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United Arab Emirates 40th anniversary




All of us, who are living and working in this beautiful and safe country, would like to express our respect to the UAE’s leaders for their hard work, efforts and contribution to make the UAE such a success.

Forty years ago Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai initiated a huge transformation process of this country and their people.

Their biggest achievement was their decision to distribute the oil wealth throughout the country. They initiated huge constructions of schools, houses, roads, hospitals, ports, airports, hotels, public parks, agriculture and industry. Emiratis engaged workforce from other countries and have facilitated the integration among people from other cultures and religions by providing expats with a safe place to work and live.

The UAE has also contributed with billions of dirhams in economic and financial aid to less wealthy nations and countries. The UAE is giving equal rights and opportunities for man and women, as well as equal law and opportunities for Emiratis and Non Emiratis

Sheikh Zayed, the father of the UAE nation, died on November 2, 2004. He fulfilled his dream to convert the desert into gardens and forests. I have been told that someone wrote a poem on Sheikh Zayed’s palace in Al Ain after he passed away, saying how the stones and the trees cried for him after his death, the trees and the palms which he once planted with his own hands were grieving for him. Happy anniversary!

Interesting links about the UAE:

Farewell Arabia film


This film is a documentary about the Arabian desert, petroleum discovery, distribution of wealth, and the vision of Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the United Arab Emirates.

Other links:


The Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Cup endurance race for women has drawn 60 leading riders who will compete for a slice of the Dh800,000 prize at the Emirates International Endurance Village in Al Wathba on December 1, 2011

Fatima Al Marri, a 17-year-old Emirati schoolgirl, created history last week by becoming the first female rider to win the National Day Cup, a 120km race

http://www.thenational.ae/sport/horse-racing/ladies-first-on-opening-day-of-the-uae-horse-racing-season
http://www.uaeinteract.com Over 50,000 Pages of News and Information on the UAE

Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert

Written by Joan Juliet Buck

A Rose in the Desert

Photographed by James Nachtwey

Asma al-Assad, Syria’s dynamic first lady, is on a mission to create a beacon of culture and secularism in a powder-keg region—and to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.

Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic—the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies. Her style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment. She’s a rare combination: a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement. Paris Match calls her “the element of light in a country full of shadow zones.” She is the first lady of Syria.

Syria is known as the safest country in the Middle East, possibly because, as the State Department’s Web site says, “the Syrian government conducts intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Syrian citizens and foreign visitors.” It’s a secular country where women earn as much as men and the Muslim veil is forbidden in universities, a place without bombings, unrest, or kidnappings, but its shadow zones are deep and dark. Asma’s husband, Bashar al-Assad, was elected president in 2000, after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad, with a startling 97 percent of the vote. In Syria, power is hereditary. The country’s alliances are murky. How close are they to Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah? There are souvenir Hezbollah ashtrays in the souk, and you can spot the Hamas leadership racing through the bar of the Four Seasons. Its number-one enmity is clear: Israel. But that might not always be the case. The United States has just posted its first ambassador there since 2005, Robert Ford.

Iraq is next door, Iran not far away. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, is 90 minutes by car from Damascus. Jordan is south, and next to it the region that Syrian maps label Palestine. There are nearly one million refugees from Iraq in Syria, and another half-million displaced Palestinians.

“It’s a tough neighborhood,” admits Asma al-Assad.

It’s also a neighborhood intoxicatingly close to the dawn of civilization, where agriculture began some 10,000 years ago, where the wheel, writing, and musical notation were invented. Out in the desert are the magical remains of Palmyra, Apamea, and Ebla. In the National Museum you see small 4,000-year-old panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl that is echoed in the new mother-of-pearl furniture for sale in the souk. Christian Louboutin comes to buy the damask silk brocade they’ve been making here since the Middle Ages for his shoes and bags, and has incidentally purchased a small palace in Aleppo, which, like Damascus, has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years.

The first lady works out of a small white building in a hilly, modern residential neighborhood called Muhajireen, where houses and apartments are crammed together and neighbors peer and wave from balconies. The first impression of Asma al-Assad is movement—a determined swath cut through space with a flash of red soles. Dark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace. No watch, no jewelry apart from Chanel agates around her neck, not even a wedding ring, but fingernails lacquered a dark blue-green. She’s breezy, conspiratorial, and fun. Her accent is English but not plummy. Despite what must be a killer IQ, she sometimes uses urban shorthand: “I was, like. . . .”

Asma Akhras was born in London in 1975, the eldest child and only daughter of a Syrian Harley Street cardiologist and his diplomat wife, both Sunni Muslims. They spoke Arabic at home. She grew up in Ealing, went to Queen’s College, and spent holidays with family in Syria. “I’ve dealt with the sense that people don’t expect Syria to be normal. I’d show my London friends my holiday snaps and they’d be—‘Where did you say you went?’ ”

She studied computer science at university, then went into banking. “It wasn’t a typical path for women,” she says, “but I had it all mapped out.” By the spring of 2000, she was closing a big biotech deal at JP Morgan in London and about to take up an MBA at Harvard. She started dating a family friend: the second son of president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar, who’d cut short his ophthalmology studies in London in 1994 and returned to Syria after his older brother, Basil, heir apparent to power, died in a car crash. They had known each other forever, but a ten-year age difference meant that nothing registered—until it did.

“I was always very serious at work, and suddenly I started to take weekends, or disappear, and people just couldn’t figure it out,” explains the first lady. “What do you say—‘I’m dating the son of a president’? You just don’t say that. Then he became president, so I tried to keep it low-key. Suddenly I was turning up in Syria every month, saying, ‘Granny, I miss you so much!’ I quit in October because by then we knew that we were going to get married at some stage. I couldn’t say why I was leaving. My boss thought I was having a nervous breakdown because nobody quits two months before bonus after closing a really big deal. He wouldn’t accept my resignation. I was, like, ‘Please, really, I just want to get out, I’ve had enough,’ and he was ‘Don’t worry, take time off, it happens to the best of us.’ ” She left without her bonus in November and married Bashar al-Assad in December.

“What I’ve been able to take away from banking was the transferable skills—the analytical thinking, understanding the business side of running a company—to run an NGO or to try and oversee a project.” She runs her office like a business, chairs meeting after meeting, starts work many days at six, never breaks for lunch, and runs home to her children at four. “It’s my time with them, and I get them fresh, unedited—I love that. I really do.” Her staff are used to eating when they can. “I have a rechargeable battery,” she says.

The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls “active citizenship.” “It’s about everyone taking shared responsibility in moving this country forward, about empowerment in a civil society. We all have a stake in this country; it will be what we make it.”
In 2005 she founded Massar, built around a series of discovery centers where children and young adults from five to 21 engage in creative, informal approaches to civic responsibility. Massar’s mobile Green Team has touched 200,000 kids across Syria since 2005. The organization is privately funded through donations. The Syria Trust for Development, formed in 2007, oversees Massar as well as her first NGO, the rural micro-credit association FIRDOS, and SHABAB, which exists to give young people business skills they need for the future.

And then there’s her cultural mission: “People tend to see Syria as artifacts and history,” she says. “For us it’s about the accumulation of cultures, traditions, values, customs. It’s the difference between hardware and software: the artifacts are the hardware, but the software makes all the difference—the customs and the spirit of openness. We have to make sure that we don’t lose that. . . . ” Here she gives an apologetic grin. “You have to excuse me, but I’m a banker—that brand essence.”

That brand essence includes the distant past. There are 500,000 important ancient works of art hidden in storage; Asma al-Assad has brought in the Louvre to create a network of museums and cultural attractions across Syria, and asked Italian experts to help create a database of the 5,000 archaeological sites in the desert. “Culture,” she says, “is like a financial asset. We have an abundance of it, thousands of years of history, but we can’t afford to be complacent.”

In December, Asma al-Assad was in Paris to discuss her alliance with the Louvre. She dazzled a tough French audience at the International Diplomatic Institute, speaking without notes. “I’m not trying to disguise culture as anything more than it is,” she said, “and if I sound like I’m talking politics, it’s because we live in a politicized region, a politicized time, and we are affected by that.”

