I waited yesterday to see who would mention the fortieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Syria's Golan Heights, plus Gaza and the West Bank (including east Jerusalem).

The blogosphere is silent.

But we go mad when a handful of people are wrongly imprisoned, or when we have silly elections.

And Syria is silent too. We have parties for Bashar, but no memorial for the Golan.

So are the 'activists' in the West. The biggest event in London yesterday was a kite-flying protest organised by Jews for Justice for Palestinians. It was an awareness raising thing, and highly commendible. But it was a drop in a very very calm ocean.

Wassim has done a great job though. And Dubai Jazz (NEW LINK - apologies for missing you first time round) has an excellent personal tale. Thank you also to Yazan for republishing the Creative Syria discussion. And Phillip and the Syrian Brit have mentioned the anniversary in the past month (thanks Yazan).

I hope there are others I've missed. Please let me know.

Labels: Israeli Occupied Syrian Golan Heights, Syrian blogosphere

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

Thanks to Arima, Princess Anarchy, Razan, and via Arima, Abu Fares, and via Abu Fares, Dubai Jazz for their wonderful replies to my tag, 'The City I Love'.

It showed me two things.

First, that this tagging thing is another way we're using the Syrian blogosphere to communicate with eachother. We're not just posting on our own blogs, throwing ideas into the air...instead, we're actively bouncing that ball of ideas between eachother. I really think the Syrian blogosphere is developing into our a forum, an arena that we own, and that we have the power to use to discuss the future of the country. No wonder Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak got a bit wobbly.

Ok, the second point's a bit more ethereal. It showed me that our cities mean something fundamental to who we are. And they have different meanings to each of us. But our cities do have a real character, that we can identify independently of eachother. (Portuguese poet Goncalo Tavares has written about the nature of the city, a body created by a set of individuals all pulling in different directions).


Arima's Damascus is someone who brought tears to her eyes as she returned to her, her truest love, a city of innocence, a city that could do no wrong. My Damascus.












The Angry Anarchist has given her characteristically angry anarchical take on her city, Beirut. (Although I sensed a little bit of love...the kind of love that hides between the lines in a lot of her writing...when she talked about the town of Shusha).

The grotesque I Love Life poster campaign by the Haririst reminants crops up a lot in Beirut, the Phonecian city which killed Arabism. And there's a l o t of driving.





Tartoussi Abu Fares names Tripoli as his top choice. It may be the other side of the Syria-Lebanon border, but it's only 60km away and Abu Fares treats it like home: "The Tripolitans speak with my accent and share my inherited values. This is the only place in Lebanon where the line between Syrian and Lebanese is almost nonexistent."


Dubai Jazz picks his birthplace, Aleppo, a city he calls his mother. He's now living with his mistress: Dubai.














Razan imagines Damascus. The city has become part of who she is, a city she dreams of when she is away, and which fulfils her when she is home. The pictures tell a story of smells, sounds and people. A story of dreams. Long dreams after lonely nights speaking English and French in Beirut.








Arima, the Dove of Anarchy, Razan, Abu Fares and Dubai Jazz, you crafted the little bubbles I sent into the Syrian blogosphere into beautiful works of art...thank you.

Update: Karin's written about Jerusalem.

Labels: Beirut, Damascus new city, Lebanon, Old City, Syrian blogosphere, tagged

This is a new blog spotted by the wonderful Ayman.

Bob's left America to spend nine months studying Arabic in Syria. His writing offers all the insights of someone casting their fresh eyes on this city, just like I was talking about a couple of days ago. It's beautifully written too.

This post about paper sellers jumped out at me.

And oh, oh, here's InHouse (the trendy Starbucks-esque coffee shop which started life near the American school in Maliki, but has now spread across Damascus).

Labels: America, Damascus new city, Old City, Syrian blogosphere

A very disturbing development. Egypt has jailed a blogger for four years for 'insulting the president'.

Egypt has a strong track record of pursuing and harrassing bloggers. It is the bloggers who are standing up against Mubarak-facism, now that the journalists have gone quiet.

