In the Lion's Den Read online

  As I worked for the first lady, and MAWRED and its business incubator would soon be officially opened, we had all the political cover we needed to produce our sample edition. Other, more fundamental obstacles stood in our way, however. Decades of authoritarianism and isolation meant that English speakers and writers were few, and those who could write effectively were even fewer. The only Syrian writers that I could remember from my work at OBG were Ammar and Amr al-Azm, an archaeologist and son of renowned Syrian intellectual Sadiq Jalal al-Azm. Given that the Israeli strike had just occurred and Syrians were keeping quiet about political reform, Leila and I decided that we should therefore write about something people could talk about openly. Because we were in one of Syria’s new NGOs under the first lady’s patronage, we thought we would use our experience to talk about NGOs in Syria and what they could do, if they had some legal reform. I assigned Ammar the NGO article and gave assignments on the country’s poverty problems and its wealth of mosaics to Amr. I would write on the slow pace of banking reform in Syria as well as writing the news notes and editing the magazine.

  With Syria Today‘s plan in place, Leila and I were optimistic that the first lady’s efforts would push reform forward in Syria. For Leila, the first lady was a role model for what a woman could aspire to in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. As for me, while US sanctions seemed to be on the way, US-Syrian trade was so small that some of the sanctions’ proposed measures, including a trade or investment ban, seemed to have little threat. Consultancy and journalism—my professional fields—would be unaffected by the sanctions. So I decided to stay the year in Damascus with Leila and take my chances. The only way was up.

  On December 11, 2003, President Bush signed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SAA) into law. The bill demanded that Damascus “halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of weapons of mass destruction, [and] cease its illegal importation of Iraqi oil and illegal shipments of weapons and other military items to Iraq.” The text added that Syria “will be held responsible for attacks committed by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups with offices or other facilities in Syria.” Under the SAA, the president was required to choose at least two of six outlined penalties within six months of the bill’s signature. The options included a reduction of diplomatic relations with Syria, a ban on US exports to Syria, a US investment ban, a restriction on Syrian diplomats within twenty-five miles of Washington and the United Nations, a ban on Syrian flights to the United States, and a freeze on Syrian assets under American jurisdiction.2

  In a public statement, Bush said the bill was “intended to strengthen the ability of the United States to conduct an effective foreign policy,” but there were tensions surrounding the decision as well. Under the American constitution, foreign policy is the domain of the executive branch. Bush’s statement added that “a law cannot burden or infringe the president’s exercise of a core constitutional power by attaching conditions precedent to the use of that power.” Just like his predecessors, Bush didn’t want his hands tied when dealing with Damascus. In response, Syria’s state news agency blamed the law’s passage on “the partisans of Israel in the American Congress … who want more than anything for Syria to end its support for the resistance of the Palestinian people.”3

  At MAWRED, no one even noticed—the staff was busily preparing for Mrs. Assad’s official opening of MAWRED’s business incubator on December 13. Until then, the incubator, which consisted of three offices in a corner of the SEBC’s ground floor, operated “unofficially” as a “pilot project.” In the days leading up to the opening, Rola rallied the NGO’s staff to finish the organization’s website and tape up some posters on the walls. The key person on this was Dunya Istanbuli, a Syrian-American SEBC analyst whom I had met in 2001. She was now the daughter-in-law of a senior Syrian military officer. Dunya and I worked marathon sessions editing and rewriting the website’s English text, which had been poorly translated from Arabic.

  As Asma al-Assad walked into the NGO that Saturday, the SEBC’s staff, dressed in their best attire, greeted her at the door. Standing behind the staff were representatives of the European Commission, which sponsored the SEBC, as well as the ambassadors and their wives from Greece, the Netherlands, and a few other countries. In the days leading up to the opening, Rola had given the European representatives guided tours of the incubator, after which their countries were thanked on the NGO’s website for their “support” of MAWRED.

  After a brief collective hello, Rola then guided the first lady around the incubator and introduced her to its projects, which, like Syria Today, she had already approved. As Mrs. Assad walked into Ammar’s office in her turquoise silk dress, only the sound of rustling clothing could be heard as staff members scrambled to open doors for her or get out of the way. This was the first time I had seen Mrs. Assad since my interview and the first time she had been seen in public since the birth of her second child, Zein.

  Mrs. Assad shook hands and rubbed shoulders with the European diplomats and representatives for about half an hour before waving a friendly good-bye and heading gracefully out of the front door. There was an air of excitement in the room, which frequently happens in the Arab world where the people seldom see their leaders. It wasn’t just that she was the wife of the leader of Syria—she was the only remaining hope for her husband’s reform promises. For me and the European diplomats, Asma al-Assad was also a comprehensible and reasonable individual in an opaque regime.

  I went upstairs to find Rola, who was sitting on a chair in her office surrounded by a handful of SEBC senior staff. She was writing down figures frantically on pieces of paper and handing them over to one of her colleagues, who was sitting at her computer terminal. The staff quietly watched in awe as Rola provided estimates for the NGO on everything from electricity to seed capital for small businesses. She put down her pen and looked me in the eye. “Next year is going to be a good year, Andrew,” Rola said, a sly smile on her face.

