Designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO more than thirty years ago, Damascus now faces a dangerous hour as construction projects set their sights on replacing the unique with the vulgar and debased

by RANA KABBANI

The city of Old Damascus is presently threatened by an obtuse and cynical plan that would destroy great chunks of it. The Syrian regime is trying to push through a "modernization" and "re-development" scheme, which would raze areas dating back to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including Syria's second oldest mosque, Jami' al-Tawba, of great beauty and historical significance. The company that aims to do this is a regime protégé. The boorish mayor of Damascus, Bishr Sabban, recently described the buildings to be razed as "garbage", not heritage. Like most regime officials, he has been ordered to say (and may, to his shame, actually believe) that the ripping out of the world's oldest city's heart, to replace it with banal and vulgar multi-story hotels, tower blocks, American-style shopping malls and motorways, is a laudable thing.

As a Damascene, with a passionate love for this gem of a city, and with family links to two of the quarters that are presently threatened with demolition, I read this plan as indicative of all that has gone wrong with Syria. The regime's desire to deface or obliterate major aspects of the Damascus past-which it may have little sympathy for, for complicated historical, political and social reasons-is reflective of the impulses of dictatorships everywhere, which deplore anything with patina, with complexity or depth, that harks back to a more sophisticated time than their own. Kitsch is their preferred vernacular.

Syria has been a dictatorship for forty years now. In that time, the country has seen a colossal brain drain of its educated elites and productive middle classes. A growing number of its people are living below the poverty line, as economic surveys sadly confirm. At the same time, there never was so much wealth in the country. It is concentrated, however, in the hands of people with strong links to the regime, some of whom are relatives of the President. These abuse their unchecked power to profiteer from monopolies, inflated commissions on government imports and construction projects, and appropriation of state land and assets. With sinister security services to act as their "business" enforcers, with a compromised judiciary and a corrupt bureaucracy, this new parasitical class has decimated private industry. By forging links to the readily-corruptible remnants of the old mercantile class, they have created a network of front men, middle men and yes-men, who help do their bidding, getting rich on the gravy train as well.

Anyone who challenges these sharks ends up in the regime's dungeons. Riad Seif, a rigorous self-made industrialist turned parliamentarian, was imprisoned for four years on trumped-up charges, for his lone and highly-courageous denunciation in Parliament of brazen corruption at the top.

Ever since the Syrian army withdrew-under duress-from Lebanon two years ago, a huge source of illegal enrichment for the regime dried up. New sources needed to be found quickly. Construction projects-often in joint-ventures with Gulf money or Iranian money-are now in vogue, setting their sights on "tourist" areas all over the country.

The projects presently being planned for Old Damascus are an example of this trend, but they may have far graver implications than the already grave ones of destroying Mameluk and Ayyubid heritage sites, which belong to the world and to future generations. One part consists of a political and financial "joint-venture" with Iran, to clear an ancient residential area around the tomb of Ruqiyya, Ali's granddaughter and the daughter of Hussein, to further expand the mosque there, to create a parking-lot, as well as an intrusive motorway for bus-loads of Iranian pilgrims to come directly from the airport to the site by car.

At present, one can reach the tomb only by foot, as one reaches everything in old Damascus-thank goodness-including the Umayyad Mosque itself. The area consists of charming warrens of alleyways, courtyard houses, khans and mosques. These are apparently being bought up by Iran, in order to go under the bulldozer. This would change the ethnicity of the place, which is Arab Sunni Muslim and Christian.

Syrians are beginning to be concerned that the "strategic relationship" with the Islamic Republic of Iran that the Assads-père and fils-have worked so tirelessly to promote, is beginning to denature their country. Syria, and Damascus in particular, is a mosaic of cultures, religions, sects and ethnicities, which have managed to muddle along, more or less reasonably, for centuries.