In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [63]
It was dark when we arrived in Afif, the Damascus neighborhood that is home to the French embassy. Security forces had finally assembled themselves in force. Leila continued to shout “sahafa” (journalism) as we approached the uniformed security agents. They let us through without batting an eye. When some plain-clothed security agents tried to stop us, she just repeated “sahafa,” and they moved away.
At the French embassy, the situation was far from tense. Police and soldiers mixed freely before the embassy’s stone walls, joking and smoking cigarettes. Two fire trucks were out front, this time complete with firemen in full uniform. They were adjusting the water cannons and firing up the trucks’ compressors. Out in front of the fire engines, about twenty yards down the street, a wall of uniformed security agents donned what looked like old green football helmets and grasped clear Plexiglas riot shields.
I took photos for a few minutes before the police told me to step back. Water shot out of the lead cannon for about thirty seconds, filling the air with a heavy mist. When the firemen turned the cannon briefly to the left, I was caught in the jet stream. I hid behind a tree to dry off and braced myself for another soaking. It never came, however. The “Muslims on a rampage” gave up without much of a fight. Leila and I walked back to the main street and headed to the nearby Damascus Journalists’ Club for oriental salads and good stiff drinks.
But the wheels inside my head were already spinning. Why would Syria’s security apparatus—which, as one civil rights activist once told a journalist friend, “sends ten agents for every protester at a human rights march”—stand back and do little to stop the burning of a number of European embassies? The answer seemed simple: the Bush administration’s Middle East “democracy agenda” had run into unexpected problems, and the Syrian regime knew it. The Muslim Brotherhood scored well in Egypt’s autumn 2005 elections (and probably would have done better without widespread government vote rigging), Shiite parties had dominated Iraq’s December 2005 poll, Hamas had upset Fatah in January’s Palestinian legislative elections, and Hezbollah remained part of the Lebanese government.
Direct regime involvement in the incidents at the embassies was hard to determine. The state did issue a permit for a peaceful demonstration. According to student activists in Islamic centers in Damascus—which are not owned by the state—they received instructions from the centers’ sheikhs to organize protests against the cartoons as well as Denmark in general on February 3. The call to protest, like the call to support President Assad’s November speech at Damascus University, was publicized by text message.
The following afternoon, as much more violent protests raged outside Denmark’s embassy in Beirut, the Syrian state news agency released a statement confirming that one armed Islamist had been killed in a security raid outside Damascus that lasted ninety minutes.
At cocktail receptions the next week, Western diplomats in Damascus were asking everyone the same question: What is the strength of political Islam in Syria? Their reason for asking was apparent: policy makers in Washington and Europe were wondering if the very pressures they were currently orchestrating would push Syria into the hands of political Islam—from which support for Islamic terrorist groups was highly suspected—or into sectarian political chaos, like that in nearby Iraq.
Answers to this question varied. Everyone noted increased Islamic sentiments, but it was unclear how much this trend had entered the political sphere. Religious parties were banned and 1980’s Law 49 made membership of the Muslim Brotherhood punishable by death. Gauging Brotherhood strength was difficult. The organization’s leaders remained in