In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [89]
When I asked them about the rampant corruption that everyone seemed to talk about, one man said, “Who did this corruption? It wasn’t Bashar!” Another said, “Bashar is the best leader in the Arab world.” When I asked them how many Syrians supported Bashar, one man shouted, “Ninety-nine percent!” Another blurted out, “We want him to be president forever!” Beside me I could hear someone whispering to a wild-eyed man from the security services, “He’s an American journalist.”
Suddenly Bilal, a good Syrian journalist friend, appeared through the crowd to my left. Bilal was an Alawite from the Syrian coast. He looked annoyed and kind of tired. “I have to get out of this place,” he said. Thinking he meant the rally, I suggested he just go back to the office or his home. “I mean this country!” he said.
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. I knew Bilal was a critical thinker and the best writer I had ever trained in Syria. However, he was also an Alawite and, like many of his sect, historically pro-Assad. “I just don’t understand why all this is necessary,” he added. I suddenly realized that, for all the economic and social changes that had taken place in Syria—not to mention technological—very little had changed politically from the day that Bashar had taken over.
When the poll took place on May 27, 2007, Assad secured 97.62 percent of the vote, a slight improvement over the 97.24 percent he obtained in 2000. The answer to Bilal’s prescient question was an extra 0.38 percent.17
From Washington, Ammar Abdulhamid—my one-time colleague at MAWRED and director of the Tharwa project—covered the Syrian elections via his website, Syrian Elector. Ammar was a recipient of funds from Washington’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the controversial program established by the Bush administration to spread democracy in Arab countries. While funding well-meaning projects, MEPI was criticized as part and parcel of the Bush administration’s “democracy agenda” in the Middle East. Funding was distributed to US NGOs such as the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), who in turn issued grants to civil-society activists in Syria. The initiative was also harshly criticized for funding the exiled Syrian opposition, though the criticism varied, because many saw the exiled group as deeply divided, ineffective, and lacking the street credibility of the Damascus Declaration and other domestic opposition.18
Syrian Elector covered the election in detail; reports came from all over Syria. The website reported on voting fraud and other kinds of regime manipulation of the ballot. While it was an interesting window for foreigners into the Syrian referendum, it was unclear how many Syrians used the site to track the referendum—a referendum that had very predictable results, as Assad was the only name on the ballot—or whether they learned via the site why their vote mattered. Nonetheless, in a Syrian context, the site was unprecedented.
The other big change that day was Leila’s departure to study in the United States. For over three years, she had struggled to keep the magazine afloat, even going without her salary for well over two years. The Damascene businessman who had invested in the project, Nazeer, thought it would motivate her to work harder—instead it wore her out. With a scholarship to the University of Maryland to study broadcast journalism, Leila saw her chance to escape and took it. While I was happy for her, I suddenly realized that I was on my own in Damascus for the first time. I had never navigated the Syrian regime without her. So I asked a friend and wealthy businessman,