June 2007

Light morning breeze, perfumed with the smell of freshly cut grass, amplified with the echoes of hurried steps. It is the start of a new day on the campus of the University of Kalamoon (UOK) in Deir Atieh, about 80 km north of Damascus.

07:55 am: The hallways are filled with hustling students rushing for their class-rooms. Quick ‘hellos’ are exchanged. Some students gather around the never ready instant “express” coffee machine trying to get a jolt of caffeine before embarking on a long day, working their brain cells in class.

I met him over a family dinner a couple of months before his death, when he was visiting Saudi Arabia as a speaker at The International Anti-Terrorism Conference. Free, inspiring, confident, elegant, and magnetic I was enchanted by his natural charisma, humbleness, sparkly outlook and sense of humor. Mustafa alAkkad was not an ordinary man. He was living testimony of an Arab who has made his way to Hollywood, the dream of many, at an early stage in his life.

 

Tiffany Darwish, the pop star of the 1980s, was born in the United States in October 1971. In 1981, she had her first public performance with a band at a country nightspot. She passed her hat around afterward and collected $235, leading her stepfather to realize that her singing could be a source of family in-come. In 1982, she toured several clubs in Alaska, earning $3,000, and debuted with her first album Tiffany, released by MCA Records, in 1987. That summer, while at-tending high school, she did a highly publicized mall tour in the US, earning coverage in People Magazine. By this time, her ground-breaking hit “I Think We’re Alone Now,” became the second-most-re-quested song on local radio. MCA Records was finally convinced to release this song as a single, after much resistance on the grounds that they were not “into” the Tiffany project. On September 26, 1987, “I Think We’re Alone Now” debuted on the Billboard singles chart and stayed there for 13 weeks. She debuted on the Bill-board album chart, and the album Tiffany reached the #1 spot. One month later, she appeared on “Tonight Show” and by November 1987, her hit single knocked Michael Jackson’s “Bad” off the charts. Her other song “Could’ve been” debuted in December 1987, staying on the pop singles chart for 14 weeks. It reached #1 on the Billboard chart in February 1988. In November 1988, her second album, “Hold An Old Friend’s Hand” was released in the US and one of its songs, “All this time” stayed on the charts for 14 weeks, peaking at #6. One year later, she toured Japan, Manila, Malaysia, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Korea. She got back to the US in June1989, just in time for her high school graduation. Also in 1989, Tiffany did the voice of Judy Jetson in the “Jetsons” movie, singing three songs for its soundtrack. The movie was released in July 1990. In December 1989, Tiffany releases her new song “Here is my Heart” with a dedication to US troops in the Persian Gulf. She released other songs in the 1990s, which failed to meet her previous success, but made a comeback in 2005 with her new album “Dust off and Dance.”

Waterpipes are a widespread method of tobacco smoking. It comes in different names, shapes, and can be found in different countries. Among the well known names in this part of the world are shisha, argeelah, or hubble-bubble. The concept is universal; the passage of smoke through the water before the smoker inhales the tobacco.

 

The Junior Chamber International (JCI) is a worldwide federation of young leaders and entrepreneurs aged between 18 and 40, with local chapters in more than 5,000 communities located in more than 100 cities with more than 200,000 members. Founded in Mexico City on December 11, 1944, JCI provides young people with the opportunity to develop their leadership skills, social responsibility, entrepreneurship and the fellowship necessary to create positive change. In 2004, five young and motivated Syrians founded JCI Syria under the umbrella of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Damascus was the first city to host the newly established organization. Then came Aleppo and Homs. Coming next is Latakia.

Reading the comments section of online Israeli newspapers over the past few years one concludes that Israelis are divided in their opinions and reactions to Syria’s calls for a resumption of peace negotiations that will lead, among other things, to the return of the occupied Golan Heights to Syria. Many Israelis wisely realized that their powerful army, the IDF, will not be able to ensure their security and stability for too long. Those Israelis are strong supporters of peace negotiations with Syria, and most of them support the full return of the Golan Heights to Syria. Yet, others are not convinced. Among them one finds that the reasons why they refuse to support giving back the Golan are usually a combination of the following:

 

I Act I—Hiroshima t was 08:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, when the Enola Gay (the most notorious plane in the history of modern warfare—innocently named after the mother of Col. Paul Tibbets’, her commanding officer) dropped her lethal gift to the Japanese people—and to humanity—over Hiroshima.