The French ambassador to Syria, Eric Chevallier, was there: “She managed to get people to consider the possibilities of a country that’s modernizing itself, that stands for a tolerant secularism in a powder-keg region, with extremists and radicals pushing in from all sides—and the driving force for that rests largely on the shoulders of one couple. I hope they’ll make the right choices for their country and the region. ”

Damascus evokes a dusty version of a Mediterranean hill town in an Eastern-bloc country. The courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque at night looks exactly like St. Mark’s square in Venice. When I first arrive, I’m met on the tarmac by a minder, who gives me a bouquet of white roses and lends me a Syrian cell phone; the head minder, a high-profile American PR, joins us the next day. The first lady’s office has provided drivers, so I shop and see sights in a bubble of comfort and hospitality. On the rare occasions I am out alone, a random series of men in leather jackets seems to be keeping close tabs on what I am doing and where I am headed.

“I like things I can touch. I like to get out and meet people and do things,” the first lady says as we set off for a meeting in a museum and a visit to an orphanage. “As a banker, you have to be so focused on the job at hand that you lose the experience of the world around you. My husband gave me back something I had lost.”

She slips behind the wheel of a plain SUV, a walkie-talkie and her cell thrown between the front seats and a Syrian-silk Louboutin tote on top. She does what the locals do—swerves to avoid crazy men who run across busy freeways, misses her turn, checks your seat belt, points out sights, and then can’t find a parking space. When a traffic cop pulls her over at a roundabout, she lowers the tinted window and dips her head with a playful smile. The cop’s eyes go from slits to saucers.

Her younger brother Feras, a surgeon who moved to Syria to start a private health-care group, says, “Her intelligence is both intellectual and emotional, and she’s a master at harmonizing when, and how much, to use of each one.”

A Rose in the Desert

Photographed by James Nachtwey

In the Saint Paul orphanage, maintained by the Melkite–Greek Catholic patriarchate and run by the Basilian sisters of Aleppo, Asma sits at a long table with the children. Two little boys in new glasses and thick sweaters are called Yussuf. She asks them what kind of music they like. “Sad music,” says one. In the room where she’s had some twelve computers installed, the first lady tells a nun, “I hope you’re letting the younger children in here go crazy on the computers.” The nun winces: “The children are afraid to learn in case they don’t have access to computers when they leave here,” she says.
In the courtyard by the wall down which Saint Paul escaped in a basket 2,000 years ago, an old tree bears gigantic yellow fruit I have never seen before. Citrons. Cédrats in French.

Back in the car, I ask what religion the orphans are. “It’s not relevant,” says Asma al-Assad. “Let me try to explain it to you. That church is a part of my heritage because it’s a Syrian church. The Umayyad Mosque is the third-most-important holy Muslim site, but within the mosque is the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. We all kneel in the mosque in front of the tomb of Saint John the Baptist. That’s how religions live together in Syria—a way that I have never seen anywhere else in the world. We live side by side, and have historically. All the religions and cultures that have passed through these lands—the Armenians, Islam, Christianity, the Umayyads, the Ottomans—make up who I am.”

“Does that include the Jews?” I ask.

“And the Jews,” she answers. “There is a very big Jewish quarter in old Damascus.”

The Jewish quarter of Damascus spans a few abandoned blocks in the old city that emptied out in 1992, when most of the Syrian Jews left. Their houses are sealed up and have not been touched, because, as people like to tell you, Syrians don’t touch the property of others. The broken glass and sagging upper floors tell a story you don’t understand—are the owners coming back to claim them one day?

The presidential family lives surrounded by neighbors in a modern apartment in Malki. On Friday, the Muslim day of rest, Asma al-Assad opens the door herself in jeans and old suede stiletto boots, hair in a ponytail, the word happiness spelled out across the back of her T-shirt. At the bottom of the stairs stands the off-duty president in jeans—tall, long-necked, blue-eyed. A precise man who takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer, he says he was attracted to studying eye surgery “because it’s very precise, it’s almost never an emergency, and there is very little blood.”

The old al-Assad family apartment was remade into a child-friendly triple-decker playroom loft surrounded by immense windows on three sides. With neither shades nor curtains, it’s a fishbowl. Asma al-Assad likes to say, “You’re safe because you are surrounded by people who will keep you safe.” Neighbors peer in, drop by, visit, comment on the furniture. The president doesn’t mind: “This curiosity is good: They come to see you, they learn more about you. You don’t isolate yourself.”

There’s a decorated Christmas tree. Seven-year-old Zein watches Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on the president’s iMac; her brother Karim, six, builds a shark out of Legos; and nine-year-old Hafez tries out his new electric violin. All three go to a Montessori school.

Asma al-Assad empties a box of fondue mix into a saucepan for lunch. The household is run on wildly democratic principles. “We all vote on what we want, and where,” she says. The chandelier over the dining table is made of cut-up comic books. “They outvoted us three to two on that.”

A grid is drawn on a blackboard, with ticks for each member of the family. “We were having trouble with politeness, so we made a chart: ticks for when they spoke as they should, and a cross if they didn’t.” There’s a cross next to Asma’s name. “I shouted,” she confesses. “I can’t talk about empowering young people, encouraging them to be creative and take responsibility, if I’m not like that with my own children.”

“The first challenge for us was, Who’s going to define our lives, us or the position?” says the president. “We wanted to live our identity honestly.”

They announced their marriage in January 2001, after the ceremony, which they kept private. There was deliberately no photograph of Asma. “The British media picked that up as: Now she’s moved into the presidential palace, never to be seen again!” says Asma, laughing.

They had a reason: “She spent three months incognito,” says the president. “Before I had any official engagement,” says the first lady, “I went to 300 villages, every governorate, hospitals, farms, schools, factories, you name it—I saw everything to find out where I could be effective. A lot of the time I was somebody’s ‘assistant’ carrying the bag, doing this and that, taking notes. Nobody asked me if I was the first lady; they had no idea.”

“That way,” adds the president, “she started her NGO before she was ever seen in public as my wife. Then she started to teach people that an NGO is not a charity.”

Neither of them believes in charity for the sake of charity. “We have the Iraqi refugees,” says the president. “Everybody is talking about it as a political problem or as welfare, charity. I say it’s neither—it’s about cultural philosophy. We have to help them. That’s why the first thing I did is to allow the Iraqis to go into schools. If they don’t have an education, they will go back as a bomb, in every way: terrorism, extremism, drug dealers, crime. If I have a secular and balanced neighbor, I will be safe.”

When Angelina Jolie came with Brad Pitt for the United Nations in 2009, she was impressed by the first lady’s efforts to encourage empowerment among Iraqi and Palestinian refugees but alarmed by the Assads’ idea of safety.

“My husband was driving us all to lunch,” says Asma al-Assad, “and out of the corner of my eye I could see Brad Pitt was fidgeting. I turned around and asked, ‘Is anything wrong?’ ”

“Where’s your security?” asked Pitt.

“So I started teasing him—‘See that old woman on the street? That’s one of them! And that old guy crossing the road?

That’s the other one!’ ” They both laugh.

The president joins in the punch line: “Brad Pitt wanted to send his security guards here to come and get some training!”

After lunch, Asma al-Assad drives to the airport, where a Falcon 900 is waiting to take her to Massar in Latakia, on the coast. When she lands, she jumps behind the wheel of another SUV waiting on the tarmac. This is the kind of surprise visit she specializes in, but she has no idea how many kids will turn up at the community center on a rainy Friday.

As it turns out, it’s full. Since the first musical notation was discovered nearby, at Ugarit, the immaculate Massar center in Latakia is built around music. Local kids are jamming in a sound booth; a group of refugee Palestinian girls is playing instruments. Others play chess on wall-mounted computers. These kids have started online blood banks, run marathons to raise money for dialysis machines, and are working on ways to rid Latakia of plastic bags. Apart from a few girls in scarves, you can’t tell Muslims from Christians.

Asma al-Assad stands to watch a laborious debate about how—and whether—to standardize the Arabic spelling of the word Syria. Then she throws out a curve ball. “I’ve been advised that we have to close down this center so as to open another one somewhere else,” she says. Kids’ mouths drop open. Some repress tears. Others are furious. One boy chooses altruism: “That’s OK. We know how to do it now; we’ll help them.”

Then the first lady announces, “That wasn’t true. I just wanted to see how much you care about Massar.”

As the pilot expertly avoids sheet lightning above the snow-flecked desert on the way back, she explains, “There was a little bit of formality in what they were saying to me; it wasn’t real. Tricks like this help—they became alive, they became passionate. We need to get past formalities if we are going to get anything done.”

Two nights later it’s the annual Christmas concert by the children of Al-Farah Choir, run by the Syrian Catholic Father Elias Zahlawi. Just before it begins, Bashar and Asma al-Assad slip down the aisle and take the two empty seats in the front row. People clap, and some call out his nickname:

“Docteur! Docteur!”

