Word: damascus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Recognizing that Syria could play a decisive role in curbing Hizballah's capacity for violence, Administration officials have been talking up plans to "peel Syria away" from its ties to Iran, although its refusal to talk directly to Damascus means it has to outsource the job to Arab allies viewed by Syria with contempt. And unless they're offering a credible incentive, they're probably wasting their breath: Syria has withstood years of pressure and harangues from the U.S. - perhaps aware that the U.S. and Israel, knowing that the most likely alternative is the Muslim Brotherhood, actually want to keep...
...Fouad Wehbe sucks on his houka pipe at the Rawda coffee house around the corner from my apartment on Sharia Pakistan in Damascus, the irony of his current plight is not lost on him. Last year, Wehbe, 26, joined thousands of his countrymen on the streets of Beirut to call for an end to Syria's domination of his homeland, and threw a heady, vodka-fueled "Liberation Festival" in his Hamra apartment when they officially withdrew. Then, last Thursday, the graphic designer, his parents and brother paid a cabdriver $2,500 to drive them out of Beirut to the heart...
...Wehbe's hometown of Beirut was, in many ways, a kind of Middle Eastern New York: a vibrant cultural capital where an educated homegrown populace rubbed elbows with a parade of jet-setting foreigners. By contrast, the far more conservative Damascus gives off an Arab-flavored Soviet vibe, from the paranoid residents and omnipresent secret police to the 30-year-old junkers rolling along the streets. The flow of refugees from Beirut to Damascus, therefore, has made for an odd tableau: the normally dreary city is suddenly teeming with sharply dressed Lebanese and foreigners figuring out their next move...
...Sitting here in Damascus, I am left with the difficult task of reconciling how much has changed in such a short time. On the day of the kidnappings and the initial Israeli response, I met with an American professor friend to discuss a non-partisan American voter-registration drive we were organizing in the Bekaa Valley. I had volunteered at a similar event in May, at which we processed over 100 voter registration and absentee ballot requests from expatriates and Lebanese-Americans...
...chance of winning Palestine back for the Palestinians, and Israel's attacks on Hizballah do nothing, long-term, to make its borders safer. But if this conflict continues much longer, Lebanon will have no chance of remaining the special place it is - and I will have to stay in Damascus, a city I do love, for all the wrong reasons...