Ali and his cyber-savvy friends have an unlikely ally in their bid to modernize Syria: Col. Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the 34-year-old son and unofficial successor of the republic’s president. Bashar, a shy ophthalmologist who was thrust into the role of heir apparent when his older brother, Basil, was killed in a 1994 car accident, has begun promoting his pet causes, computers and the Internet. “Before long, the computer culture is going to become an integral part of our traditions,” he told the Beirut newspaper Al-Kifah Al-Arabi, in his first major press interview in February. “[And] just as illiteracy until fairly recently meant a human being’s inability to read and write, the latter-day version means an inability to use the computer.”
Outwardly at least, the dawn of the Information Age has produced little real change in Syria. The government is still dominated by President Assad, who was re-elected to a fifth consecutive seven-year term in February with a 99.987 majority. The long-ruling Baath party faces no real political opposition, and there is no independent press. But the regime’s stranglehold on information has begun to crack. Four years ago, fax machines were still banned. Then satellite TV dishes began to sprout (illegally) on the rooftops of wealthy Damascenes. Today, tens of thousands of households can tune in to MTV and Sky News as well as to a host of (non-Syrian) Arabic-language programs. The state-owned telecommunications company recently started taking applications for e-mail accounts after officials realized that hundreds of people had signed up with foreign-based Internet service providers.
To many of his countrymen, Bashar has become the standard-bearer for the cyber-revolution. “He’s very interested in new technology, and he likes to read about satellites and telecommunications,” says Osama Ali, who first met Bashar in 1995. “Everybody is looking to Bashar [because] he will be the guy who will open the country to investors, tourism and [new] industry.” But not all Syrians share Bashar’s enthusiasm for new technology–especially not his father, the military or the apparatchiks of the Baath party. A couple of years ago, government officials put out a tender for a cell-phone service contract until Assad’s intelligence chiefs vetoed the idea on the ground that it threatened national security. Talk of licensing a local Internet service provider remains just talk– at least for now. That sense of paralysis is mirrored at the highest echelons of the party and state. “The cabinet has been there for such a long time, and this is creating a lot of frustration because a whole new generation was looking forward to serving the country,” says a professor at the University of Damascus. “They feel they’ve hit the glass ceiling and there is nowhere to move up. Even within the party there is a restlessness.”
The low-profile tug of war between defenders of the old order and a younger, more restive generation is unfolding against the backdrop of a shrinking economy. In real terms the gross domestic product shrank by 4 percent in 1997. Depressed world prices for oil exports–Syria’s largest source of foreign exchange–are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. And there is no realistic hope of reversing a recent fall in yearly remittances by Syrians who work in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf. Though limited economic reforms have attracted more foreign investment in the last five years, the state still accounts for about a third of the economy, and there is still no stock exchange or private banking system where businessmen can go to raise money. “Economically, there is a sense of total blockage because certain decisions [have not been] made about the role of the private sector,” says the University of Damascus professor. “The private sector has grown in strength and economic influence, and the big fear of Assad is that this will get translated into political power.”
That hasn’t happened yet. As Assad approaches his 69th birthday, he faces no credible threat apart from his frail health. So far, the number of Syrians who have followed Bashar Assad’s footsteps into cyberspace remains small. The flood of uncensored news reports via satellite has not undermined the foundations of the regime. But that may be changing. Some Syrians cite the influence of instant news coverage for the spontaneous unrest that engulfed the Greek Embassy in Damascus last February after angry Kurds gathered to protest the arrest of guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan. They advise Middle East leaders to stay tuned. “As Syria increasingly becomes a recipient of technology, the walls of the state are being chipped away,” says one U.S.-educated political scientist. “It is creating a more assertive, aggressive, information-thirsty younger generation, and [whether] this is translated into organized political action is too early to tell. But this is no longer a regime that is in control of everything as it once was.” With or without their government’s approval, Syrians will find their way online.