Two hundred children dressed variously as elves, reindeers, or candy canes share the stage with members of the national orchestra, who are done up as elves. The show becomes a full-on songfest, with the elves and reindeer and candy canes giving their all to “Hallelujah” and “Joy to the World.” The carols slide into a more serpentine rhythm, an Arabic rap group takes over, and then it’s back to Broadway mode. The president whispers, “All of these styles belong to our culture. This is how you fight extremism—through art.”

Brass bells are handed out. Now we’re all singing “Jingle Bell Rock,” 1,331 audience members shaking their bells, singing, crying, and laughing.

“This is the diversity you want to see in the Middle East,” says the president, ringing his bell. “This is how you can have peace!”


Fraud investigation at the Central Bank of Bahrain

Al Gosaibi corporate fraud is a war of attrition Frank Kane (The National, UAE)

The Middle East’s biggest corporate scandal has raged for more than a year now and still shows little sign of abating, nor of resolution.If anything, the confrontation between the al Gosaibi dynasty and their estranged family member Maan al Sanea is becoming more intractable, as positions on each side become more entrenched.What began as an explosive fight over US$10 billion (Dh36.72bn) of allegedly stolen money, which may be twice that amount at stake in the form of bank borrowings from about 100 creditors, has turned into a war of attrition largely fought in the courts in New York, London, the Cayman Islands and the Gulf.

In the confusion of flying legal actions and counter-claims, it is easy to lose track of the central thread, but there are some pretty important issues that must be resolved if global investors are to feel comfortable about doing business in Saudi Arabia. What’s at stake is the corporate integrity of the kingdom and its business culture.A brief resume. In May of last year, two Bahraini banks defaulted on repayments to creditors, sparking a cash crisis for their owner across the causeway in Saudi. When the al Gosaibi family looked at the books of one of those banks, The International Banking Corporation (TIBC), they uncovered huge losses; when they examined the records of the other, Awal Bank owned by Mr al Sanea, there were similar deficits.

The result was a $10bn hole in the finances of the Saudi parent, which the family alleged was the result of theft, forgery and deceit by Mr al Sanea. He has denied these allegations consistently since the beginning.The first legal actions began in New York, ironically by the UAE-based Mashreqbank, which claimed it was owed money by al Gosaibi entities in the US, but then snowballed into courtroom filings in London, Geneva, the Cayman Islands and other parts of the Gulf.
For its part the al Gosaibi side has accused Mr al Sanea of forgery, fraud, extravagant misuse of company money – for example, on a private zoo in Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia.These and other alleged corporate sins flowed from legal filings and courtroom exhibits. In particular, and central to the al Gosaibi case, were allegations, apparently backed up by expert witnesses, that Mr al Sanea had forged signatures on financial documents.
If this very public campaign was designed to spur the Saudi authorities into action, however, it failed. The financial and corporate establishment in the kingdom closed ranks against the allegations coming from abroad; a committee set up to examine the issues is still sitting, and presumably deliberating, but we have not heard a single word in public from it.Meanwhile, it looked to be going the al Gosaibis’ way. The evidence against Mr al Sanea began to mount. There was the supposed evidence of alleged forgery, backed by testimony from former employees in Bahrain that he allegedly ran the financial companies there as his personal banks.

Investigations by the Bahrain authorities, via the accounting firm Ernst & Young and a relatively unknown corporate investigator called Hibis, seemed to support the al Gosaibi version of events in Bahrain. Authorities in the Cayman Islands, where Mr al Sanea’s master company Saad Group was based, froze his assets and appointed liquidators to assess their value; in a major escalation, a US congressman demanded an investigation into alleged money laundering aspects of the affair, which the American authorities are considering. All this gave the impression of an unstoppable momentum on the part of the al Gosaibi cause.

Mr al Sanea, in contrast, has waged a low-intensity campaign in response to these allegations. In the courts, he has answered with evidence of his own and there have been some signs recently that this is paying off. His former lieutenant at TIBC, Glenn Stewart, fled Bahrain despite an order to remain there and from the safety of California filed a lengthy complaint to UN human rights officials that rebutted the central al Gosaibi claim that they were innocent and ignorant, victims of Mr al Sanea in Bahrain. Other executives also took legal action against the Bahrain authorities for what they claimed were prejudiced investigations against them, especially by Hibis. Hibis has stood by its work.
It then emerged that the Bahrain authorities were suddenly not so convinced about the al Gosaibis’ central claims about forgery, with the ruling of a tribunal that some, at least, of the documents presented in evidence were original.

http://suqalmal.blogspot.com/2010/02/awal-bank-hibis-europe-2009.html

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100618/BUSINESS/706189864&SearchID=73395219100331

About SYRIA

Shadowland (published in the National Geographic Magazine) Poised to play a pivotal new role in the Middle East, Syria struggles to escape its dark past. By Don Belt


