Silenced by the men in white socks

The Damascus Spring has presaged no
golden summer for Syria

By Robert Fisk

Shut them up. Accuse them. Imprison them. Stop them talking.
Why is it that this seems to have become a symbol of the Arab –
or Muslim – world? Yes I know about our Western reputation for
free speech; from the Roman Empire to the Spanish inquisition,
from Henry VIII to Robespierre, from Mussolini and Stalin to
Hitler, even – on a pitiable scale – to Mr Anthony Blair. But
it's getting hard to avoid the Middle East.

When Egyptian women cry "Enough!", they are sexually abused
by Mubarak's cops. When Algerians demand to know which
policemen killed their relatives, they are arrested for ignoring
the regime's amnesty. When Benazir Bhutto is murdered in
Rawalpindi, a cloak of silence falls over the world's imams.
Pontificating about the assassination in Pakistan, Shaikh es-Sayed,
who runs one of Canada's biggest mosques, expressed his
condolences to "families of beloved brothers and sisters who
died in the incident [sic]". Asked why he didn't mention Bhutto's
name, he replied: "Why? This is not a political arena. This is
about religion. That's politics." Well, it certainly is in Syria
. George Bush – along with M. Sarkozy – has been berating
Damascus for its lack of democracy and its human rights
abuses and its supposed desire to gobble up Lebanon and
"Palestine" and even Cyprus. But I always feel that Syria had
a raw deal these past 90 years.

First came the one-armed General Henri Gouraud, who tore
Lebanon off from Syria in 1920 and gave it to the pro-French
Christians. Then Paris handed the Syrian coastal city of
Alexandretta to the Turks in 1939 – sending survivors of
the 1915 Armenian genocide into exile for a second time –
in the hope that Turkey would join the Allies against Hitler.
(The Turks obliged – in 1945!) Then in the Six Day War,
Syria lost the Golan Heights – subsequently annexed by Israel.
Far from being expansionist, Syria seems to get robbed of
land every two decades.

On the death of Hafez al-Assad in 2000 – it's extraordinary how,
like Sharon now that he is comatose, we come to like these old
rogues once they've departed – we were told there was to be a
"Damascus Spring". I always thought this a bit dodgy. I'd
experienced the Lebanon Spring and read about the Ukraine
Spring and I'm old enough to remember the Prague Spring, which
ended in tears and tanks. And sure enough, the Damascus Spring
presaged no golden summer for Syria.

Instead, we've gone back to the midnight knock and the
clanging of the cell door. Why – oh why – must this be so?
Why did the Syrian secret police have to arrest Dr Ahmed
Thoma, Dr Yasser el-Aiti, Jabr al-Shufi, Fayez Sara,
Ali al-Abdulla and Rashed Sattouf in December, only days
after they – along with 163 other brave Syrians – had attended
a meeting of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change?
The delegates had elected Dr Fida al-Hurani head of their
organisation. She, too, was arrested, and her husband,
Dr Gazi Alayan, a Palestinian who had lived in Syria for 18
years, deported to Jordan.

The net spread wider, as they say in police reports. The renowned
Syrian artist Talal Abu Dana was arrested up in Aleppo, his studio
trashed and his paintings destroyed. Then on 18 February,
Kamel al-Moyel from the lovely hill town of Zabadani, on the
steam train route from Damascus, was picked up by the boys
in white socks. A point of explanation here. Almost all Middle
East Moukhabarat men – perhaps because a clothing emporium
has won a concession for the region's secret policemen – wear
white socks. The only ones who don't are the Israeli variety, who
wear old baseball hats.

Needless to say, the Syrian prisoners were not ignored by their
regime. A certain Dr Shuabi, who runs a certain Data and
Strategic Studies Centre in Damascus, appeared on al-Jazeera
to denounce the detainees for "dealing with foreign powers".
Dr al-Hurani suffered from angina and was briefly sent to hospital
before being returned to the Duma jail. But when the prisoners
were at last brought to the Palace of Justice, Ali al-Abdulla
appeared to have bruises on his body. Judge Mohamed
al-Saa'our – the third investigative judge in Damascus, appointed
by the ministry of interior – presided over the case at which the
detainees were accused of "spreading false information", forming
a secret organisation to overthrow the regime, and for inciting
"sectarian and racist tendencies". The hearing, as they say, continues.

But why? Well, back on 4 December, George Bush met at the
White House – the rendezvous was initially kept secret – the
former Syrian MP Mamoun al-Homsi (who currently lives,
dangerously perhaps, in Beirut) with Amar Abdulhamid, a member
of a think thank run by a former Israeli lobbyist, and Djengizkhan
Hasso, a Kurdish opposition activist. Nine days later, an official "
source" leaked the meeting to the press. Which is about the time
the Syrian Moukhabarat decided to pounce. So whose idea was
the meeting? Was it, perhaps, supposed – once it became public –
to provoke the Syrian cops into action?

The Damascus newspaper Tichrine – the Syrian equivalent of
Private Eye's Rev Blair newsletter – demanded to know why
Washington was showing such concern for human rights in Syria.
Was not the American-supported blockade of one and a half
million Gaza Palestinians a violation of the rights of man? Had not
the Arabs seen all too clearly Washington's concern for the rights
of man in Abu Ghraib and Guanatanamo? All true. But why on
earth feed America's propaganda machine (Syria as the centre of
Hamas/ Hiz-bollah/Islamic Jihad terror, etc) with weekly arrests of
middle-aged academics and even, it transpires, the vice-dean of
the Islamic studies faculty at Damascus University?

Of course, you won't find Israel or the United States engaged in
this kind of thing. Absolutely not. Why, just two months ago, the
Canadian foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, discovered that a
confidential document sent to Canadian diplomats included a list
of countries in which prisoners risked being tortured – and the names
of America and Israel were on the list! Merde! Fortunately for us all,
M. Bernier knew how to deal with such pernicious lies. The document,
he announced, "wrongly includes some of our closest allies. It doesn't
represent the opinion or the policy of the (Canadian) government".
Even though, of course, the list is correct.

But M. Bernier managed to avoid and close down the truth, just as
Mr Mubarak does in Cairo and President Bouteflika does in Algiers
and just as the good Shaikh es-Sayed did in Toronto. Syria, according
to Haitham al-Maleh, a former Syrian judge, claims there are now
almost 3,000 political prisoners in Syria. But how many, I wonder,
are there in Algeria? Or in Egypt? Or in the hands – secret or otherwise
– of the United States? Shut them up. Lock them up. Silence.