The posters at the bus stops show either the Syrian flag or a large, simple portrait of the President, Bashar al-Assad. There are no words, for the message is well understood: support the regime.
In shop windows, stickers show the flag, this time accompanied by a rallying cry such as ”Only for Syria” or ”Syria bows to no one but God”.
Two lines from the national anthem describe it: ”It has blackness from each black eye, And redness from the blood of each martyr.”
In most countries such a binge of patriotism would signal an international football match. In Syria, it is a response to the greatest crisis the regime has faced for years: a United Nations investigation into the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which has already fingered Syrian intelligence as probably responsible.
Only a few months ago the regime seemed anxious, but last month it won breathing space after publicly challenging the evidence of at least two witnesses and cooperating just enough to stave off the threat of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council.
Damascus was also heartened by pressure on Washington from regional powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who do not want the investigation to trigger the collapse of the Syrian government and a possible descent into violence. ”Everybody is saying we don’t need another Iraq in the region. I think they will exert more efforts to reduce the current crisis,” said Marwan al-Kabalan, a political analyst at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Damascus University.
That, however, was before former vice-president Abdel-Halim Khaddam delivered his bombshell, implicating Assad directly in threats against Hariri, if not the murder itself. This has swung the regime back into defiant mode, accusing Khaddam of treason and anything else it can find to blacken his character.
Defiance comes at a price. Long-awaited promises of reform are already slipping away. The government still oppresses opposition activists and works hard to prevent dissent; in a speech at Damascus University last month, Assad warned that this was not about to change. Discussion of a law allowing the formation of new political parties would now ”take a long time”.
In a café in Damascus, Louay Hussein is sipping coffee and worrying about the future. He spent seven years in jail as a political prisoner in the 1980s. Now he runs a publishing house and writes political commentaries. Last year the government ordered him to stop writing, but he ignored the warning.
He argues strongly for reform, but believes pressure from the West is preventing it, not encouraging it. Like most dissidents in Syria, Hussein opposes the government but does not want it toppled because there is no opposition movement ready to take its place.
”We don’t want to change the regime, but we need to change the policies of the regime,” he said. ”But I don’t think the West is aware that this regime doesn’t know how to change.”
He discounts the chance of a popular uprising or coup, but says a collapse into violence is a real possibility. ”If people think the Islamists will take over if this regime falls, that is not true. It will be worse. There will be chaos.”
A few streets away are the offices of Nabil Sukkar, an economist who worked at the World Bank. He too believes reform is imperative, not just because of the political crisis but also because deeper economic problems beckon. Already Syria has low economic growth and an unemployment rate as high as 20%. Its oil reserves are running so low that in five years it will become a net importer. The country’s natural gas reserves have not been well exploited. The population continues to grow.
In the past, change in Syria has been spurred by economic crisis, not ideology, Sukkar says. ”We have no choice but to reform, otherwise we will face a crisis in five years’ time.” — Â