In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [62]
“I renovated this,” Tarek said. I knew he was a practicing Muslim; Leila had told me so. But on the surface, Tarek looked like a wealthy, Westernized Syrian who had spent time in the United States—which he also happened to be. I took off my shoes and stepped inside. Tarek took me through the carpeted room to the shrine, opened the door, and showed me the sarcophagus. “By building it next to this tomb, I get around the permits,” Tarek said. After a few words with the prayer room’s sheikh, I returned to the front door and recovered my shoes from a locker. Tarek remained to pray, saying he would join us later in his office.
For a secular state that arrested people for praying in public in the 1980s, tolerance of this Islamic trend raised eyebrows. What was pushing a nonreligious state, dominated by Alawites, to openly accept growing Sunni Islamic movements? The short answer: external pressures and the complex internal tensions they created.
Standards of living were eroding in Syria. The reasons behind this slide were pretty clear: a general lack of investment, due largely to an extremely corrupt legal and regulatory environment, was not creating enough jobs. Exacerbating this trend was the fact that, when political tensions bubbled over in the 1980s, Syria endured one of the highest birthrates in the world. That massive demographic wave was now hitting the Syrian market with full force.
At the same time, the secular state and the ruling Baath Party continued to hold up socialism as an economic ideal. The public sector’s ability to create enough jobs to absorb labor-market entrants was rapidly declining, however, due to decreasing oil production. Public-sector salaries were also much lower than those in the private sector. Pure and simple, the state was running out of ways to buy off its population and keep them complacent.
Enter the external pressures. Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, relations between Syria and the United States had deteriorated rapidly. Because of Syrian support for the Iraqi insurgency as well as for radical Palestinian groups based in Damascus, Washington had tightened sanctions on Syria in 2004. Washington was also talking about spreading democracy in the Middle East—something Syrians do not necessarily oppose. However, television images of US forces waging a bloody war on insurgents in Iraq also turned Syrian popular opinion against the United States and its “democracy agenda.” After all, the majority of Iraqi insurgents were Sunni Muslims—a minority in Iraq, but a majority in Syria.
Syria’s rapid withdrawal from Lebanon following the assassination of Rafik Hariri as well as the subsequent investigation into his death put the Syrian regime under tremendous international pressure. Trade, both formal and informal, between Syria and Lebanon had been drastically interrupted, impacting the livelihood of an unknown number of Syrians and Lebanese.
As the investigation into Hariri’s death focused its attention on Damascus, the Syrian regime hunkered down, preparing for a siege—including possible UN sanctions. So instead of sharing some of the wealth generated by record-high oil revenues over the last year, the state increased salaries by only 5 percent that January—far short of the 20-percent increases in 2004 and 2002 respectively. Gasoline subsidies had also recently been slashed, which caused a 20-percent increase in prices at the pump. Inflation ran at an estimated 15 percent. Syrians were feeling the economic pinch of reform and external pressure at the same time.
When we met Tarek in his office after his prayer, he looked relaxed and at ease. We had a glass of tea, talked over a bit of business, and went on our merry way.
However, the fun was not over. We soon learned that the demonstrators had moved on to the Norwegian embassy and burned it down as well, since