Middle East Electoral College: Syria results

Damascus, Syria – Tuesday, Nov. 4

The polls have just open across the United States, but they're vote has long been decided in Syria, where Barrack Obama has unsurprisingly won another clear victory in our unscientific little survey of how Middle East voters feel.

Asking Syrians their opinion about politics is like walking around the Vatican asking who's gay. Most people just blush and walk away when you bring up the topic.

That said, a few Syrians did open up and share their opinions, usually when they were in situations where they could be certain that no one was listening. All who did talk frankly with me said they either supported Obama or none of the above. Not one wanted to see a McCain victory, for the same reason I've heard elsewhere in the Arab world — he's seen as more likely to continue the reviled policies of George W. Bush.

Here's a sampling of what I heard:

"I think Obama is better, but America's policy to Syria will not change no matter who is president."

— Rami, 35, bartender working at a resort in the coastal town of Lattakia.

“People here believe Obama has an inclination to use diplomacy instead of military force. He likes to talk rather than flex his muscles, and I think we need to talk rather than fight.”

— Marwan Kabalan, political scientist at the University of Damascus.

"We support whichever person will help us get back Golan"

— Georges Salim Attoun, gold seller in the old city of Damascus, referring to the strategic Golan Heights area that Israel has occupied since a 1967 war.

"You can see from their faces which one is better. Obama has a better smile, a better personality."

— Sarah, 23, waitress and model based in Damascus.

"Obama or McCain? Bashar Assad!"

— nearly everyone else I asked.

So we colour Syria blue and award Obama 98 more seats in the electoral college, adding to his already wide margin of victory over McCain.

Barack Obama (Dem.) — 441 votes
John McCain (Rep.) — 65 votes

Jordan, which has 34 seats in our electoral college, will be the last to vote. Look for the final results here tomorrow, as well as perhaps a little analysis of what I've heard across this region about Bush, Obama and McCain since my journey began back on Oct. 8.

Syrian visa roulette

By car from Damascus, Syria to Amman, Jordan - Tuesday, Nov. 4

Technically, I'm banned from reporting in Syria.

I found this out last year while working on a series tracing the plight of Iraq's millions of refugees.

I asked for a visa to visit Syria — the country that had absorbed the largest number of Iraqis since 2003 — and was told I was no longer welcome.

The official reason given was that the Syrian regime had discovered that I lived in Jerusalem, and Syria denies visas to all those who have visited what it refers to as Occupied Palestine. But I knew from experience that Syria turns a blind eye to where most journalists are based so long as their coverage is perceived as fair to Bashar Assad and his buddies.

The real problem, a contact of mine in Damascus explained, was that the Ministry of Information had examined my work and found a) that I regularly referred to Bashar Assad as a dictator (Gasp! How dare I?) and b) reported on the alleged connection that United Nations investigators had found between Syria and the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Guilty on both counts, though the latter simply reporting the UN investigator's findings, not any conclusions of my own. Surely, I protested, other journalists had done the same without getting banned. My contact dug deeper and found the real reason was a favourable portrait I had written back in 2006 of Michel Kilo, the jailed writer who is one of the leaders of Syria's democratic opposition. Apparently the regime saw red when I compared Kilo to the likes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel, dissident writers who were also persecuted, but eventually helped bring down authoritarian regimes in their countries.

Here's the story. Read it again if only because Bashar Assad doesn't want you to.

Despite the ban, I was able — to my own surprise — to enter enter Syria twice in the past week despite the fact that I had no visa, tourist, journalist or otherwise.

When I crossed into Syria last week from Turkey, I was given a three-day pass only after a short interrogation by the border guards. They asked me my profession and whether I'd ever been to Israel. I lied on both counts and they waved me across. Though they had computers, I could see they weren't connected to anything but each other, so there was little risk of being caught. (The Syrian regime is paranoid about the Internet, having banned such sites as Facebook and Hotmail out of fear they could be used to foment dissent. In the information age, such an attitude can damn an entire country, or at least its rulers, to obsolescence.)

Yesterday, I crossed from Lebanon with even less hassle. An uninterested border guard stamped me in for 15 days without making me fill out the standard form. Perhaps he thought I was part of the group of Iraqis driving ahead of me in a white Oldsmobile with red Baghdad license plates who had overtly bribed the customs officials with a bottle of Lebanese arak not to look in their car.

I was quite pleased with myself last night as I wandered the old city of Damascus, chatting with the locals for the story about Syrian attitudes toward the U.S. election that appeared in today's newspaper. I had outsmarted Syria's vaunted intelligence services.

Or at least I thought I had until I arrived today at the Syria-Jordan border. When the guard asked me my profession I told him I was a teacher, the cover story I usually use when entering journalist-unfriendly places like Syria, Belarus and Zimbabwe.

