What Americans think when a fellow American tells them he studies in Damascus…

During a short trip to the United States this past week, I encountered a variety of different responses to my living in Syria. The purpose of my trip was to visit some of the universities to which I am applying for graduate programs this year.

My first stop was Washington D.C. where, due to a snow storm, I ended up having to stay in a hotel overnight before taking a train to New Jersey. The hotel clerk, who I apparently had woken up so that he could check me in around 2 a.m., asked me where I was coming from. “Syria,” I said. The clerk looked at me at smiled saying, “So, you work for the government, then?” This was one of the most common responses to me saying that I live in Syria – particularly in the political capital of the U.S

Even after I got to the first university in New Jersey the following day, I received some interesting responses to living in Syria. The students were all applicants for a Near Eastern Studies and many had spent time in Egypt and Turkey studying. They, too, however, were surprised to find that I live in Syria – albeit less surprised than my cab driver in Boston a few days later.

There is no doubt that there are more American students in Damascus than ever before and my feeling is that number will only increase in the coming years

Habib was an Algerian who moved to the U.S. three years ago, leaving his family at home in Algiers. As we loaded my bags into the trunk of the car at Logan International, I heard him say hello to a fellow cabby across the road and so I knew he was from North Africa. He was very chatty and told me all about his father who had fought in the Algerian Revolution against the French. I told him I would really love to go to Algeria some day but it is still somewhat difficult for Americans. He told me the Arab world is generally like that – to which I responded that I actually live in Syria now. He laughed for a few seconds and was very surprised, “You live in Syria? Well if you live there then why would you not go to Algeria?” He asked me a ton of questions about living there. He was pleased to hear that I had wonderful things to say about being an American in Damascus.

There was a general response of surprise from pretty much everyone I spoke with about living in Syria because most American students studying Arabic right now are still going to Cairo. Things are changing quickly, though. Cairo is fast becoming a less favored location for Arabic study and many study abroad programs and university departments are sending students to Damascus. There is no doubt that there are more American students in Damascus than ever before and my feeling is that number will only increase in the coming years.

Heavyweight Arab investor (ART TV’s Saleh Kamel) backs investment in Syria, asks for more reforms

Heavyweight Arab investor backs investment in Syria

ART TV’s Saleh Kamel asks for more reforms

 

Heavyweight Arab investor Saleh Kamel (owner of ART satellite channels) asks for more reforms in Syria. This is an exclusive photo by Forward Magazine-Syria (captured by Nabil Nijem)

 Exclusive English text  – by Forward Magazine, Syria

 

Speaking at the 13^th Arab Businessmen and Investors Conference this week in Damascus, Saudi businessman Saleh Kamel raised eyebrows with what was described as a sharp and courageous speech, dealing with investment, red-tape, and corruption in Syria.

Kamel, owner of the popular ART TV, CEO and founder of Dallah al-Baraka Group, addressed President Bashar al-Assad directly in his speech,  saying: “When you came to power, I was among the optimists regarding what lay in store for Syria – a brighter future in all domains, especially economics.” The reasons for this optimism, he noted, still firmly stand, calling, nevertheless, on President Assad to initiate “an Economic Correction Movement that demolishes bureaucracy and dismantles its complexities!”

While praising Assad’s vision and intellectual acumen, Kamel noted there were several malpractices taking place on a regular basis, obstructing the work of investors coming to do business in Syria – “obstacles to which Syria shies away from, and which your aids do not report, in fear of you and for you.”

Kamel made it clear that a heavyweight investor like himself faces no such obstacles, “since if they close the doors before me, I simply, walk in through open windows. What is required is simplifying procedure for ordinary investors!”

Such systematic change will not happen, he warned, “only by passing strict legislation and firm bylaws.” It needs a strong will from the helm of power in Syria that trickles throughout the political command, all the way down to grassroots Syrians, “employees, executives, observers, and ordinary citizens.” Kamel added, “We need to transfer your beliefs and desires to all of those mentioned above. It is high time that different branches of the state catch up with your grand aspirations!” He pointed out in order to move forward, one must not have a situation in which “one wheel is working, while the rest are rusty.”

Tourism industry in Syria: Lagging behind?

Kamel then spoke of the historic and cultural value of Syria, with all its “God-sent endowments and gifts, abilities and privileges.” Syria was a country, he added, “envied by ill-wishers and coveted by the good-willed.” Why then, he asked, “was it lagging behind neighboring Lebanon when it came to tourism? The two countries, after all, share the same eco-space, yet not the same success story, given Lebanon’s flourishing tourism industry.”

 “What is difficult here is to change the mentality of people, transforming them from bureaucrats into tourism-makers, efficient at smiling before incoming visitors at Damascus Airport.” A tourism culture and industry, he added, were no less important than beautiful landscape and historical sites.

