|
How Syria's Assad Is Steering His Country out of Isolation
Part II: Torture Is on the Decline, but
Harrassment of Dissidents Persists
Deir Spiegel, By Erich Follath
The scene is a plush, discreet café in Damascus' Old City, not far from the Omajjaden Mosque, in the middle of the "paradise of the orient," the traditional realm of the
"bride of all cities," a place adored by poets and authors throughout history. Yassin al-Hajj Salih, a 47-year-old doctor, loves this Damascus .
He walks through the streets every morning, inhaling the scents
of cardamom and fresh coffee, trying to commit his impressions to memory. He feels the cold surfaces of old walls, trying to preserve them, and gazes at slim minarets, hoping to burn their images into his mind. He takes nothing
for granted. Perhaps this is what happens to anyone who has spent half his adult life in prison. "I was behind bars for exactly 16 years and 14 days," he says. "I don't expect to be arrested again, but in Syria
one can never know."
As a young man Salih, a leftist, sought to unhinge the system with his fiery communist speeches. Hafez Assad had him arrested in 1980. He spent 11 years suffering in prison without any charges
having been brought against him, and he repeatedly refused to renounce his ideals. He was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison, as well as an additional year for "bad behavior," to be served in Tadmur Prison, a
place notorious for torture. "Our Guantanamo ," Salih calls it.
After his release, Salih summoned up his remaining strength to finish medical school, and began a relationship with a woman who had also been in
prison for many years. Like many Syrians, he believed in the "Damascus Spring" of 2000, when Bashar Assad came to power after his father's death and promised more pluralism.
"We were certainly naïve,"
says the civil rights activist. Within a year of the new president coming to power, the arrests began again. Criticism of the government had become too vehement and fundamental for the younger Assad's taste. Salih was summoned
by Syrian intelligence almost monthly and "warned" about critical articles he was publishing in a Lebanese newspaper.
"It is true that there is less torture under Bashar than under his father," says
Salih. But he also fails to recognize any signs of political liberalization, pointing out the government's recent treatment of regime critics, like the arrest of former businessman Riad Seif, 62, who was awarded the Human
Rights Award of the German city of Weimar in 2003. Since January Seif, who has cancer, has been in prison with other members of an opposition group that had dared to publish a pro-democratic manifesto.
Salih also signed
the document. He now asks himself who ended up on the list of those arrested, and why. "This arbitrariness is meant to demoralize civil rights activists like us," says Salih, who turned from communist to social
democrat long ago. And then the fearless Salih voices yet another of his deliberately provocative opinions: "We Syrians are hostages of the Assad family."
For Salih, the many changes that Damascus has seen in
recent years, including new Internet cafes, Western businesses and growing tourism, are "superficial." He wants to see fundamental change and condemns anything else as nothing but "lazy compromises."
In Aleppo , the more than 4,000-year-old trading center in northern Syria , a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the terminus of a branch of the legendary Silk Road , there is also a man who is convinced that he knows what matters
to Syrians. "Religious freedom and improvement of living conditions, those things are important," says Grand Mufti Dr. Ahmed Badr al-Din Hassoun, 59, as he fingers his prayer beads.
Hassoun is the leader of
Syria 's Sunni Muslims, who make up about 75 percent of the country's population. A jovial man who laughs often and is fond of animated gestures, Hassoun completed his religious training at Cairo 's renowned Al-Azhar University
, where he studied Islamic Science and Arab Literature. Hassoun is not interested in being a lofty scholar, but rather a man of the people -- all the people. He aspires to be a "representative of all religions, including
the atheists."
Hassoun is everything but apprehensive. His English interpreter is an Armenian Orthodox Christian, and his closest advisor is Roman Catholic. Although Syria may still be a police state, religions
treat each other with greater tolerance there, unlike in neighboring Lebanon . Minorities enjoy special protections, perhaps because the "ruling family" is part of a minority religious group itself. The Assads are
Alawites, a Shiite minority that makes up only 10 percent of the Syrian population. The radical Muslim Brotherhood, considered a threat and brutally opposed by Hafez Assad, is now nothing more than an insignificant, underground
splinter group.
"A war can never be holy. Only peace is holy, and any preacher who foments hatred must be stopped," says the Grand Mufti. "The life of one child is more important to me than any mosque, no
matter how significant."
For Hassoun, the notion of a theocracy on earth is deeply suspect. He believes in a country where government and religion are separate, "in a social order based on justice and in which
Muslims, Christians and Jews live in peace with one another." But to avoid sounding too much like a pacifist, the Grand Mufti makes it clear that, in his view, Israel's occupation policy and the outrageous injustices
against the Palestinians are the root of all evil in the Middle East. "Suicide attacks are a regrettable reaction to this."
Hassoun was a member of the powerless Syrian parliament for eight years. Although his
fellow Sunnis proposed him for the position of Grand Mufti, he was appointed by the president. Does he believe that this makes him Assad's mouthpiece? "Absolutely not," he says. Although he is generally in agreement
with the president, says Hassoun, he repeatedly has grounds for criticism.
Hassoun and Assad get together several times a year for scheduled one-on-one meetings, and they meet more frequently when special problems arise.
The Grand Mufti says that the complaints he hears from citizens often relate to rising inflation, corruption and unemployment. Hassoun, who sees himself as a modernizer, wants his country to open up and investors to come to
Syria . "But it must happen gently," says the religious leader.
|
