In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [17]
Reports continued to make it into the Western press that Syria received up to two hundred thousand barrels per day of Iraqi crude at discounted prices. For proof, most diplomats pointed to figures showing Syrian oil exports rising—quite an anomaly for a country whose oil fields were well known to be in slow decline. The extra top-up from Iraq helped the regime not only to export more crude but to continue subsidizing diesel, food stuffs, and other basic goods far below market prices. Businessmen close to the regime, whose factories produced poor-quality goods, were rumored to have dealings with Iraq as well.
Suddenly, anything to do with Iraq became a red line. On December 23—while most Westerners in Syria were home spending the holidays with their families—security forces arrested Ibrahim Hamidi, Damascus bureau chief of Al Hayat and author of the main political commentary in our OBG report the previous year. No one knew where he was for about a week—Syria’s emergency law allowed the state to detain any Syrian citizen indefinitely without charge. A few days before his arrest, Ibrahim had written a story about Syria’s preparations to receive up to one million Iraqi refugees should American forces invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein. His arrest was finally confirmed by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), which stated that he was being held on charges of “publishing false news,” a crime that carried a possible term of three years in prison and a fine of one million Syrian pounds (twenty thousand US dollars).5
I knew Ibrahim well, and his arrest upset me greatly. When I returned to my desk at the SEBC in January, I reread Ibrahim’s article, “Modernizing Syria’s Image,” in OBG’s last report. The article was one of the most concise summaries of the clampdown on the “Damascus Spring” during Bashar’s first two years in power. He concluded the article with a certain degree of optimism about the release of political prisoners and the closing of Syria’s most notorious gulags. I hated to think of the one in which he now found himself.
With reforms frozen, people avoiding my phone calls, and the story of Syria’s opening up to the outside world fading, I could see from my edition-planning sheet that this year’s report would be remarkably thin. So I called a meeting with Rola to ask for her advice on what to do. She agreed with me that there had been setbacks in Syrian reform, due largely to the “regional situation.” However, unlike most Syrians and foreigners involved in reform that year, Rola was optimistic that reform would continue. She said a number of new NGOs under the patronage of the president’s wife, Asma al-Assad, showed the president’s dedication to reform. “Would you like to see their operations in action?” she asked.
Two days later, I found myself sitting in the backseat of a black SUV speeding down a windy dirt road that cut through the lush green countryside outside Aleppo. I was there to tour the development projects of the Fund for Integrated Rural Development of Syria (FIRDOS), an NGO dedicated to tackling rural poverty that was supported by Mrs. Assad. As I read through the NGO’s introductory pamphlet, I remembered that “firdos” was Arabic for “paradise.”
The SUV slowed down as we entered a village southwest of Aleppo. Before the driver could put it into park, villagers gathered around the car to greet us. I stepped down from the car, and my polished shoes immediately sloshed into four inches of deep red