I was in Kuwait when the incidents of Daraa in Syria erupted. I discovered that the man in charge of the participants, in the Poetry Festival I attended, was a young intellectual from Daraa named Manaf. He noticed the interest I had in the situation, as he was calling his relatives and friends in the city (phone communications and internet were cut off in Daraa for a while) and then conveyed the details of what was going on to me. I found Manaf to be a trustworthy source of information on Daraa and Syria. He knew every nook and cranny of the city (or “Zenga Zenga” [Alleyway by Alleyway] in Gaddafi's lingo) and knew everyone by their names. He told me that one of the people killed was his friend in high school, and showed me where his house was. According to Manaf's account, some young students aged between ten and eleven saw the images of Arab uprisings and the chants ‘down with the regime' on television, and so they went out into the streets chanting ‘down with the regime' and wrote this slogan on walls in handwriting that was obviously a child's. As a result, local security services detained them and detained their parents and teachers on counts of incitement. The people of the city held protests subsequently, demanding that the detainees be released, but were shot at, and several were killed or wounded. But what the reader may perhaps not know is that security deployment in Daraa is extensive, because of the city's location on the southern border with Jordan, and falls inside a large security zone. In his address to the nation on Wednesday, President Bashar al-Assad said that he postponed his speech until the picture became clearer. I also had decided to postpone commenting on the situation in Syria pending the President's speech. He said that the people want reform and that there are no obstacles to this, and spoke of measures to combat corruption and other measures related to the media and job opportunities. I had hoped that President al-Assad would announce the abolition of the emergency law, which has been in place for more than 40 years, and which the president inherited from his father Hafez al-Assad in 2000. However, he did not do so, but perhaps the cancellation of this law will be among the decisions that the president said in his address were taken, but not declared. I had proposed to President Hosni Mubarak, time after time, to abolish the emergency law, because it became a ‘banner' raised by the opposition against him. However, he refused to do so, and then the emergency law was abolished as soon as he stepped down, and national security was not affected in any way whatsoever as a result. I feel that cancelling the emergency law in Syria would not undermine the security of the state at all, but would instead increase the popularity of the government and the people's confidence in it. This confidence will grow exponentially if corruption is combatted at every level. Dr. Bashar had spoken to me, in the years prior to his becoming president, about the importance of combatting corruption. I remember telling him once that it is imperative to combat corruption at every level, and that if the state targets smalltime or weak crooks, and leaves the major ones alone, then it would only be adding injustice to corruption. He replied with a story about how he once supervised an anti-corruption case, involving a prominent figure that all Syrians know, to prove to me that the campaign is wide-ranging and comprehensive. However, I do not have the right to publish the details of this case without the president's consent. Perhaps some Arab leaders are incapable of acting out on their promises to the people, but President Bashar al-Assad is not among those leaders. For this reason, I hold him fully responsible for implementing promises, and insist once again that Syria has the potential to become the Singapore of the Middle East. Implementing reforms is also necessary to thwart the ‘major conspiracy' mentioned by the president in his speech, referring to enemies who masterfully managed to combine strife, reforms and the daily needs of the citizens. These enemies are well known, from Israel and its governments, to the Likudniks in and around the U.S. administration, particularly in both houses of Congress. For instance, Senator Joe Lieberman demanded that Bashar al-Assad be threatened with the same fate as Gaddafi, even though it is impossible to compare between the two men. Lieberman visited Syria in the past, and I protested against this visit and his reception in this column at the time, since he represents Israel in the Senate, not the United States. I encourage President al-Assad, nay incite him, to launch massive reforms. His position is strong in his country, and his foreign position is even stronger. I read many articles and news stories purporting that the United States, and even Israel, at a greater degree, does not want regime change in Syria, because the only obvious alternative is Islamist groups that will be more hostile to Israel than the current regime. It seems that these groups are the ‘bogeyman' for the West, be they in power or outside of it. [email protected]
