In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [20]
Some of the “discussion forums” of Bashar’s early days in office were rumored to have tried to register under the associations law, the statute governing civil-society organizations that dated back forty years—long before NGOs existed. But the reason why NGOs couldn’t register was political; some of the “discussion forums” of Bashar’s early days in office had tried to register under the associations law, which alarmed many in the regime. They had probably followed the Egyptian government’s legal battles with Western-funded NGOs in the 1990s that tried to promote democratic change. Some in the Syrian regime were rumored to believe that the NGOs were “Trojan horses” designed to bring down the regime.
To protect FIRDOS, Mrs. Assad explained that she registered the NGO as a charity, which legally restricted its work but allowed it to operate. She also placed the organization under her “patronage,” a term that I knew, from my years of working in the Arab world, meant that she called most, if not all, the shots.
I suddenly felt confused. If we had had this conversation during my first project in Syria, when reform euphoria still gripped the country, it would have been consistent. However, times had changed. The legislation to open private banks in Syria, passed in April 2001, had yet to be implemented—in fact, not a single bank had even been named. Those who had originally written about the potential of private banks wouldn’t write for me anymore, and my buddy Ibrahim was in jail.
So I asked her about these recent setbacks and the reasons behind them. She smiled and said reform in Syria would continue, but it was taking longer than expected. “When you are in our situation, you come to depend on people you would not have to elsewhere,” she said impenetrably. Did she mean that the Syrian regime was next on Washington’s hit list? Or was it because it was a minority regime? “If we opened the market to private banks now, and the staff at the Central Bank was not prepared to handle it, there could be chaos. Would that be good for the country?”
I had experienced the incompetence of Syrian public officialdom firsthand. Only a few weeks previously, the Syrian Central Bank governor—the Syrian equivalent of the Federal Reserve chairman—had grilled one of our analysts on last year’s OBG report. During a three-hour meeting, he read aloud every line of the financial services section in Stalinist fashion, screaming “This is a lie!” at the end of every sentence. While I didn’t doubt that OBG was capable of making mistakes, the notion that everything we wrote was untrue was simply nonsensical.
I didn’t agree with everything she said, but Asma al-Assad seemed genuine and was very likable. After working in Syria on and off for two years, it was just refreshing to meet a talented person in such an interesting—and powerful—position. While many of her projects seemed naïve, her motivation to improve her fellow man in such a tough environment was seductive. I felt so comfortable with her that when I shook her hand to say good-bye, I nearly called her by her first name.
Excited by my visit with Syria’s first lady, I began writing my article on FIRDOS the next morning. I was familiar with NGO activities in Egypt as well as the problems associated with Cairo’s sprawling shantytowns, so it was an easy task. When I visited Mounir Ali at the Ministry of Information that week and told him about my interview with the “first lady,” he looked surprised. “Just a point of clarification,” he said pedantically. “Officially, the first lady of Syria is Anissa al-Assad, the late president’s wife and President Bashar’s mother. Asma should be referred to as ‘the wife of the president.’”
After the article had been edited, I sent a copy to Rola to forward on to Mrs. Assad.