"No you're not," he replied in English before switching to Arabic.

"Inta sahafi," he said accusingly, knowing I'd understand. You're a journalist.

"No," I stammered, leaning forward to try and catch a glimpse of what it said on his computer screen.

He spared me the effort. "Mark MacKinnon, The Globe and Mail, Canadian newspaper," he read.

Busted. Terrifying images of what the inside of a Syrian jail might look like floated through my head.

"Yes, but I'm leaving now," was the only reply I could formulate.

The guard dropped a blue exit stamp into my passport. "That's good for you," he said with a smile.

Quote of the week

Damascus, Syria - Monday, Nov. 3

"I think if Syrians had a vote it would be 99 per cent in favour of Obama. In other words, a proper Syrian election."

— Joshua Landis, Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.

High times in the Axis of Evil

By car from Lattakia, Syria to Tripoli, Lebanon – Thursday, Oct. 30

After three weeks of wandering through Iran, Iraq and Syria, may I humbly present you a brief backpackers' guide to the three of the least-understood countries on the planet:

Syria:

DO

* Spend a day or more wandering the Old City of Damascus. It's simply one of the most magical places on the planet.
* Pop by the Krak des Chevaliers near the port city of Tartus. I was there today and could have easily spent several more hours than I did wandering what is easily the best-kept Crusader castle in the region. Almost untouched by time, it looks like something out of a fairy tale (see the photo).
* Pack some going-out clothes. Syria may be an honorary Axis of Evil member (I think John Bolton described them as being in a subgroup with Libya and Cuba, sort of like the minor leagues of evil), but that doesn't mean the people don't like to have a good time. Damascus has one of the best nightlife scenes in the Middle East.

DON'T

* Giggle at all the portraits of President Bashar Assad, even if such enforced adulation is silly in the extreme. I counted 12 of them in one room at the Lebanon-Syria border today, many with slogans like “we're all with you” and “we love you” printed underneath the pictures of the smiling dictator.
* Try and ask Syrians about politics. Nine times out of 10, you'll run into a stone wall. People who say what they think here can easily end up in jail.

Iraq

DO

* Spend an hour or more touring the ancient citadel overlooking the city of Irbil.
* Go for a stroll in the laid-back Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah. It's probably the only major city in Iraq where it's safe for a foreigner to walk around on their own, even after dark.
* Pop by the Christian town of Ainkawa, outside of Irbil. The German restaurant there is a pretty good send-up of a Munich beer house. There's a not-too-bad Chinese restaurant (think Manchu Wok) in Sulaymaniyah too.

DON'T

* Believe everything that you read. The “surge” is indeed working (along with, a more important decision by various Iraqi groups to hold their fire for now) and has reduced the level of violence from the insane heights of the bloodletting in 2006 and 2007 to the merely nutty levels of today, but this is still very much a war zone. Outside of the Kurdish north, it's only safe for a foreigner if you've got trustworthy Iraqi friends and a bulletproof vest. (For a daily tally of the latest violence, check out the Iraq Today website.)
* Leave home without Ciprofloxacin or some other wide-spectrum antibiotic in your kit. I've been to Iraq seven times and have gotten I'd-better-sit-down-and-start-writing-my-will sick on each occasion.

Iran (well, OK, Kish Island, the only part I was allowed to visit):


DO

* Do pull out an English newspaper or book if you're sitting by yourself at dinner. Iranians love showing off their mastery (or bare competency) of foreign languages. You'll be chatting with the locals in no time.
* Book yourself onto one of the dinner-boat cruises that circle this island after dark. It's the best way to see Iranians, in Iran, kicking back and relaxing as much as they're allowed to in the Islamic Republic.
* Check out the Dariush Grand Hotel, which somewhat garishly recalls the grandeur of ancient Persia.

DON'T

* Show up on Kish Island, hoping to talk your way into a full-fledged Iranian visa. Especially if you only have a Canadian passport.
* Hum the bars to John McCain's new hit song, “Bomb Iran.”

When I set out on this journey, some friends and family back home expressed concerns that I was taking my life into my hands (Iran, Iraq and Syria! Oh my!). And while it's certainly not a route for the faint-hearted, you don't need to be a journalist (actually it's probably better if you aren't, at least in Iran and Syria) to get a lot from such a trip. And while the bus services aren't great in some parts of Iraq and Syria, they're a great way to meet the ordinary people who live in these places and never make the news.

So, economic crisis be damned, call your travel agent now and tell them you want to see the Axis of Evil today. Get there before the American army does.

The sorry state of Syria's army

Lattakia, Syria -Thursday, Oct. 29

The army of the Syrian Arab Republic often appears as the bad guy in Western media narratives.

