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Chirol
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Chirol

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February 7th, 2006

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The Lightning Rod

In the wake of the violence in Damascus and the burning of embassies, I thought it prudent to briefly mention my experience in Syria. In the middle of September, I visited the Golan Heights. In order to do so, one needs special permission from the Interior Ministry and has to go there, present one’s passport and the day and time he wants to go. The Syrian Interior Ministry is in the embassy district which looks like another world. Taking a cab or minibus there, one is immediately surprised by newer buildings, street lights and yellow lines draw for lanes in the road (often nonexistant). The parks are green and watered daily, the grass is cut and flowers are tended to, all in stark contrast to the generally run down and filthy city. On top of that, the area is crawling with armed guards.

As my friend and I approached the ministry, armed guards stood up and a man approached us asking what we wanted. We explained and he took our passports, asked us when we wanted to go and told us to come back in an hour. There were around 8 guards with machine guns hanging around and we couldn’t even walk up to the gate of the building! So, we walked away to a nearby park, in the top left of the map below left of the American flag. Only a few minutes after sitting down, a man in a suit with a gun under his jacket approached us to ask in Arabic what we were doing. He pestered us for a few minutes but eventually left though did keep an eye on us.

The embassy district was a few minutes walk from our language school and one could navigate that entire area in a few minutes as it wasn’t very big. Yet, every street had at least one embassy on it, most of them multiple ones, all with at least two or three guards lounging outside with AK-47s. The point of the story is that I find it HIGHLY suspect that the Norwegian and Danish embassies were successfully burned. As my personal experience illustrates, in a police state like Syria, not to mention the most heavily guarded area of Damascus, the government was almost definitely involved in the incidents. Considering the mobs moved on to the American embassy and were fought off by police, I’d bet the farm that these riots were intentionally allowed to get out of control, but not enough to threaten the United States which is the last thing Syria needs now. Denmark and Norway don’t have any real international muscle to worry about.

Syria, as many other Arab dictatorships, has almost certainly stoked these riots and encouraged them so as to use the cartoons as a lightning rod, channeling discontent and rage towards the West and away from his regime helping Assad to retain his grip on power and shore up support against any western pressure.

Comments to this entry

CTDeLude
February 7, 2006
9:37 pm
As ass-backwards as we often perceive these people to be I for one cannot discount this possibility. These are shrewd men and though they have the flames of fundamentalism all around them I suspect it is as much a tool to them as anything else in their power. I've heard others speculate much the same thing and one would guess our government has caught on as well. The only question is though, what are they going to do about it, or are they even going to at all?
Mi-Hwa
February 7, 2006
11:00 pm
Chirol: You misspelled "The Lighting Rod"Â? - it should be lightning.

As for Syria, it is a big troublemaker in the Middle East. It sponsors the Islamic Jihad terrorists in Palestine. It supports the Hezbollah militant group in southern Lebanon. Many Syrians go to Iraq to fight the Americans.

America and Israel would like regime change in Syria, but the problem is that there isn't a good alternative to the current government.

Regarding the cartoon furor, I read today that a newspaper in Iran wants to publish Holocaust cartoons.
"A prominent Iranian newspaper said it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad."
Dan tdaxp
February 7, 2006
11:08 pm
Catholicgauze notes that the Arab street is fine with the invasion of Iraq, but not cartoons. We should use this to our advantage. Just as long we keep in the Danes in line, we should be able to occupy the entire Arab World without a hitch!
Chirol
February 7, 2006
11:22 pm
Mi-Hwa: Woops! Thanks for that. I fixed it.

Dan: I think their recent behavior shows that's actually what they need =) Just another example of the fact that certain countries and cultures have to be forced to develop and modernize. Speak ill of empires, but the British brought modernity to much of it and as hackneyed of an excuse that is to some, there's actually quite a bit of merit in it.
davesgonechina
February 8, 2006
7:33 am
I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the Syrian government struck a deal with certain clerics or other to allow them to burn down the embassy as long as they kept the crowd on message and didn't let it turn on the government. But consider this Zogby poll (cited by Pat Buchanan, not one of my usual sources) showing Arabs have a dismal opinion of the US and Israel. Not news, right? But those people need no prodding to riot; they just need to be allowed.

So one way to remove the governments ability to channel this rage is to take it away... wouldn't a real patriot in time of war engage in restraint, even self-censorship, if it deprived not us but our enemies of a weapon?

I think republishing the cartoons is bad strategy. In a democracy's soft power is often in the hands of private interests, like a newspaper. Unlike an authoritarian government, which controls all media, a democracy gives that power and responsibility to its citizens. Why not use the energy put into making the cartoons into something meant to strengthen solidarity between reasonable people on all continents, instead of focusing on the freaks?

I personally have been straining to hear the voices of the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims who have not stormed down a street or burned an embassy. Frankly I think they're being ignored, because they're clearly there. Here's a set of translations of Arab bloggers on the cartoon row. And Slate has translated excerpts of Arab editorials from February 3, before the embassy burnings. And finally I recommend a piece in The Times by a British magazine (Punch) editor (Alan Coren) talking about choosing controversial cartoons in the 70s and 80s. One cartoon:

when we ran a cartoon of an SS Gruppenführer contemplating a shop window displaying rows of little black discs below a banner reading "Zeiss sun monocles, 50% off!"�, I was tickled by the complaint from one of our major advertisers that that was then and this is now, and anyway, they had only been carrying out orders. They did not, however, withdraw their advertising. They could take a joke, in Jena. I could mention the war.
GI Korea
February 8, 2006
1:14 pm
I found it interesting that all this rioting over a cartoon happened after Iran was referred to the UN security council because of their nuclear program. I think they are sending a message to the Europeans that they can cause internal strife inside those countries due to the lack of integration of their Muslim citizens if Europe continues to push them on the nuclear issue.

I wouldn't be surprised if Europe backs down and the US has to deal with Iran.
Mi-Hwa
February 8, 2006
2:35 pm
There's a news article that echoes what GI Korea said.
"EU officials expressed concern that Iran, increasingly isolated over its nuclear program, was exploiting the crisis to try to unite the Muslim world against the West."
Dan
February 8, 2006
4:00 pm
Mi-Hwa, Stratfor agrees
Your Norse Whereware Companion » Blog Archive » Syrian Riots
February 8, 2006
8:11 pm
[...] The excellent travel-blog Coming Anarchy comments on the burning of the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus: [...]
R. Elgin
February 12, 2006
3:20 am
Here is a recent quote from the NYTimes, from the mouth of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, during the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution:

"I ask our dear people to prepare themselves for a great struggle,"

and

" . . . he insisted that the country would continue its nuclear activities and urged Iranians to brace for tough times."

It seems that North Korean posturing and phraseology is popular.
Kim Il Sung anyone?
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Denmark First, Germany Next
September 16, 2006
1:33 pm
[...] This entire story sounds strangely familiar. As I wrote back during the Mohammed cartoon controversy, defunct Muslim governments used the Danish cartoons as a convenient lightning rod to redirect domestic anger and international attention away from themselves. In Syria it was particularly blatant and Stratfor postulated that Iran was fanning the flames to divert attention from its nuclear program. It seems old tricks are the best tricks. [...]