There's a passage in The Godfather in which a young Michael Corleone, living abroad, realizes that with his older brother suddenly and violently deceased, he now stands anointed—doomed is more like it—to take over the Mafia empire his aging father has built from scratch. "Tell my father to get me home," he says to his host, resigned to the role he is now fated to play. "Tell my father I wish to be his son." If there was a moment like that for Bashar al Assad, the current president of Syria, it came sometime after 7 a.m. on January 21, 1994, when the phone rang in his rented apartment in London. A tall, scholarly ophthalmologist, Bashar, then 28, was doing a residency at Western Eye Hospital, part of St. Mary's Hospital system in Britain. Answering the phone, he learned that his older brother, Basil, while racing to the Damascus airport in heavy fog that morning, had driven his Mercedes at high speed through a roundabout. Basil, a dashing and charismatic figure who'd been groomed to succeed their father as president, died instantly in the crash. And now he, Bashar, was being called home. Fast-forward to June 2000 and the death of the father, Hafez al Assad, of heart failure at age 69. Shortly after the funeral, Bashar entered his father's office for only the second time in his life. He has a vivid memory of his first visit, at age seven, running excitedly to tell his father about his first French lesson. Bashar remembers seeing a big bottle of cologne on a cabinet next to his father's desk. He was amazed to find it still there 27 years later, practically untouched. That detail, the stale cologne, said a lot about Syria's closed and stagnant government, an old-fashioned dictatorship that Bashar, trained in healing the human eye, felt ill-equipped to lead. "My father never talked to me about politics," Bashar told me. "He was a very warm and caring father, but even after I came home in 1994, everything I learned about his decision-making came from reading the notes he made during meetings, or by talking to his colleagues." One of those lessons was that, unlike performing eye surgery, running a country like Syria requires a certain comfort with ambiguity. Bashar, an avid photographer, compares it with a black-and-white photograph. "There's never pure black or pure white, all bad or all good," he said. "There are only shades of gray." Syria is an ancient place, shaped by thousands of years of trade and human migration. But if every nation is a photograph, a thousand shades of gray, then Syria, for all its antiquity, is actually a picture developing slowly before our eyes. It's the kind of place where you can sit in a crowded Damascus café listening to a 75-year-old story¬teller in a fez conjure up the Crusades and the Ottoman Empire as if they were childhood memories, waving his sword around so wildly that the audience dives for cover—then stroll next door to the magnificent Omayyad Mosque, circa A.D. 715, and join street kids playing soccer on its doorstep, oblivious to the crowds of Iranian pilgrims pouring in for evening prayers or the families wandering by with ice cream. It's also a place where you can dine out with friends at a trendy café, and then, while waiting for a night bus, hear blood-chilling screams coming from a second-floor window of the Bab Touma police station. In the street, Syrians cast each other knowing glances, but no one says a word. Someone might be listening. The Assad regime hasn't stayed in power for nearly 40 years by playing nice. It has survived a tough neighborhood—bordered by Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey—by a combination of guile and cozying up to more powerful countries, first the Soviet Union and now Iran. In a state of war with Israel since 1948, Syria provides material support to the Islamist groups of Hezbollah and Hamas; it's also determined to reclaim the Golan Heights, a Syrian plateau captured by Israel in 1967. Relations with the United States, rarely good, turned particularly dire after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, when George W. Bush, citing Syria's opposition to the war and support for Iraqi insurgents, threatened regime change in Damascus and demonized Syria's young president as a Middle Eastern prince of darkness. It's been nearly a decade since Bashar took office, and it's fair to ask what, if anything, has changed. It's also a good time to take stock, as Syria—responding to overtures from a new U.S. administration hungry for success in the Middle East—seems poised to resume a pivotal role in regional affairs. Henry Kissinger famously said you can't make war without Egypt or peace without Syria, and he's probably right. Like it or not, the road to Middle East peace runs right through Damascus. Yet even Bashar acknowledges that it will be hard for Syria to move forward without tending to its crippling internal disrepair. Outside the ancient Hamadiya market in Damascus, a photograph of Hafez al Assad as tall as a three-story building once stood. Marked by a high forehead and poker player's eyes, the president's giant head peered out over his traffic-choked capital of four million people, as it did from billboards and posters all over Syria. Modeled on the totalitarian cults of the Soviet imperium, this Big Brother iconography always gave Syria the feel of being sealed in amber, trapped in an era when dictators were really dictators, the days of Stalin and Mao. This is the Syria that Hafez left behind. In its place today, flanked by the city's Roman-era walls, is a large white billboard with a photograph of Syria's first postmodern president, waving. Bashar is shown with a buoyant grin on his catlike face, squinting over his whiskers into a bright sun. "I believe in Syria," the billboard says reassuringly. But it will take more than a smile and a slogan to reinvent his country, and he knows it. "What Syria needs now," Bashar told me, "is a change in the mentality." The home village of the Assad family, Al Qardahah, sits on a mountainside facing west, sheltered and aloof as hill towns often are, yet so close to the Mediterranean that on a clear day you can see the fishing boats of Latakia, Syria's largest port, and the seabirds circling like confetti in the western sky. A modern, four-lane expressway rises like a ramp from the coast and delivers supplicants to the remote mountain village, where the streets are paved, houses upscale, and off-duty regime officials—large men in their 50s and 60s who carry themselves like Mafia dons on vacation—pad around town in their pajamas. Hundreds of years ago Al Qardahah was an enclave of destitute Shiites who followed the Prophet's son-in-law and successor, Ali, so fervently that centuries before they'd been declared heretics by other Muslims and driven into the mountains of northwest Syria, where they came to be known as Alawis. Then in 1939, one of their own—a whip-smart, nine-year-old boy named Hafez—was sent down the mountain to get an education. He lived in Latakia while attending schools run by the French, who had taken over this part of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, in the great carving up of historic Syria (which included present-day Israel, Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, western Iraq, and southern Turkey) that Britain and France had plotted in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Quiet and tall for his age, Hafez was driven to succeed and ultimately to rule. After Syria gained its independence from France in 1946, he joined the Baath Party, a secular Arab nationalist movement that would seize control of Syria in 1963. Hafez rose through the ranks of the air force and was eventually appointed defense minister. From that position, in 1970, he mounted a bloodless coup with a trusted coterie of military officers, many of them fellow Alawis. Since then, followers of this tiny Shiite sect have managed to hang on to power in this complex, ethnically volatile nation of 20 million people, 76 percent of whom are Sunni—a scenario that one diplomat likens to the Beverly Hillbillies taking charge of California. Hafez al Assad survived by becoming a world-class manipulator of geopolitical events, playing the weak hand he was dealt so cleverly that Bill Clinton called him the smartest Middle Eastern leader he'd ever met. Inside Syria, Hafez was a master at downplaying the country's potentially explosive religious identities and building an adamantly secular regime. He discouraged the use of the term Alawi in public and changed the name of his home region to the Western mountains; it is still considered impolite to ask about a Syrian's religion today. He also went out of his way to protect other religious minorities—Christians, Ismailis, Druze—because he needed them as a counterweight to the Sunnis. Hafez was ruthless toward his enemies, especially the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist movement eager to remove the apostate Alawis from power and make Syria an Islamic state. To counter them, he built an elaborate internal security apparatus modeled after the communist police states of Eastern Europe. When the Brotherhood launched a series of attacks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hafez sent his air force to bomb densely populated neighborhoods in the group's stronghold in Hama. His army bulldozed the smoking remains. Between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed, and thousands more were jailed, tortured, and left to languish in prison. Despite criticism from human rights organizations, the regime soon unleashed its internal police on all political opponents. When Hafez al Assad died in 2000, his body was returned to Al Qardahah and placed near that of his firstborn son, Basil, whose adrenaline-charged exploits on horseback, in uniform, and behind the wheel set him apart from his studious younger brother, a soft-spoken health nut whose musical taste runs to Yanni and the Electric Light Orchestra. Yet any suggestion that Bashar is a pushover is an illusion, says Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. Ambassador in Damascus during the transition from father to son. "Bashar is so personable that it's easy to underestimate him," Crocker says. "But rest assured: He is his father's son." A young man in an imitation black leather jacket was drawing in my notebook, launching a sailboat on a choppy sea with careful strokes of a blue pen. We were at a café overlooking the stony hills of northern Syria, watching cloud shadows play across a landscape of red soil and silver-green olive trees. Freedom, the man was saying. That's what we need. "I'm not talking about political freedom," he said, glancing over his shoulder to be sure there were no mukhabarat, or secret police, about. "I mean the freedom to do things," he went on, "without getting strangled in rope by bureaucrats. In Syria, for guys like me, there's no incentive to try anything new, to create something. No way. You could never get approval from the government, or even the permits to think about it. Here it all comes down to who you know, what clan or village you're from, how much Vitamin Wow is in your pocket." "Vitamin Wow?" I said, recalling that there is an Arabic letter pronounced "wow." "Wasta!" he said, laughing. Money! Bribes! "Where is your sailboat going?" I asked, nodding at his sketch. "Nowhere," he said, grinning. "I've got no Vitamin Wow!" Shortly after Bashar returned from London, he diagnosed Syria as suffering from an overdose of Vitamin Wow. After taking office in 2000, he launched a tough anticorruption campaign, firing a number of