  I stopped by Rola’s office a few days later to say hello. The confident person of MAWRED’s opening now sat slumped over her desk, leafing through the pages of her passport. Her fingers were cocked back like the hammer on a revolver.

  “I need to go to Switzerland for treatment,” she said. “I suffer from a rare disease that will eventually kill me.”

  I was shocked. I had noticed that she had certain minor physical limitations, but I had not thought that they were due to an underlying disease.

  “I’ll be back in a few weeks,” she said. “Keep working on the magazine.”

  When I arrived back in Syria after the Christmas break, I talked with all the writers about their progress on the articles and the approaching midmonth deadline. Amr told me that he was still working on his assignments but didn’t discuss his progress in detail. Ammar simply said he had done nothing on his article at all. “Every time I sit down to write, I just start attacking the regime,” he said. I reminded him that if he did a bit of research and conducted some interviews, he should have lots of raw material for an article. “I can’t write it, but I know someone who can,” he said. “He’s written on this before.”

  The lack of activity by the Syrian writers filled me with a sense of dread. It wasn’t fear of the authorities—I was confident of our political cover—or worry about the magazine’s design and concept, which had already been finalized through a Dutch friend and former colleague in Istanbul. It was the sense that the Syrians were making no progress—even energetic Leila, my business partner and guide to Syria, seemed to be doing little on marketing and other research. I was confident that I could put together a magazine and edit it, but how could I do anything if I had no raw material to work with? And how could it turn into a viable venture if we had no idea of the market?

  The mid-January deadline came and went without a single writer’s achieving it. After a few more days of haranguing Ammar, he presented me with an Arabic text by a Syrian writer on civil so
ciety and NGOs in Syria. It had no discernable argument, covered none of the NGOs under the first lady, and gave no references or quotes to support its points. The only article that I had in hand was my own on Syrian banking and a few news notes.

  So I began work on the NGO article myself from scratch, interviewing people from FIRDOS and some of the other NGOs under the first lady’s patronage. Getting information was like pulling teeth, but what I found was interesting and helped me understand the layout of the “limbo land” in which I was working.

  Since marrying Bashar, the first lady had quietly built a network of what are internationally referred to as operational NGOs: bodies dedicated to the design and implementation of development projects. These NGOs mirrored the Baath Party’s “popular unions,” organizations formed in the 1960s when Syria’s civil-society associations and other clubs were consolidated under the Baathists’ control. Legally, Asma’s charities were the same as the hundreds of charities that had sprung up since Hafez al-Assad passed a law in 1974 that gave these organizations tax-exempt status. They were dedicated to specific causes: FIRDOS addressed rural poverty; MAWRED, women; the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association (SYEA), entrepreneurialism; Qawz Qaza (“rainbow” in Arabic), abused children; and AMAL, the disabled. As charities, they officially steered clear of advocacy activities such as the defense or promotion of a specific cause in order to influence public policy, which is the very activity many of the discussion forums sought to do when they tried to register under the associations law during the Damascus Spring. However, because these NGOs were “from the first lady,” all those that I interviewed actively lobbied the Syrian government on their field of expertise. As a result, Syrians and the international community now had two ways to lobby the Syrian government to reform: through the state or through Asma’s NGOs.

  After a month of writing, working with external copyeditors in Beirut, and traveling to Turkey for design-layout discussions, we printed our sample edition (legally in Syria called “zero edition”) in Beirut in the first week of March 2004. I illegally smuggled a hundred or so copies in my suitcases over the Lebanese frontier to our office in Syria, where I passed them out to everyone at MAWRED and FIRDOS. I sent thirty copies to the palace through the FIRDOS mail system; I included a letter from Leila and me to Mrs. Assad, which thanked her for her quiet support for our project. I also asked her if the NGO would like to import the magazine from Lebanon.

  A few days passed, and I didn’t hear back from the palace. So I called the first lady’s secretary, Lina Kinaye, to see if she had received the copies I had sent. She confirmed that they had arrived and said that I should send thirty more, which I immediately did. When three days passed and I didn’t hear from the palace, I called Rola. I had been in touch with her about once a week during her absence to give her updates on the magazine’s progress. Each time she was encouraging and asked lots of questions on the publication date and marketing plan. During this call, however, I asked most of the questions. She broke it to me a few minutes into the conversation: the first lady didn’t want to help to import the publication into the country. In an instant, I reviewed the magazine’s contents in my mind. I had read and reread the text countless times with an eye to avoid the only red lines I knew: criticism of the president and his family or anything that promoted sectarianism. Nothing came to mind, but we had been very critical of the Syrian government’s population policy as well as the government’s unwillingness to reform. I then asked Rola if there was something specific we could remove and gain the first lady’s support. “No, it’s not that,” Rola said sadly, then said she had to go.

  Leila arrived at my house half an hour later. As I told her that the first lady didn’t want to help us import the magazine, Leila’s tears poured down her face. I put a finger to my lips and pointed at the ceiling, not knowing where a listening device might have been planted in my apartment. We ran out of my apartment and onto the street to talk privately.

