World Affairs
Successor to Saladin
Published 04 September 2006
Observations on Syria
In spite of temperatures of 40C, fans and air-conditioners have been switched off. Businesses are forced to close and people swelter. But in Aleppo, Syria's second city, no one complains.
These power cuts have been scheduled by the government. Each day different districts of Aleppo are deprived of electricity for up to two hours so that power can be diverted to "help Lebanon". The inconvenience is greeted by the local population with stoic pride. How much this benefits the Lebanese people is hard to say, but the benefits to the Syrian government are clear.
All over Syria, government support for Lebanon is impressed on the people, serving as a means of pleasing a population who, prevented from discussing internal politics by the Mukhabarat, Syria's secret police, focus their attention on international affairs.
In the souk al-Hamidiyya in Damascus, shafts of sunlight filter through the bullet holes that pepper the corrugated iron roofing (a reminder of when French planes strafed the market to quell an uprising against colonial rule in 1925) and on to bright banners hung at intervals above the crowded passageway. The banners, in Arabic, French and English, carry tirades against Israel and America: "When discussing the horribleness horrors the second massacre of Kana . . . the security council failed in condemning Israel due to the refusal of America too in spite of the fact there was a consensus in confessing in its horribleness and ugliness . . . [sic]." Not far away, an Israeli flag has been drawn with great care across one of the narrow streets of old Damascus, its purpose unclear until a crowd of Syrian teenagers slow to stamp their feet as they walk across it.
Support for Lebanon and for Hezbollah means the same thing in Syria, where Hezbollah is often referred to as the "national Lebanese resistance".
Not even in the heavily bombed Hezbollah strongholds of south Beirut is the organisation's popularity as striking as it is in Damascus, where green and yellow flags, billboards, stickers in car windows, portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, T-shirts, and oddly, posters depicting Nasrallah and Che Guevara, now outnumber even the ubiquitous idolatry of President Bashar al-Assad.
Claims that Nasrallah is a modern-day Saladin, the 12th-century Muslim leader who created a united Arab front against the crusaders and liberated Jerusalem, are common; an association affirmed on Sharia ath-Thawra, a busy street where people stop to have their picture taken in front of a concrete statue of Saladin on a horse, which now bears a fluttering Hezbollah flag on a rod taped to his right arm.
Syria is riding high after the war in Lebanon, no longer the pariah it was after the assassination of Rafik Hariri in February 2005. In Hezbollah, it has the perfect conduit through which to wield its influence in Lebanon. The point is not missed on Saad Hariri, son of Lebanon's assassinated prime minister. Leader of the largest faction in the Lebanese parliament, he accused Syria on 17 August of exploiting the situation in Lebanon and sowing sedition.
His protests may be in vain: Syria has already achieved its goal of cementing itself as a key power-broker in the region.
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