ministers and bureaucrats and vowing to replace old, wasta-loving ways with the "new mentality" he was seeking to instill. Swept up in the spirit of reform, he went on to release hundreds of political prisoners and eased the restrictions on political dissent—a so-called Damascus Spring that quickly spread from living rooms to a growing subculture of Internet cafés. It was Bashar himself who had made this last trend possible, working with like-minded technocrats to computerize Syria even before he became president. Over the objections of the country's powerful military-intelligence complex, Bashar had persuaded his father to connect Syria to the World Wide Web in 1998. He also took steps to reboot Syria's stagnant economy. "Forty years of socialism—this is what we're up against," said Abdallah Dardari, 46, a London-educated economist who serves as deputy prime minister for economic affairs. Bashar has recruited Syria's best and brightest expatriates to return home. The new team has privatized the banking system, created duty-free industrial parks, and opened a Damascus stock exchange to encourage more of the private and foreign investment that has quickened the pulse of the capital and launched dozens of upscale nightclubs and restaurants. "My job is to deliver for the people of Syria," said Bashar, who is known for occasionally dropping by a restaurant, leaving the bodyguards outside, to share a meal with other diners. In his push to modernize, Bashar's most potent ally is his wife, the former Asma al-Akhras, a stylish, Western-educated business executive who has launched a number of government-sponsored programs for literacy and economic empowerment. Daughter of a prominent Syrian heart specialist, Asma was born and raised in London. She and Bashar have three children, whom they're fond of taking on picnics and bicycle rides in the hills around the capital—a marked contrast to Hafez al Assad, who was rarely seen in public. "You only know what people need if you come in contact with them," Bashar said. "We refuse to live inside a bubble. I think that's why people trust us." For more than 4,000 years, the city of Aleppo in northern Syria has been a crossroads for trade moving along the Fertile Crescent from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. Guarded by a towering hilltop Citadel, Aleppo's 900-acre Old City has remained essentially intact since the Middle Ages. Today, entering its covered suq, the largest in the Arab world, is like stepping across some cobblestone threshold into the 15th century—a medieval mosh pit of shopkeepers, food vendors, gold merchants, donkey carts, craftsmen, trinket peddlers, beggars, and hustlers of all stripes, moving in a great colorful clanking parade of goat bells and sandaled feet. If Aleppo bureaucrats had gotten their way, much of this would be gone. During the 1950s, urban planners in Aleppo began implementing a modern development plan, dissecting the Old City with wide, Western-style streets. In 1977, local residents, led by an Old City architect named Adli Qudsi, fought back and eventually got the government to change its plan. Today the Old City has been preserved and its infrastructure overhauled, with funds from both government and philanthropic sources. Once considered a crumbling relic, old Aleppo is now cited by Bashar as a prime example of the new mentality he's seeking, a model for how Syria's past, its greatest asset, can be retooled and made into a future. "Syria has been a trading nation for millennia, so what we're trying to do is return the country to its entrepreneurial roots," said Dardari. "But it's not going to be easy: 25 percent of the Syrian workforce still draws a government paycheck. We've inherited an economy that runs on patronage and government money, and we can't keep it up." To see what Dardari and the modernizers are up against, I toured a government cotton-processing plant in Aleppo reminiscent of factories in the Soviet Union, vast and crumbling monuments to rusty machinery. The plant manager rambled on like a good apparatchik about the aging factory's production figures and impeccable safety record—unaware that a group of workers had just told me about the lost fingers, crushed feet, and lung damage they had suffered. When I asked if the factory made a profit, he looked at me as if I were speaking in tongues. By allowing private investment in state-run industries, starting with cement and oil processing, Bashar and his reformers hope to modernize their operations and run them more efficiently. Many jobs have been lost in the process, and prices, no longer subsidized, have soared. But so many Syrians depend on government-supplied incomes from the cotton industry—a primary source of export revenue—that it remains mostly state run. In many respects, the Syria that Bashar inherited bears all the signs of an antique enterprise, ready for the wrecking ball. Built by the Syrian Baath Party in the 1960s, the system of state enterprises and government jobs raised living standards and brought education and health care to rural villages, but its foundation resembles the corrupt and moribund Eastern-bloc socialism that collapsed under its own weight in the early 1990s. The Syrian bureaucracy is even older, having been erected from the fallen timbers of Ottoman and French colonial rule. Education reform is also on Bashar's drawing board, and not a moment too soon. Syrian schoolchildren are taught by rote memorization from aging textbooks, and judged, even at the university level, by the number of facts they know. In Damascus, once revered as an intellectual capital of the eastern world, it's hard to find a bookstore that isn't stocked with communist-era treatises penned by Baath Party ideologues. "My 11-year-old daughter is so confused," said Dardari. "She hears from me at home about free markets and the way the world works, and then she goes to school and learns from textbooks written in the 1970s that preach Marxism and the triumph of the proletariat. She comes home with this look on her face and says, 'Daddy, I feel like a Ping-Pong ball!' " When a son goes into the family business, the old way of doing things can be very hard to change. And even though the eldest son, Basil, was considered more like his father, Bashar has ended up following in his footsteps—in more ways than one. A year into his presidency, planes hit the World Trade Center in New York City, and suddenly the threat to secular, "non-Muslim" regimes like Syria's from al Qaeda and its cousins in the Muslim Brotherhood appeared stronger than ever. The U.S. invasion of Iraq—and subsequent saber rattling toward Damascus—inflamed Syria's Islamists even further, while swamping the country with some 1.4 million Iraqi refugees, most of whom never returned home. Some believe that Bashar, in a move reminiscent of his father, diverted the widespread rage in Syria away from his vulnerable regime toward the Americans across the border in Iraq, allowing jihadists to use Syria as a staging area and transit point. Even before 9/11, Bashar had backtracked on political reform and freedom of expression. His anticorruption drive had stalled, undermined by the shady business dealings of his own extended family. Investigations into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut led to Syria's doorstep; shortly thereafter Bashar rearrested many of the political prisoners he'd released just a few years earlier. And last year, in an ironic twist for a self-confessed computer nerd who brought the Internet to Syria, Bashar's government banned a long list of websites, ranging from Arabic news sites to YouTube and Facebook. In all this, some see Bashar as the victim of reactionary elements within the regime—the youthful idealist dragged down by forces he is powerless to resist. Others see a young godfather learning to flex his muscles. Bashar blames the U.S. invasion of Iraq for pushing the region, and Syria, into a dark corner and defends his tough internal security measures as vital weapons in the struggle to survive. Whether he's talking about the survival of Syria, or his regime, is unclear. "We're in a state of war with Israel," he said. "We've had conflicts with the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s. But now we have a much worse danger from al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is a state of mind. It's a CD, it's a booklet. And it's very hard to detect. This is why we need a strong internal security." Members of the opposition, nearly all of them underground or in jail, don't buy that argument, having heard it used for 30 years to smother any spark of dissent. While acknowledging that today's repression is administered with a lighter touch, the activists I talked to consider the differences between Bashar's regime and his father's to be cosmetic. "Bashar seems like a pretty nice guy, but the government is more than one person," said a young human rights activist I met secretly with in a tiny, book-lined apartment on the outskirts of the capital. He'd been interrogated a half dozen times by various agencies of state security. "Living here is something like a phobia," he went on, smoking a cigarette, dark circles under his eyes. "You always feel like someone's watching. You look around and there's no one there. So you think, I shouldn't have this feeling, but I do. I must be crazy. This is what they want." Whatever its purpose, Syria's shadow of fear, the cloud that blocks its sun, is pervasive. To protect my sources for this article, I've left a number of people unnamed, fearing that they'd be arrested once it's published. An academician I met in Aleppo, for example, was harshly interrogated after attending a conference where Israeli scientists were present. After trying to browbeat him into informing on others, the interrogators let him go with a warning not to breathe a word or his file would be reopened. In Idlib, an Islamic fundamentalist hotbed south of Aleppo, a merchant compared living in Syria, with its internal security apparatus, to "walking sideways with a ladder, always having to think ahead and watch every little move you make." One morning in Damascus, I was talking to a group of day laborers in a park, scruffy guys in their late teens and early twenties who were looking for work. Most were from southern Syria around Dara, and we were debating what kind of city Dara is. They were bad-mouthing it as a dry and dirty hellhole; I was defending it, having passed through a number of times on my way to Jordan. While we were bantering, a bullish, middle-aged man in a green polo shirt and wraparound sunglasses drifted over and listened in. As the workers became aware of him, our discussion murmured to a halt. "Dara is a truly great city," the newcomer finally said, with an air of steely finality. The others moved away, suddenly afraid of this man. To see what he would do, I told him I was scheduled to see the president and asked if he'd like me to convey a message. He stared at me for a long moment, then went over and sat on a bench, scribbling in a notebook. I figured he was writing a report on me, or perhaps issuing some kind of ticket. A few minutes later, he was back. "Please pass this to the president," he said, handing me a slip of paper folded so many times it was the size of a spitball. Then he turned and walked away. On it he had scrawled his name and phone number and a message in rough Arabic: "Salute, Dr. President Bashar, the respected. This paper is from a national Syrian young man from Al Hasakah who needs very much a job in the field  of public office, and thank you." 