They were the brutish soldiers who oppressed Lebanon throughout their 29-year-stay in that country. They're the jihadi-friendly outfit that looks the other way as suicide bombers to be cross Syria on their way to Iraq. Israelis still shudder at the mention of 1973, when the combined forces of Syria and Egypt staged a surprise attack one October morning.

Up close, they hardly live up to their nefarious reputation. Poorly paid and badly equipped, they're most often seen walking along the side of the road in their fading camouflage gear, trying to thumb rides.

Today, I met Abdo, a 29-year-old tour guide in Lattakia who recently finished his three-year stint as a conscript. He said he earned 300 Syrian pounds per month (about $6) while stationed near the Lebanese border. "I live with my mother, but I still need 5,000 or 6,000 pounds a month," he said. Which is why Syrian soldiers are notoriously corrupt. They live on bribes.

My first encounter with the feared Syrian army on this trip was a trio of soldiers manning a checkpoint near the Turkish border. Ostensibly, they were there to examine travellers' documents, but taking shelter from the rain in a roadside shack, they were much more interested in bumming cigarettes.

"Are those good to smoke?" a somewhat portly middle-aged soldier said, spotting a pack of Dunhill cigarettes lying in the front seat of my longtime friend Raed's car.

Raed, a Jordanian and a skilled negotiator of Middle Eastern checkpoints, flipped him the whole pack. We didn't want to be held up and scutinized. (More on that later.)

Seeing our apparent generosity, two other soldiers surged forward, leaving their Kalashnikov rifles leaning against their chairs. "Hey, there are three of us," one says. Raed handed over a second pack.

The first soldier asked Raed where "the foreigner," me, was from. "Canada," Raed said.

The soldier raised his eyebrows. "He looks like one of us," he offered with a shrug before waving us on. His curiosity had been bought off by the Dunhills.

It was easy to imagine the notorious foreign fighters of Iraq sliding through the same checkpoint with even more ease.

The U.S. brazenly bombed eastern Syria this week, claiming Damacus wasn't doing enough to clamp down on the flow of jihadis into Iraq. The truth is that even if Bashar Assad's regime were to make helping the U.S. priority No. 1 (something that's unlikely given the angry, if orchestrated, demonstrations at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus today) this underfunded, unmotivated force simply doesn't look nearly up to the task.

In the Republic of Hatay

Antakya, Turkey - Wednesday, Oct. 29

My head snapped around to look when I heard the familiar sound of Arabic being spoken. "Keefak, ya doktor?" the waiter at the restaurant shouted to an acquaintance. "How are you, doctor?"

Arabic, the language that (along with Hebrew) has surrounded me for the 3 1/2 years I've lived in Jerusalem, has been rare on this trip. And since I was still in Turkey, I didn't expect to start hearing it hear either.

But national borders in the Middle East are a poor way of judging who lives where. In fact many of the region's most persistent troubles can be traced back to the half-mad way the lines were drawn in this part of the world back in the colonial era.

Many Iraqis, for instance, curse the day in 1920 that the British united the predominantly Sunni province of Baghdad with the Shia province of Basra and the largely Kurdish Mosul area to form what is now Iraq. Similarly, though less explosively, the line that divides Saudi Arabia from Jordan cuts right through the ancient territories of several tribes who are now split by the border. And that's without discussing (for now) Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Antakya, known during the Roman era as Antioch, is another one of those places. Historically part of Syria, it was arbitrarily made a separate territory (the sanjak of Alexandretta) during French colonial rule.

In 1938, under Turkish pressure, this tiny patch of land declared independence from France and became known as the Republic of Hatay, a country with its own flag and parliament (best known as the fictional setting for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which unfortunately for the local tourism industry, was actually filmed in Petra, Jordan.)

A year later, a referendum was held — during which Turkey is alleged to have moved in busloads of Turkish "residents" — and Hatay voted to join the Turkish Republic. France, anxious to keep Turkey neutral in World War Two, meekly acquiesced.

Flash forward seven decades, and it still doesn't make much more sense than it did in 1938. The street signs are in Turkish and the red-and-white Turkish flag hangs from every shop in an over-the-top display of nationalism. But on the streets, this is still an Arab town that ended up in Turkey through a string of events almost to strange to be depicted in film.

"Ninety per cent of the people here speak Arabic better than they speak Turkish," my cab driver, Fouad, told me as we left Antakya and headed south towards the Syrian border.

In this region, where history is never forgotten, such anomalies have a nasty habit of flaring into bigger problems. But with Turkey rapidly modernizing and flirting with the possibility of European Union membership, no one is agitating for reunion with isolated Syria just now.

"Life is good here in Turkey, thank God," Fouad said. "We are Arabs, but we don't want the troubles the have in Syria and Lebanon.