19. what to make of ten days in Syria?

Firstly, contrary to common belief, traveling in Syria is not dangerous. There has not been a single moment that I have felt uncomfortable, let alone threatened. I suppose it has been relatively quiet in Syria for the past four, five years, fighting has subdued, the government is in control again of most of the country – and those are the only places we can travel anyhow. Of course, you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time: Israel is regularly attacking specific targets in Syria, but those are strategic targets, Iranian military positions – or embassies in the middle of Damascus, granted. The director of our travel agency came along, and brought his wife and two teenage daughters, which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t think it was safe to travel.

Travel is tightly controlled, though. At every check point we have to hand over a passenger list. Our travel operator has submitted an itinerary, and it proved impossible to deviate from that. At one stage we wanted to drive to the coast, but we got the idea too late, the Ministry of Tourism was already closed, and the next morning, because of national school exams, the internet was suspended, country-wide – we cannot have students cheating, of course. So for 3-4 hours every day for two weeks from early morning onwards, the internet is down. GPS doesn’t work, emails don’t come through, websites are unavailable, mobile telephone and WhatsApp is down, payments cannot be made, it is incredible, just in terms of economic costs. And for tourists who want to change their itinerary.

For the rest, at least from what I have been able to see, Syria is a functioning country. People go about their business, they go to work, go shopping. They go out at night, restaurants are operating, the hotels we stayed are operating, too. And not only in Damascus, also in Homs and Aleppo, cities that obviously have been badly affected by the civil war. And in smaller towns, like the village of Rabah, or the small towns of Ma’loula and  Al Mistaya. People are resilient, they start their businesses again, whether in restored souks or just from a table or a carpet on the street.

Of course, millions of people have fled – an estimated 6.6 million have left for other countries, mostly in the neighbourhood, like Turkey and Lebanon, and another 7 million are thought to be internally displaced. Think of those people on the way to Aleppo, who lived in the now flattened towns along the highway. Or those in the centre of Homs, or Aleppo. Another half a million people have been killed in the civil war, give or take a few, and the victims from ISIS may add up to another 20-30,000, or so. Imagine this, on a population of perhaps 22 million before the civil war started in 2011. (Except that official population figures for 2024 are 23 million, again, whilst only a handful of the refugees have returned – enigma.)

The ones who stayed put are solidly behind Bashar al-Assad and his regime. Or at least, that is what they tell me. They may have no other option, of course – one of our group, a Ukrainian, commented that he had lived under an authoritarian regime in the past, and he well understood the limited space to manoeuvre, for our tour guides. Nevertheless, we have heard, for ten days, nothing but good about the regime, opposition is referred to as rebels and terrorists, and all the severe damage we have observed has been done by them, or by ISIS. Actually, all those rebels and terrorists were clients from foreign powers who were intent on undermining the Syrian state – Turkey, Qatar, UAE, Saoudi Arabia, and the great satans Israel and the US, of course. It is indeed true that foreign powers have supported the Syrian opposition, with funds and with weapons, although carefully, as they were well aware of that part of the opposition that was leaning towards ISIS and other extreme Islamist factions. But agents undermining the state? Fighting the regime, yes, but the regime immediately links this to plans for competing gas pipelines, at the time, from the Gulf to Europe. One proposal was from Qatar and Turkey, to bring gas to Europe, crossing Syrian territory, another was from Iran, also crossing Syrian territory but bypassing Turkey by laying the last part through the Mediterranean, to end up in Greece. All of this directly undermining Russian gas exports, at the time, to Europe. Unfortunately for Syria, none of these gas pipe options ever materialised. And Russia is the friend, helping without any ulterior motive. And is the country that got most directly, and visibly, involved in the conflict. And is the one country not blamed for the gas pipe debacle. Plenty of food for conspiracy theories, not entirely unthinkable. But the fact that there may have been some dissatisfaction from parts of the Syrian population with the rather authoritarian government in charge, within the context of the Arab Spring in late 2010, early 2011, no, that’s unthinkable. Unthinkable to those we talk to. And they may not have been able to say anything else, yet, to me their conviction seemed all too real. I really think they believe in Bashar, and in his version of the truth. Well, there are Trumpists, and there are Brexiteers, too.

Syria is a beautiful country, with fabulous ancient archaeological sites. Krac de Chevalier is impressive, and so is the theatre in Bosra, the colonnaded road in Apamea, even what is left of Palmyra. The mosques, the churches. The Bedouin tents, the characteristic bee-hive huts. Maybe not so much the country side, but alas. However, the one thing that overshadows all that is the destruction, the senseless destruction, the rubble everywhere, the bombed-out city centres, the demolished suburbs, the flattened houses. Think of the pain this must have caused, the distrust it must have generated. I have no idea where this country is going to, who is going to solve this mess. But I do hope that at one stage the people – those Syrian people, like so many Middle Eastern people funny, friendly, welcoming and hospitable – I hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel for those Syrian people. Even if they support their own government.

next, and last: a word on group travel.