 Saleh Kamel floats the idea of starting a $20m company in Syria

Kamel then said that he has been involved in start-up companies that hunt for opportunities in Saudi Arabia, Mali, Senegal, Uganda, and Sudan, worth $2 billion. From the pulpit of the Businessmen Conference, he sought permission to establish a similar company in Syria, with a capital of $20 million. He personally vowed to contribute 50% of the initial capital, along with partners from other Arab states, granted that “we find serious Syrian investors to cover the other half.” The objective of the new company, which he described as “Syria Opportunities” will be to find new investment opportunities in Syria, jumpstart pending or suffocating ones, and expanding existing successful companies. He wrapped up that he wouldn’t call such a project, “Adventure Capital” but rather, “Initiative Capital,” claiming that God created Man to construct the earth, “and construction only happens when there is initiative.” If there were adventure and risk in construction, he said, “Allah the All Aware would not have ordered us to do so!”

Saleh Kamel’s speech elicited strong applause from the conference audience, which has been estimated at 1,000 businessmen from Syria and the Arab world. The 13^th Arab Businessmen and Investors Conference, held in Damascus on March 3-4, 2010 is organized by a variety of players including the Arab League and the Syrian Union of Chambers of Commerce. It is held under auspices of President Bashar al-Assad, who was represented at the event, by Prime Minister Mohammad Naji al-Otari.

* Text of Saleh Kamel’s speech was originally published in Arabic in the daily al-Watan, and translated into English with modification by Forward Magazine.

U.S. names Ford as its ambassador to Syria

This is the full text of a Statement by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William J. Burns, that Forward Magazine, and other media oulets in Syria, received a few days ago.

February 17, 2010

Good afternoon.  I am pleased to be back in Damascus.  I am here to convey President Obama’s continuing interest in building better relations with Syria based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.  Syria plays an important role in the Middle East and this is a moment in which both Syria and the United States, despite our differences, have a stake in exploring ways in which we might cooperate.

 I had quite productive and extensive discussions with President Assad.  We talked candidly about areas in which we disagree, but also identified areas of common ground on which we can build.  The White House announced yesterday that Robert Ford will be the next American ambassador to Syria if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate.  That is a clear sign – after five years without an American ambassador in Damascus – of America’s readiness to improve relations and to cooperate in the pursuit of a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace between Arabs and Israelis with progress on all tracks of the peace process, and in the pursuit of regional peace and stability.

To deepen our dialogue as we move forward, Ambassador Dan Benjamin, the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism, will remain here for another day of meetings.  I have no illusions about the challenges on the road ahead, but my meeting with President Assad leaves me hopeful that we can make progress together in the interest of both of our countries. 

 Thank you very much.

William Burns

Avatar: A commentary on the Palestinian saga (Reading between the lines)

Avatar movie (2009) tells the story of Palestine, according to Syrian sales professional, Soud Atassi (Photo doctored by R. Saqr)

Reading between the lines of AVATAR

By Soud Atassi

AVATAR, for many, is just an American movie about war between the humans and some strange creatures that own a strange living forest that is full of life power. The movie shows us that the American army does not care about humanity, shedding light on how the bad decisions of the highest management of the world can ruin the innocents’ homes and history (American effrontery) and how deceived are the American people!

Why pay to watch such a movie when they can see it in front of their eyes, not in imagination, but for real:

Just look at the map,

Mark on Palestine.

Enjoy the movie!

Please go and watch AVATAR and consider that you are looking at a movie about the Palestinian people, whose tree and home have been uprooted –  just like the tree and homeland of the aliens in AVATAR!

Soud Atassi is the Group Sales Manager at Forward Magazine and Haykal Media

Short joke, but good… An Israeli…

A friend of Forward Magazine, Syria, just sent us this joke. Short but good!

An Israeli arrives at London ‘s Heathrow airport.

 As he fills out the entry form, the immigration officer asks him: “Occupation?”

The Israeli promptly replies: “No, no, just visiting!”

Meet Bassel Ojjeh, the Syrian web wizard who just left Yahoo! – by flipping the magazine digitally

Are you proud to be Syrian? Well, you should be!

Flip through Forward Magazine’s January 2010 digital pages, using the latest in page-flipping technology…
http://anax8a.pressmart.com/forwardsyria/index.aspx

Meet 4 Syrian expatriates who are …

– Influencing the online world (Yahoo!’s Bassel Ojjeh new ArabCrunch.net sponsorship deal for entrepreneurs)

– Lobbying to change perceptions about Syrians and Arabs in the US (Helen Samhan – Arab American Institute Foundation)

– Leading the paper industry from his Vienna-base (Nabil Kuzbari)

– Proposing premium health care insurance for Syrian from her US experience (Rola Kaakeh)

Interview with Syrian entreprenuer Abdulsalam Haykal on ‘The Next Web’

The Next Web blog, an international source of  news and views about the web, posted a recent interview with Syrian entrprenuer Abdulsalam Haykal. With sanctions on Syria getting a recent renewal by Obama’s administration, Haykal views sanctions “both as a blessing and a curse.”

He continues, “In entrepreneurship, the barrier to entry is a crucial factor. Sanctions make the barrier low because competition is less fierce. However, it gives you a cushion that might slow down innovation if all that a country or society seeks is self-sufficiency.”

“Sanctions can limit your access to resources, and your belonging to an international community of peers, and this limits the resourcefulness of a company.”