 

Throughout history diplomats have used a little known device to break impasses, or stand-offs, between sovereign states. That device was called the “back channel.” So when King Henry VIII, of England, was “not talking” to the Pope about his desire for a divorce, he might have conceivably used a “third party” (someone friendly to both the royal court in London and the papacy in Rome) to keep the dialogue open—and potentially resolve the conflict. I would like to put forward the case that “back-channel diplomacy” should be much more broadly defined to include a great many different types of bilateral contacts between societies that are often at “loggerheads” with one another. Contacts that are educational, cultural, economic as well as political and diplomatic. So, let me begin this discussion by stating its fundamental premise: what unites human beings is fundamentally more important than what divides them. It may seem self-evident but just reflect how hard it is to achieve that when it comes to Syrian-US relations. So what is to be done? Well, first of all we can begin by building bridges since expatriate Syrians (and other expatriate communities around the world) are in a unique position to do this. With our knowledge of our “new” countries--Canada, the U.S., etc.—and our profound understanding of our homeland, we have the ability to create and nurture important “back channel encounters” between the West and the Middle East. Such encounters could be educational exchanges, or hosting visiting professors, or student exchanges, etc. As an illustration of what can be accomplished by such programmes, let me commend the great work of Syria’s ambassador in Washington, H.E. Imad Moustapha. When diplomatic contacts between the US and Syria were more or less Back-channel diplomacy improved relations between the US and both China and the USSR. It can do the same today in Syrian-US relations.

non-existent, Ambassador Moustapha undertook an extensive lecture tour of American universities and colleges, discussing Syria, and explaining its official position on various international issues. The Syria Project, a discussion series about Syria, was recently established at George Mason University’s Centre for Religious Studies in Washington. Indeed, the head of the Centre for Religious Studies, Professor Marc Gopin, with the help of the Syrian Public Relation Association in Damascus, and its president Dr. Nizar Mayhoub, has visited Syria and lectured on several occasions, making a significantly positive contribution to constructive bilateral relations between the US and Syria. So, what do such relationships generate? Well, for starters, a much deeper understanding of the so-called “enemy” society. Ignorance, or prejudice, about the other side is perhaps the greatest impediment to better relations between the two countries. Certainly, most Arabs, and I would argue almost all Muslims and Christians in the Middle East, feel deeply misunderstood in the West, particularly in the US. And most of us also feel they we are victims of a double standard policy vis-à-vis the Arab World. The US media, and the Bush administration, strongly criticize the political system in Syria but not the regimes in Cairo and Amman. The US media and the Bush administration don’t stop calling for democratic reform and fair elections in the Arab world. But when Hamas becomes the democratically elected government in the occupied west Bank and Gaza in an election that everyone acknowledges was free and fair, the US government and media betrayed their commitment to democracy and resorted to cutting off financial support to the Palestinians. So how do we encourage this deeper understanding of one another? I would argue that this can be done through many more back channel contacts among nations. The more we know and understand each other, the better suited we will be to establish better relations. I believe that cultural and educational exchanges are central to Syria’s future.

An important announcement last week, here in Washington, attracted considerable attention from many political analysts and observers in the United States. Nicolas Burns, the Undersecretary of State, informed the US Congress in a writ-ten statement that the State Department was dissolving a ‘Syria de-stabilization’ unit that had been in operation for the last four years. Its tasks included coordinating a series of ‘aggressive’ measures, including, among others, weakening the Syrian currency, ‘whispering’ to international banks that they should not do business with Syria, blocking Syrian attempts to promote trade and economic relations with foreign parties, bolstering opposition groups, dissuading tourists from going to Syria, orchestrating a propaganda warfare, and preventing Syria from acquiring spare parts for its Boeing leet. In a nutshell, this unit was in charge of a dirty war against Syria aiming at ‘regime change.’ Now why did the State Department decide to dissolve this unit? Is it be-cause the guys there suddenly saw light and decided to mend their ways? Or is it because an epiphany has converted them into diplomats who favor engagement to the arrogant concept of nations reengineering? No, the reason, simply put, behind this decision was that it didn’t deliver the expected results, and henceforth a ‘more standardized approach’ would be adopted. The implications of this whole story are multifold. One can think of it as

 

Syria celebrated its first National Day on Wednesday April 17, 1946. It was not its Independence Day. That day goes back to March 8, 1920, or per-haps to the autumn of 1941. The National Day was when all foreign troops (British and French) evacuated Syria. One of the invited speakers on the occasion of her National Day was the representative of Palestine, Akram Zueiter, a famous thinker and a man of letters. In his speech he did not congratulate the Syrians. Instead, he warned; “The Syrian Republic does not have the right to consider herself free from foreign troops and totally independent and sovereign when her southern part, Palestine, continues to be under occupation.” The short sentence defined the ABCs of Syria’s foreign policy from that time, until the present.