From: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/syria/belt-text Ambassador Imad Moustapha Critiques National Geographic Article on Syria Imad Moustapha,28/ 10/ 2009 
 Dear Chris Johns: It is with a heavy heart and a great deal of indignation that I write this letter to you. I read with deep disappointment on the pages of your November publication the story on Syria by your editor, Don Belt. This piece, laden with inaccuracies and disinformation, was a misrepresentation of the Syria that I belong to, and the National Geographic that I have read for decades. The article draws an unfairly bleak and intentionally inaccurate picture of Syria, reminiscent of the neoconservative literature that was prevalent during President Bush’s era, and in stark contradiction to all current, objective reporting covering Syria. It is skewed to highlight solely negative aspects of an otherwise vibrant country undergoing tremendous transformations on the social, cultural, economic, and political levels. Moreover, as an avid reader of this magazine since my teenage years, this article seems an outlier in the legacy and spirit of the National Geographic that has made a name for itself by exposing the hidden beauty of cultures and geographies of different parts of the world. This is a political article par excellence inspired by the most radical neoconservative paradigm, and it saddens me to see this great name of your magazine reduced to a propaganda horn. I can refer you to the Syrian Studies Association, a neutral and authoritative expert body on Syria that includes over 170 American academics, all of who would unequivocally refute and reject this article. The author clearly did not approach this project with objectivity; rather, he came with a preset thesis and searched for people and settings to prove his point. It is equivalent to a third-rate foreign journalist who visits the US, talks to neo-Nazi groups, such as the one who recently killed the guard at the Holocaust Museum; talks to the LaRouche group that declares there is no democracy in this country; talks to inmates in Guantanamo; talks to people living in the ghettos with high illiteracy and low life expectancy rates; talks to crime and drug lords; talks to ignorant folks that think all Arabs are terrorist and must be expelled or executed; and then based on that information, he publishes an article on the ‘truth’ about this great country. It obviously will be a specious, skewed article. A ‘Borat-style’, if you may –in reference to the Hollywood movie character played by Sacha Baron Cohen. The bottom line is that Syria is admittedly far from a perfect place. Although the author unfairly focuses on the mukhabarat legacy of Hafez Assad while ignoring how much he helped transform Syria, he makes a point in depicting that President Bashar Assad had much reform to undertake. However, to show that Syria is still a tenebrous place where people live in fear, where education is lagging, bookstores are dated, factories are defunct, progress is stagnant, run by ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ and mobsters, and lacks entrepreneurship and opportunity is an egregious fallacy. It also seems that while the First Family of Syria opened their doors and lives to the author in full transparency and candor, he reciprocated with spleen and a supercilious attitude. Sir, I have included a point-by-point critique of this article. I hope you take the time to read them carefully. Unfortunately, the disinformation, lack of objectivity, and unprofessionalism exhibited in this piece assure me that the relationship between your foundation and my country has been permanently damaged. Indeed, I believe that many other countries in our region will reconsider their working relationship with your organization when they are made aware of this incident. Sincerely, Imad Moustapha Ambassador of Syria to the United States of America Cc: Terry Adamson, NGS Executive Vice President; Don Belt, Senior Editor Detailed critique of the article:“Shadowland.” This is the first word in the article on the opening photograph. This is not what the author saw, but what he perceived Syria as before setting foot there on his last trip. It sets the stage for how he approaches this article, by pithily and hastily listing the drastic positive developments in Syrian society, while digging meticulously and painstakingly to find people and images that would fit his ‘shadowland’ theme. The opening passage of the article is indicative, truly setting the tone for the article. This comparison with the Corleone’s is an analogy that neocon, Israeli, and other writers wore-out during the previous eight years in an attempt to veil all of Syria’s reform and development behind a specious veil of a ‘mob-like’ ruling family. People like Jonathan Schanzer, Trudy Rubin, Eyal Zisser, and even the somewhat unbiased Flynt Leverett and David Lesch have used this analogy on several occasions, especially when Bashar Assad first came to power, rendering it an unimaginative, boring tautology. More importantly, the University of Maryland, along with the Zogby International Polling, conducted an opinion poll in six Arab countries earlier this year (all US allies), Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, and the UAE, which showed that President Assad was the most popular figure amongst Arab leader. These results consolidate those of last year’s, where President Assad also came in first place as the most popular Arab leader. While you might disagree with many of President Bashar Assad’s policies, these numbers year in, year out, indicate that he is actually standing for the demands of his people in particular, and the Arab street as a whole. To turn the reality around and make him into a mere ‘mafia don’ is unjust. A mafia don would not capture the imagination and hearts of the Arab street in such a fashion. Moreover, my understanding is that the author spent several hours with President Assad and his wife, discussing all issues, and even took a trip with the First Lady. This makes me wonder how can such a ‘mobster’ family, or a ‘Soviet-like’ family as he also likes to describe them, provide him with so much access. One thinks of mobsters and soviet-era leaders to be secretive, not to allow such access for an unknown journalist. “Iran pilgrims at the Omayyad”: This is an example of the image the author tries to draw. The Omayyad mosque that is always bustling with visitors from around the world and from all different backgrounds, is confined to ‘Iranian pilgrims.’ Anyone who visits it, knows that it is a tourist and religious attraction for Christians as much as Muslims, foreigners as much as locals. Obviously, singling out Iranian pilgrims aims to make specific hints, and adds a certain touch to his pre-conceived story. “Bab Touma Police Station”: This is the first of many very disturbing distortions and actual lies in the article. As a Syrian who grew up constantly visiting the Bab Touma area, I can assure you that not only have I never heard the so-called ‘screams’ from the police station, but I have never even heard of such procedures taking place in such a station. Anyone with basic knowledge of Syria knows that a police station is not involved in any political procedures, interrogations or not. Moreover, Bab Touma is the second most touristic place in Damascus (after the Omayyad mosque) and it is ludicrous to think that there would be such horrible interrogations taking place among the tourists and visitors of that area. In fact, this area has underwent the most transformation in the city as the public and private sectors focused on reviving the old city, promoting it into a premier tourist destination by turning its old houses into boutique restaurants and hotels. Thus, as one reads this awful depiction of screams, seemingly out of a thriller novel, we have to question whether there is any proof for such theatrical stories. I challenge you to find any Syrian who would confirm this woven tale. The novel continues with Syrians casting “each other knowing glances, but no one says a word. Someone might be listening.” Again, a thriller movie taking place in the most awful of places would not contain such descriptions. Instead of wasting time weaving fables of interrogations and states of fear in Bab Touma, the author could have talked about the beautiful maze of streets and houses that is Bab Touma, dating back centuries, and adorned with beautiful Damascene jasmine overflowing from behind every wall, and shyly bending into the streets as if inviting passers into these beautiful antique homes. He should have discussed the mosques and churches that stand side-by-side. He should have described the over 120 boutique restaurants and hotels, which although seem numerous, you still have to make reservations months in advance in order to find room. That is the heart of the oldest continually inhabited city in the world, which alas, the author renders it a fable of an imaginary torture cell. In reality, the sounds you hear there are not those of “blood-chilling screams”; rather the sounds of giddy locals and tourists sharing a drink and a bite under a Damascene moon, and to the sounds of church bells and Muslim call to prayer. This is the Bab Touma I grew up knowing, and it is the one I visit every year. “The Assad regime…by a combination of guile and cozying up to more powerful countries, first the Soviet Union and now Iran.” A brief overview of Syrian political history shows that Syria always maintained an independent foreign policy from either the Soviet Union or Iran. During the so-called ‘cozying’ to the USSR, Syria engaged with the US on the Peace Process, while disagreeing with the USSR on many issues, including Lebanon. Also, during that time and later, Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush, and Clinton all either visited Damascus or met President Assad in a third country. Of course, Syria was known to be closer to the Soviet Union, but it was the Cold War, and all developing countries had to take a side. The Americans took the Israeli side, Syria was forced to turn to the Soviets, all while maintaining good relations with the US. As for Iran, it is US policy in the region, and its previous attempts to isolate Syria –something which is eerily brought to mind through this article –that brought Syria and Iran even closer. If the author was honest, or maybe just knowledgeable, he would note that Syria is actually ‘cozying up’ to Turkey, which has become Syria’s closest ally in the region, politically and economically. We just removed border barriers between Syria and Turkey and our trade amounts to $2.4 billion, as opposed to the mere $0.5 billion of Syrian-Iranian trade. Relations with US “never good”: on this topic, all I have to remind the author of is: a) Syria and the US were allies during the Gulf War, fighting side by side against Saddam’s troops, and b) the cooperation on Al-Qaeda which then-Secretary of State Collin Powell described as “saving American lives” in a formal letter to Congress. The author then sets the premise of the article, stating that as there is a new administration “hungry for success in the ME,” and that we need to know if anything has changed in Syria –implicitly asking if there is change that constitutes this engagement. Obviously, the author is indirectly arguing in this article that there is not much change, or it is still ‘struggling to escape its dark past’; thus, implying that maybe Syria is not ready for engagement. Now if this was an op-ed in the Washington Times or the Weekly Standard I would understand, because first, they always discourage US-Syrian rapprochement, and second, because they focus on such matters of policy. Never, though, did I imagine that the National Geographic Society would advocate such a malicious policy of disengagement within its covers. After all, one of the founding principles of the magazine was to build bridges with the rest of the world, was it not?? “Tending to its crippling internal disrepair”: I find it hard to believe that President Assad “acknowledges” such a description. I have heard him say on several occasions that there is much room for reform and improvement, even humbly admitting that reforms are not where he hoped them to be. Still, Syria has registered an economic growth of over 6.2%, according to World Bank figures, and I find it hard to believe that it could do so with “crippling internal disrepair,” just as I doubt the President would describe it as such. Still, if he did “acknowledge” such short-comings, it does not strike me as something a ‘mobster’ does. Does it? The author then gets lost in describing the town of Qurdaha –which any observer of Syrian politics would easily tell you that it is not quite a center of power as it might have once been or as the author shows it to be. The author returns to his Soprano-esque style, describing “regime officials…flaunting their unfettered power by padding around town in the pajamas.” Again, it is either ignorance, or the author’s fascination