Damascus in the last weeks of tranquillity
Early this year, a Tunisian street vendor lugged a can of petrol to the Sidi Bouzid provincial headquarters, fumbled with a match, and set the Middle East on fire. Just weeks before, Michael Safi spent a few days in Damascus – Syria’s capital and the oldest continually inhabited city in the world.
He didn’t know it then, but these photos would show Damascus in the last weeks before the silence broke.
A poster of President al-Assad in a shop window declares, ‘We Love You’, from the election campaign in 2007 – he won 97.62 per cent of the vote. An accidently apt comment sits in the bottom-right corner.
The al-Assad’s are prolific monument builders. This statue of Saladin was unveiled in 1993 to mark the 800th anniversary of the Sultan’s death. The crusades have little relevance to the West, but they resound in the Arab imagination.In 2001, shortly after September 11, President Bush warned that “this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile”. The offhand comment resonated in the coffee shops and homes of the the Middle East.
Schoolboys lounge on the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter. On this site, the Arameans built a temple for Hadad, the god of storms. The Romans destroyed it, and built the Temple of Jupiter. The Christians toppled that, and built a church dedicated to John the Baptist. The Muslims left it alone. For 70 years. And then they knocked it down, and built the Ummayad Mosque.
Over a curiously receded jaw, the President-for-life watches a busy Damascus morning unfold with faint disdain. Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafiz, in 2000. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. It was his brother, Basil, who their father was grooming for the Presidency. In 1994, speeding to catch a flight, Basil missed a turn, drove into a curb at 125 miles per hour, and died instantly. Bashar was promptly ordered home from London.
Heavy security and images of President al-Assad are part of the Damascene scenery. Syria’s last rebellion occurred in 1982, in its fourth-largest city, Hama. Muslim Brotherhood militants took over state buildings, slaughtered government troops and regime collaborators, and declared the city ‘liberated’.
Hafiz al-Assad responded by sealing off the city and indiscriminately pounding it with tanks, aircraft and artillery. Twelve thousand troops then marched through the ancient city demolishing mosques and entire neighbourhoods. Amnesty International reports that they carried out “collective killings of unarmed, innocent inhabitants” and buried them in mass graves around the city. This destruction was wholly unnecessary; most of the resistance had fled or collapsed after a day of fighting. Hafiz al-Assad was making an example.
Mike Safi is currently completing a Masters of Peace and Conflict Studies.
All photos by the author.