  Leila kept looking over her shoulder into the darkness and ahead of us into the areas illuminated by streetlights. “Do you see someone there?” she asked me. When I said no, she still insisted someone was watching us. “It’s mukhabarat [intelligence agents], don’t you see them,” she said in complete panic, tears streaking her face. Not knowing what to do, I held her hand and told her not to worry. “I will talk with the first lady personally,” I said. “Don’t worry, we haven’t done anything wrong.”

  The next morning I sent a letter in the company mailbag up to the palace requesting a meeting with the first lady. As I knew she wasn’t helping us with the magazine’s import procedures, Leila called the Ministry of Information and made an appointment with deputy minister Taleb Kadi Amin. A rotund man with a thick grayish-brown mustache and sporting a 1970s-style comb-over haircut, Taleb was known to be among the ministry’s “reformers”—officials who, supposedly, were not closely aligned with the country’s intelligence services.

  Taleb greeted us with a firm handshake and asked us to sit down. After a few minutes of introductions, Taleb looked at Leila and me and said, “Where is Ms. Rola Bayda?”

  Surprised he knew Rola and that we worked with her, we told him she was out of the country recovering from an illness.

  “What about the money from the UNFPA [United Nations Population Fund]?” he asked.

  Leila just stared at me, not knowing what to say. We were there to talk about importing the magazine, and he was asking us about money from a UN agency.

  After we made it clear that we didn’t know what he was talking about, Leila presented him with our sample edition for submission to the ministry’s censorship bureau. Syrian law stated that no printed material could enter the country without approval from the Ministry of Information, so we needed permission in order to clear the magazine’s shipment from Lebanon through Syrian customs. He shook our hands as we left and asked us to call him the next day for the verdict.

  In the ministry’s rickety elevator, whose stainless-steel sides scraped the sides of the elevator shaft as we descended, I remembered that the UNFPA was listed among the bodies supporting MAWRED. I also remembered that the agency’s Syrian director, Dalia Hajjar, was a good friend of Rola’s. Dalia was smart and well educated; she was also from the ruling Alawite elite. It was widely rumored that the first lady would soon promote Dalia to be the head of Syria’s “Family Council”—an umbrella institution that the first lady was creating to deal with the myriad problems facing Syrian families.

  Thoroughly confused and not knowing what to do, I initiated a process of damage control. After Leila received the censor’s approval the following day, I also requested that she obtain all permissions to distribute the magazine as well. Next, we imported the sample edition’s five thousand copies into the country and stored them at my apartment, well out of the way of anyone snooping around Syria Today‘s offices at the MAWRED incubator. I then drafted a letter with Leila introducing the magazine. Finally, we sent introductory copies to all the embassies, the EU and UN agencies, and all the ministries.

  Letters of support started to fill our e-mail in-boxes. One impassioned e-mail from the chief of the UN Development Program’s office in Damascus urged us to push forward “no matter what obstacles we faced.” It made us feel good to hear that people enjoyed the publication’s writing, editing, and layout—but underlying every message was something else: what we were doing was unprecedented and needed to continue at all costs.

  Two weeks later, Rola suddenly returned to Syria. When I stopped by her office to welcome her back, I found Rola sorting through stacks of papers a foot or higher on her desk. While she was superficially chipper, she looked as if she had aged considerably since I last saw her three months ago. I asked her about what had happened with the sample edition of Syria Today. She said that all she knew was that the first lady didn’t want to help with importing the magazine. That was it.

  Down in the incubator, however, rumors ran wild regarding some kind of problem between Rola and t
he first lady. At first, Leila heard someone saying that the first lady was angry with Rola for running the NGO badly, while someone else said that the first lady was just keeping everyone at arm’s length because US sanctions were being put in place. Some of the rumors were coming from Dunya; others were coming from known Rola supporters.

  With the fate of the Syria Today project uncertain, I turned my attention to writing for Beirut’s English-language broadsheet, the Daily Star. I tackled Syria’s recent announcement to cut taxes, the implications of US sanctions on Syrian business and its oil industry, and, while I visited home in Pennsylvania, the impact that spiraling US casualties in Iraq was having on local politics.

  In April, Leila and I assisted a team from the World Bank to evaluate Syria’s investment climate. The group was led by Joseph Battat, a Lebanese American and well-known China expert. A few days after their arrival, Joe asked me to a dinner at Arabesque, at that time the best restaurant in Damascus’s Old City. Between entrées, our conversation quickly moved on from Syria to me.

  “I’ve been watching you,” Joe said, looking intently at me. My spine immediately stiffened, thinking for sure that this was a pitch to work for a foreign-intelligence agency.

  Seemingly reading my mind, he said, “No, no, it’s not CIA stuff. I know what it’s like to be you—a rare person in a strange place. I was one of the only foreigners allowed to be in China after Mao died, during the Gang of Four time. I worked with the State Council, the country’s highest decision-making body, to reform China.”