Abdel Kareem Soliman fell foul of a law which threatens anyone "dissmeninating news".

He now joins the 40,000 political prisoners in Egypt. Free them all NOW, and Syria's 600, although Syria, unlike Iran, Egypt and Saudi, has never jailed a blogger.

I wonder how America, and An-Nahar will react.

Labels: Iran, Syrian blogosphere

Ok, I started blogging (I have seen at least three blogs starting with that line in the past month...including the wonderful Razan...maybe the Syrian blogosphere's coming of age...) two years ago today (almost). At that time, there were a handful of blogs. 10, 15 at most (correct me if I'm wrong).

The Syrian blogosphere was tiny. Ayman's Damascene Blog has got to be one of the first, and it was also a reference point. He listed all of the Syrian blogs. Getting a mention on there was a huge highlight of my first month's blogging.

But now, the blogosphere has it's own directory (right) listing at least 200 Syrian blogs and new sites are springing up all the time - and more often than not, they are great reads. I've spent most of the past fortnight stumbling across new blogs.

It seems many of my readers are themselves bloggers. Have a look in the comments section, click on the name, and you'll probably find a blog.

Blogging almost seems like our way of talking to eachother. The Syrian blogosphere is a stylishly designed forum to discuss the future of our country, and we all own a little part of that arena.

So techies...the tools we use to blog have got to adapt to that new reality. (And besides I think the Syria News Wire needs a birthday present). We need a site that can track all our comments around the blogs. So I can log on and see a list of comments I have left on other people's blogs - that way I'll be able to keep up to date with the replies. How easy is it to leave a message and forget to check for replies on someone else's site.

I know I should just give the site a present myself. But I am either too lazy or too cheap. It needs a new header, but my design skills can't compete with this



or this



can they (they're both Jordanian). Hmm.

Back to the real world. There are reasons why Syrians are blogging more and more - Syria has found place on the political map in the past couple of years (because of Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq), and internet access is becoming cheaper.

So happy birthday Syria News Wire: 2 years (and four days) old today! And long live the Syrian blogosphere.

Labels: Syrian blogosphere

Oooh, hello to the Americans dropping by from 'that' US newspaper article.

First, have a look at the status of women in Syria.

Feel free to look around. And when you're done here, if your craving for the real feelings of Syrians isn't satisfied, you must visit:

Syria Planet, it re-posts what every known Syrian blog is saying.

And have a look at Syria Comment for some of the most informed words on this beautiful country.

Don't forget - Syria wants PEACE. Syria has repeatedly asked for peace talks WITHOUT CONDITIONS with Israel and America. Why haven't we got an answer? Letters on a postcard please (or in the comments section if you can't afford a postcard).

And what about that thorny issue of democracy:

Labels: America, Israel, Peace talks, Syrian blogosphere, Video

I've said this many times. But when you attack someone's personality, it only points to the weakness in your argument.

Case and point.

Tony Badran's latest rant against Joshua Landis. He goes on to rail against Sami Moubayed, taking in a few other people he dislikes.

They are two of the most knowlegable writers on Syria. You may disagree with their views, but you'll struggle to dispute their insight. That's when we turn to personal attacks.

I left a comment challenging Badran's tactics against Landis, and pointing his readers in the direction of Moubayed's webpage so his readers can make up their own mind. The comment has been deleted.

Personal attacks and a lack of tolerance for dissenting views. Perhaps a few democracy activists should look a little closer to home before deleting dissent. Have a look on the sidebar of my page: "the information democracy". Feel free to post a comment, disagree with me, debate, discuss, argue. You won't find me erasing views I don't agree with.

It seems Bashar's access to a major US TV network (ABC News's week of Syria specials ... scroll down this page to find my links to the videos) has really made some people throw their toys out of the pram. Boo hoo.

UPDATE: My second comment ("Am I right in thinking you deleted my comment") has also been deleted. We run a tight dictatorship here.

UPDATE2: And again. So I've posted this: Just tell me Tony, what do you find so threatening in my opinion that you find it necessary to hide my views instead of replying to them.

How long will it take him to delete that.

Labels: Syrian blogosphere