with the mafia theme that makes him write such fallacies. If one visits any coastal city in Syria, it is a common sight to see people walking around in pajamas, women more than men. It is a very rural theme in Syria, and you can even see it amongst farmers in most Syrian villages. The notion that only gangsters do that is a purely American/Hollywood one, and can be viewed as very patronizing to Syrian citizens. The author then describes Syria as “ethnically volatile.” This is also a very egregious statement that would offend most Syrians. Lebanon is known to be ethnically volatile, not Syria. Syria has always been an example of co-existence (something attested to by Popes John and Benedict). The most vivid proof is our long history of coexistence, where violent incidents between ethnicities and sects are almost nonexistent. Historically, different religious and ethnic groups have fought side-by-side for independence, formed governments and coalitions together, and traded amongst each other. When the Armenians fled the massacre in the beginning of the 20th C., they chose Syria as their destination where they found a safe haven and managed to prosper and flourish. That would not have been the case if Syria was “ethnically volatile.” The author then erroneously claims that Hafez Assad protected other minorities “to counterweight the Sunnis.” Shamefully, the author ignores all of Syria’s history. The ethnic and religious coexistence in Syria far dates Hafez Assad. In fact, the main figures of Syria’s independence were the likes of Ibrahim Hanano (Kurdish), Saleh al-Ali (Allawite), Sultan Basha al-Atrash (Druze), Fares al-Khouri (Christian). These forces all then untied under the National Front and coalesced to fight foreign invaders together. If there is one fact ordinary Syrians take immense pride in, it is their harmonious coexistence for millennia. The author then uses the “Beverly Hillbillies” analogy. What a condescending way to describe such a proud ethnic group with centuries-old culture and traditions, and who were so pivotal in the independence of Syria. Any journalist can get “one diplomat” to describe the US, or any other country, in the most disrespectful way, but does that mean it is something to be promoted? Hama: once again the author regurgitates Israeli and neocon rhetoric in depicting the events of Hama. If he had underwent any investigative work, he would have discovered that actually the Muslim brotherhood did not just “launch a series of bombing”, but were rather massacring and beheading government officials, along with women who were ‘too liberal’ or did not confine to Muslim attire. And that the government response never included the air force, but rather, it sent troops and tanks and surrounded these extremist, and in turn a vicious battle ensued similar to the US’s encounter in Fallujah. Undoubtedly, innocent civilians lost their lives, as unfortunately is always the case, but Syria was facing what many North African countries, such as Algeria, would then face with these fanatics declaring an ‘Islamic state’ in Hama, and trying to spread it to the rest of the country. Also, the numbers of casualties put forth by the author are grossly exaggerated and again, mainly taken from Israeli and neocon authors. In fact, there is not one neutral source that can substantiate these allegations. The author then turns to a young man who tells him about Vitamin Wow. I cannot claim that just like most developing countries, there is not a certain level of corruption –something that the government has committed to fighting. However, to show only that side raises suspicion. The author never interviews the thousands of other young men who are involved in the private sector –a sector employing so many of Syria’s youth. He does not interview someone from, say the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association that holds job fairs and conferences, and promotes entrepreneurship and opportunity among young adults (one of its own was just named by the Davos-based World Economic Forum among 200 of the most distinguished young leaders in 2009). But again, such a detail does not fit the black-and-black portrait this author paints of Syria. Then, the author surprisingly dedicates one section describing in brevity the actual change and improvement in Syria, which is mindboggling. After all, the ostensible premise of this article was to “ask what, if anything, has changed?” Yet, he briefly and hastily counts the tremendous improvements, such as privatizing banks and industries, opening of a stock exchange, introducing the internet, recruiting highly qualified minds to the government, developing programs for literacy and economic empowerment, etc. This all apparently does not constitute ‘change’ for the author, and thus, is unworthy of elaboration. Instead, he is interested in guys walking around in pajamas, 27-year old colognes, and self-woven fables of dons and mafias. The author then describes Aleppo as “a medieval mosh pit of shopkeepers, food vendors, gold merchants, donkey carts, craftsmen, trinket peddlers, beggars, and hustlers of all stripes, moving in a great colorful clanking parade of goat bells and sandaled feet.” This could very well be a scene out of Aladdin, which although many in the West find amusing and enchanting, the Arab world finds offensive and emblematic of colonial and Orientalist rhetoric. The late Edward Said would undoubtedly been outraged by it and considered it further flagrant proof to his treatise on “Orientalism”. The author then claims that in the 70’s, Syrian officials wanted to bulldoze the Old City (which is already somewhat difficult to believe), until the residents prevented it from happening. Yet, the author claims that this was a time of “Mao and Stalin” style of dictatorship -“when dictators were dictators.” The author though fails to explain how such a ‘dictatorship’ would heed to the complaints of the people on such a colossal project?!?! The author then discusses his trip to a state-run factory where he talks to workers with lost fingers and crushed feet. I will not refute this escapade that he presents, but I am left to wonder why he refuses to take such a trip to some of Syria numerous private factories that he inaccurately describes later as driving prices up and forcing people out of their jobs. Syria has one of the most productive private industrial sectors in the region, exporting everything from pharmaceuticals to olive oil (Syria is the world’s 4th largest exporter of olive oil) and with international recognition. These industries and their suppliers provide jobs to millions of Syrians, as well as help catapult Syria on to the international and regional markets. The section on education is also just as skewed and inaccurate as that of the industrial sector. To say that “it’s hard to find a bookstore that isn’t full of communist-era tracts,” is either a sign of lack of knowledge or an attempt for deception. Almost any bookstore in Syria contains a wide range of books from Hemmingway to ‘how to have a healthy sexual relationship’ to theories on capitalism and economic integration. Education wise, private schools and universities in Syria are mushrooming everywhere with internationally recognized curricula. Even public universities have undergone a tremendous overhaul of their curricula and pedagogical philosophies that is transforming the education process in Syria. The author also ignores the vibrant cultural scene in Syria widely regarded as the best in the region, with Damascus being elected the Arab cultural capital –Aleppo was the Muslim cultural capital the prior year. During the year, Damascus put on such a fascinating program of artistic, theatrical and musical performances from around the world, that it received immense international acclaim (more on the cultural scene in the conclusion). The author then turns to the events of 9/11 and the Iraq war, and their resonance in Syria, where he further demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the events on the ground and their nature. When the US invaded Iraq, the Syrian street, like all the Arab streets, was vehemently against such a foreign invasion of a fellow Arab country. However, among all Arab leaders, President Assad was one of the very few that opposed the war, knowing that it would be detrimental to Syria, the region, and more importantly, Iraq (something that ironically the current US president shares with President Assad). He demonstrated once again that he represented the Arab street more than any other Arab leader. I am, therefore, confused regarding why the author said that President Assad “diverted the widespread rage in Syria away from his vulnerable regime toward the Americans…” It is common knowledge that the Syrian, and indeed the Arab, street was against the invasion before the Syrian government can take any position, leaving one wondering about the ‘diversion.’ Furthermore, when we take into consideration that the author actually acknowledges the real threat that Syria faced from Al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the “saber rattling” from the US, and the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees –all which the ‘regime’ had nothing to do –we see further signs of self-contradiction regarding ‘diversion’. The author then addresses the Hariri assassination with worrisome ambiguity. He states that it “led to Assad’s doorstep.” This is a misleading statement that leaves much room for dangerous speculation. If he means that the assassination affected Syria, then it is true, as it eventually led to Syria’s full withdrawal from Lebanon; however, this does not seem to be his intent as he does not mention such withdrawal. If by “leading” to his doorstep, he means that President Assad is behind it, then this is another blatant neoconservative/Israeli slogan. There is a UN investigation currently underway to determine the perpetrator and all the reports by the current and previous lead investigators (Bellamare and Brammertz) have commended Syria for its cooperation in the investigation. Moreover, all objective reporting on this issue has shown that Syria suffered the most from this incident, which would have made it impossible for it to be behind the assassination. Regardless, the statement is again, dangerously ambiguous and can be seen to have sinister implications. Finally, the author again talks about a “cloud of fear” in Syria, depicting it as a dark, sepulchral, state. Yet, when one walks the streets, sits in coffee shops, and reads the paper, people are freely criticizing most anything. To claim that it is full freedom of speech is an exaggeration; to describe it as a state where no one dares “say a word” is unjust. Conclusion: To sum up, as a Syrian and as a reader of the National Geographic, I expect a piece on Syria in this magazine to give justice for both. It saddens me that this article gives none to either. With a preconceived theme for his article, a “shadowland,” the author (and his photographer) sets off on a journey taking pictures and talking to anyone who would help him paint this theme. He is clearly obsessed with what Syria ‘was’, or how some neocons view it currently, instead of focusing on what it really ‘is’. The author completely ignores, or barely brushes on, the recent developments evolving in Syria. Instead, he spends pages weaving a novel-like description of President Hafez Assad’s rise to power and how President Bashar then came to power, while ignoring the ‘real’ issues of change. It inaccurately depicts Syria as a remnant of an ‘80’s style communist Eastern European’ state that is drowned in corruption and intelligence, rather than presenting a more accurate picture of Syria, which is one with a vibrant social, cultural, and economic scene. In the past few years, Syria has witnessed tremendous transformations. Economically, it has registered one of the highest growth rates in the region. Financial institutions and banks have mushroomed, stock exchange opened, previously government-run sectors privatized, foreign investment flowing and sparking a wide range of new projects and construction, the only law dedicated to microfinance in the region, among many others –some which this author mentions but does not attribute any value to. Culturally, Syria boasts some of the most sophisticated art and art houses in the region; one of two opera houses in the region; internationally-renowned novelists and poets; and vibrant film, TV, and theater productions. Politically, Syria weathered a ferocious attempt of isolation, and even regime change by regional and international powers, all while maintaining an astounding economic growth rate (6.2%) and promoting cultural dynamism. The author asks “what, if anything, has changed” in the past decade. These are the true answers to his question. This is what I would expect to find in the National Geographic. Not a tale of old cologne, mafia guys in pajamas, and a worn-out saga of a brother ‘forced’ into leadership. I would leave that to Hollywood.

