highways have been razed to the ground.

Lebanon is held hostage to the angry Israeli war machine. And now more than ever, Syrians bloggers, just like every Syrian stand by her.

Another generation of Lebanese will know nothing but war. We can't let this happen. Again.

This post has been supported by the group of Syrian bloggers at Syria Planet. Please feel free to re-post this statement, and tell one of us, so we can all add your name to this list.

Sasa, The Syria News Wire
Yazan Badran, My Stupid Corner
Ammar, My Many MY's
Ayman Haykal, The Damascene Blog
Omar Salaymeh, Earth to Omar
Annie (in French), Blog.Syrie.Be
Aleppous, Aleppous
Stellar, Rollercoaster Journey

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign

In an unprecedented move, dozens of Syria's bloggers have put their name to a joint statement condemning the attacks on the Danish and Norweigan Embassies in Damascus last week.

The statement - which will be appearing across the Syrian blogosphere - follows...

None of us believe in violence as a solution. The following is a compilation of the writings of Syrian bloggers, regarding the attacks on the Danish and Norwegian embassies. The intent of this post is to give our readers a different perspective, a perspective that the media ignores. We’ve all seen the images of riots in the streets, flag burning, and public protests. On the other hand, few have heard of the reasonable voices coming from the Arab world in general, and from Syria in specific. If you would like to add your voice to ours, let me know and I’ll be more than happy to add you to this post. Let’s work together to make our voices heard.

Ihsan: "I welcomed both the commercial and diplomatic actions in response to the cartoons that mocked the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and for once, I felt that we are reacting in a civilized manner! Not any more! While I’m 100% convinced that the Syrian Regime had a hand in what happened. I still cannot understand the concept of being driven like a sheep. To me, those people who were sabotaging and burning the embassies seemed like stupid sheep led by a smart shepherd."

Yazan: No, they were not attacking Danish or European "out of line" freedom of speech, they were not even taking revenge for the prophet, They were attacking the heart of Syria. The civilized idea of Syria. These ppl are criminals, And the ones RESPONSIBLE for letting them unleashed are CRIMINALS too...

Ayman: What happened in Damascus today is just shameful. I had expected the protest to be peaceful and civilized. Mobs ran into the streets, shouted and attacked embassies, without realizing the severity of the damage they inflicted to "their" cause and to Islam's image. Mobs controlled the protests today, and people who were there to peacefully protest were shocked and had to hide in their homes. I felt a bitter disappointment.

Sara: I couldn't believe that a mob of angry Muslims burnt the Danish embassy. Why?? That was seriously not necessary. They had no right. Islamically this is seriously NOT acceptable. I personally condemn this sinful act. You cannot fix something wrong with something worse... Innocent people could've died. They had nothing to do with the cartoons.

The Syrian Brit: "These acts were carried out in the name of Islam, under the guise of defending it.. What a sickening farce.. I say to all those bastards who attacked the Embassies and burnt flags and vandalised properties.. Not in my name.. Never.."

Omar Faleh: "I do feel ashamed of how things turn out in my home country, and I do feel very bad about where the country is going, especially that I believe that the government was not completely innocent of being involved in this matter.. and I don't agree with any political or social value in there.. but.. those people are not Syrians.."

Sinan: There is not in any imaginable way a valid reason to the attacks held against the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish embassies, however I totally understand it. Have you ever heard of marches and demonstrations where violence didn't occur? However it's necessary and very crucial for the rest of the world to understand that these actions do not, I repeat, do not in anyway reflect what the Syrian people really believe, or at least what the elite in here believe.

Omar Salaymeh: "I hope people don’t take the actions of a few thugs as representative of the Syrian or Lebanese people. Just like we expressed our voices of concern over the cartoons in the first place, we’re all expressing our views again over the shameful acts. We, the rational, should work together to show the world that there’s more to Arabs than what they see on television. If I learned anything from the cartoon fiasco, it’s that our views, beliefs and culture are not well known to the west. I think this whole situation could have been prevented if there wasn’t much ignorance on both sides of the table."

Ammar: Everybody said it, this is not us, nor it is our Islam. Everything that happened in the last two days in Syria and Lebanon jeoperdised the efforts muslims made to keep the protests civilised and rational. Apologies to the people and countries hurt in the violence acts. Still, we'll keep protesting peacefully against the cartoons about our prophet Muhamad (PBUH).

Yaman: The problem for Muslims is not the Danish economy. In fact, the source of the problem does not even rest with the editors of the European newspapers or the cartoonists themselves. The problem is the cancer of the extremists who embrace and adopt their closed minded and violent world view based loosely on an erroneous understanding of the Qur'an. For, we must realize that the publication of the cartoons in the first place was a response to the extremists and ironically enough, succeded only in eliciting primarily the response of those same extremists further intensifying the problem. It was irresponsible of the papers to do this knowing what the response would be--but let us not forget that the cartoons were originally published five months ago on September 30, 2005. Why the delay? Obviously, it was more politically suitable for the Arab regimes to inflate this issue today. Why the riots 5 months later? If the cartoons were really the issue then the world would have been on fire in 2005, not 2006.

Digital Oasis: (post in arabic)

Gottfried: (post in Arabic)

Labels: Syrian bloggers' campaign