Bahrain Labour Law

There are many companies in Bahrain laying off employees partly because of the current global economic crisis, partly because of their bad and unprofessional management and partly because they just seek to reduce their overheads and costs.

Some companies respect the local labour law in Bahrain, some are generous and pay the end of service benefits according to the employment contracts they signed with the employees and some are trying to escape from their responsibility as employers by not paying the salaries, leave pay and EOS benefits.

The redundancies in Bahrain should be discussed and brought up to the public attention. As all other GCC countries, Bahrain is for the first time in its recent history experiencing such a high number of job losses. The HR managers and professionals, legal advisors and the official department heads of the Ministry of Labour have recently been reviewing applicable laws, regulations, policies, processes and provisions applicable to redundancies.
Today there is only the Bahrain Labour Law, in force since 1976, regulating employment contracts, although the majority of international companies operating in Bahrain apply the modern international standards and conditions of employment. As there is no law with regard to the redundancy, the labour law is applicable in all disputes related to the termination of employment.
.According to the Bahrain Labour Law, an employee may only be legitimately dismissed by giving notice according to the terms specified in the employment contract or in accordance with the provisions of the Labour Law, chapter 14. Therefore a redundancy is almost always initiated by the provision of a written notice to the employee and the reason given by the employer (usually verbally only) is almost always the employee’s bad performance.

The employer’s need to cut costs and overheads initiates and drives the redundancy process and the most important for the employer in this process is how to minimize the costs of making the employee redundant.

Reputable local and international companies in Bahrain have policies in place and their HR departments are applying these policies to every one who has been terminated. These companies are treating employees with respect and are paying all the benefits (including bonus schemes and share options), leave pays and end of service benefits etc. in accordance with the employment contracts. The reputation and the future business activities are more important for them than to cut costs by not respecting the employment contract they once signed with their employees.

But there some companies which are doing everything they can in order to save money on the terminated employees. These companies use all kinds of methods to avoid payments of contractual obligations and they treat every employee different depending on his knowledge of the labour law and ability to make a complaint by reporting to the Complaints department at the Ministry of Labour. Sometimes the company reduces the leave pay, sometimes the number of working days, sometimes the company says that the employee is not entitled to any end of service benefit amount because he has not worked more than a year, or more than three years and therefore he is not entitled to receive it. All these discussions and disputes are arising after the terminated employee has left Bahrain.

Whatever the company says, we have to remember that there are some minimum statutory entitlements which, according to the Bahrain Labour Law, an employer is obliged to pay to the terminated employee. These are following: the notice period of minimum 30 days, the accrued but unutilised leave and the end of service benefit (gratuity). The employer is also obliged to repatriate the employee to his country of origin and pay for this end of service travel home.

These statutory entitlements listed above do not contain any compensation amount due to redundancy. The legislation in Bahrain does not provide for any obligation to pay compensation to the employee who has been terminated as a result of redundancy. The labour law does not contain any specific provisions which would compensate an employee due to arbitrary dismissal either. However, it happens that, if the court considers that an employee has been unfairly dismissed, the company will be obliged to pay compensation to him..

In the business friendly Bahrain many more employees will have to leave their jobs during this year and the years to come, and therefore there is a need for the legislation of the redundancy compensation.

Business friendly Bahrain

Useful websites about Bahrain:

Bahrain tourism
http://www.bahraintourism.com/
Bahrain government
http://www.bahrain.gov.bh/
Bahrain National Museum
http://www.bnmuseum.com/
Bahrain exhibitions
http://www.bahrainexhibitions.com/
Bahrain Financial Harbour
http://www.bfharbour.com/
Bahrain World Trade Centre
http://www.bahrainwtc.com/
Bahrain Airport
http://www.bahrainflights.com/
Bahrain Duty Free
http://www.bdutyfree.com/
Gulf Daily News Newspaper
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/

My trips in Africa during 2008

From Dar As Salam to Nairobi airport in Kenya

I took an early morning flight at 05.00 from Dar As Salam to Nairobi with Precision Air. There is nothing to do at the airport in Dar As Salam when you are waiting for boarding. No shops are open, and you have to seat one and a half hour in a small room. No coffee, no water, no newspapers, no internet and no television. Onboard the Precision Air plane a good breakfast with Tanzanian fruit yogurt and fresh bread was served.

After we landed at the Nairobi Airport, we had to walk about 1 km from our airplane to the main airport. To enter the business lounge of Kenya Airways you have to register manually at the entrance desk, which means you must queue in 30 minutes, as there are many business class passengers. And once you are there, you will find no food, no newspapers, no internet and no television (CNN). And even no place, no chair to seat on. It was an interesting experience to find out what the business class lounge in Nairobi looks like.

N’djili International Airport in Congo Kinshasa (DRC)


I departed on Kenya Airways from Nairobi at 09.15. The flight was actually quite OK, and the food too. To land at N’djili airport in Kinshasa was another experience. Forget what I just wrote about Nairobi Airport! It was a very good airport compared to Kinshasa airport!! With one difference. At N’djili airport there are several first class, VIP, business class, High class, diplomat class, important businessman’s class, important passengers class, important people class etc. I have visited four of them during my two departures and two arrivals to Kinshasa.

If you have never been to Kinshasa and would like to get more practical information, please contact me and I will give you some important facts.

Best hotels in the DRC, Congo Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo)


Hotel Venus

The best thing at the Venus hotel in Kinshasa is the high-speed internet.
The rooms are bad and so is the food. But, if you have to work and be online, you should choose this hotel.












Reception at Venus Hotel in Kinshasawww.venushotel.cd
reception@venushotel.cd
Tel: + 243 (0) 81 556 35 20 - 099 99 17 459 – 081 997 01 50
If you want to call reception from your room call 115 or 110 and room service 164


Hotel Memling


Memling hotel is considered the best hotel in Kinshasa, but the only good thing there is the food! Internet access WiFi is available for USD 20 per day, but you will not get any access anyway! There is an IT expert available at the hotel, Mr. Salamon, he can be reached 081 598 15 78.













www.memling.net
info@memling.net
Tel: +243 (0) 81 700 11 11 or (0) 997 002 000
Fax: +243 (0) 81 301 33 33

Air France has an office in the Memling hotel. Tel: 099 800 10 14



More about the DRC (Congo Kinshasa)

Another interesting thing is that there are several big supermarkets in Kinshasa, where you can buy everything, provided you are rich and earn at least USD 10 000 as a monthly salary! Local people here are poor and must live the whole month on less than 1 USD per day.
Interesting Links:

** Congo's silent harvest of death ** The decline of medical services in DR Congo has left millions dying from preventable diseases, the BBC's Mark Doyle reports.

Air France

From Kinshasa to Paris:
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday departure at 21.15, arrival Paris CDG at 06.00

Brussels Air
Daily from Kinshasa at 00.17, arrival Brussels at 07.00

Air Morocco
Friday and Sunday, from Kinshasa at 03.00 arrival in Casablanca at 11.00

Etiopian Airlines are flying several days per week via Addis Ababa

Kenya Airways daily via Nairobi