Haykal is CEO of Transtek, founder and CEO of Haykal Media (Forward Magazine’s mother company), and president and co-founder of SYEA (The Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association).

Forward Magazine is Syria’s 1st magazine to adopt a digital version & an online page flipper

Forward Magazine is Syria’s first-ever magazine to become digital. It has adopted an online page-flipper software that allows our readers to flip  thorugh our pages with the same ease and flow as in flipping through a print version. The difference is that all links in the online edition are clickable (URLs, emails, etc); you can also send the articles you like to interested people through clicking on non-image text.

The interactive flipper also allows readers to see the original layout of the magazine, the ads, and most importantly our cool Forwrad Shabab section.

Flip our first such edition  here.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year…

Forward Magazine leaks the name of the probable US Ambassador to Damascus!

Ambassador Walles or Khury to Damascus?

As the year comes to an end, two new names are floating in the air — leaked to us at Forward Magazine by our sources in Damascus and Washington, on who the new US ambassador to Syria will be.

This comes after the State Department reportedly sent its recommendation to the White House for approval. One is Jacob Walles, the former US consul general in Jerusalem, and Nabil Khury, a veteran of the Foreign Service, of Lebanese origins, who rose to fame in the Arab world for serving as liaison officer between the US and Arab media during the Iraq war in 2003.

Foreign diplomats stationed in Damascus insist that no names are on the table on who the new US ambassador will be, and journalists in Washington DC echo a similar line: “No Names!” What everybody is sure of, however, is that an ambassador will be named—soon—to Syria, given that US President Barack Obama decided to name one last June, to fill a post that has been vacant since 2005. The only reason for delay, sources confirm, is pure bureaucratic hassle of the Department of State.

Previously, two names had surfaced in the media, being Fredric Hof, a State Department veteran, and Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to Israel in 2001-2005. Forward Magazine contacted Hof earlier in 2009 and he said, “To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of my impending appointment are greatly exaggerated. Indeed, they are false. I have maintained a lifelong habit of not accepting jobs I’ve not been offered, and this one will be no exception.”

Will these names prove to be another hoax? Our sources confirm otherwise… although if Nabil Khury is chosen by President Obama, he would be the second Khury ambassador to Syria, after Lebanon named Michel Khury to Syria earlier in 2009. In fact the list of Khurys would now be a long one: Michel Khury, Syrian novelist Colette Khury, and now, US “ambassador” Nabil Khury?

Related stories:

• Forward Magazine conducts the first-ever interview with an American president: Carter tells Forward he will carry President Assad’s greetings to Obama (Forward Magazine, January 2009)

 

Syrian Jews living in Syria & USA proud to be ‘Yehudi Arabi’

 

Jews in Syria are an integrated community. In our last September issue, you have Syrian Jews and Palestians speaking about co-habitation in Syria, while Syrian Jews living in the US confessing to feelings of pride stemming from the fact they are “Yehudi-Arabi”. Photo by Carole al-Farah, Forward Magazine (Damascus, Syria)

Syrian Jews living in Syria and USA say they are proud to be ‘Arab Jews’

Damascus (October, 2009) – Syrian Jews living in Syria and the US told Syria’s leading monthly, Forward Magazine, their Arab roots are a source of identity and pride – amid speculations about the reality of Syrian Jews at the time when Turkish intermediation is taking place between Syria and Israel towards a possible peace scenario.

According to media analysts, Syrian Jews are seldom mentioned in the media, having distanced themselves from the Arab-Israeli conflict due to their natural integration into the Syrian society’s fabric. They do enjoy, contrary to misconception, full citizenship rights in Syria, with many Jewish Syrians refusing to relocate into Israel if a peace treaty takes place.

A peace scenario between Syria and Israel doesn’t mean Syrian Jews might leave their homeland Syria

 “We are Jews of Arab culture, and we are proud to be Yehudi Arabi (Arab Jews). It is in our veins,” Carlos Zarur, an Oriental Jewish researcher from Boulder, Colorado, told Forward Magazine. Like many third generation American-Syrian Jews, Zarur’s grandparents hail from both Damascus and Aleppo. He echoes similar sentiments by Jewish Syrians residing in Syria.

Abdulsalam Haykal, Syrian media entrepreneur and CEO/publisher of Forward Magazine, says the time is ripe to communicate to the world the reality of the Syrian Jews community. “They have synagogues, exercise religious freedoms, have a community leader whom we featured in our magazine, and are fully naturalized,” Haykal said.  “When we were children we used to accompany my grandfather for a weekly visit to his Jewish friend, Abu Jamil, a shop keeper in Old Damascus. Jewish, Muslim and Christian friendships are a natural part of Syrian life, no question marks raised.”

In their two articles – “Culturally Syrian, Religiously Jewish” and “He is not my enemy” – Brooke Anderson and Julian Weinberg, two of Forward Magazine’s senior writers, recounted how historians believed that Jews have inhabited Syria since before Roman times. According to legend, King David built the area’s first synagogue in Aleppo. Dura-Europos, a Greek colony on the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, built in 300 BC, is considered to be the site of the earliest known Jewish Diaspora synagogue. The ruins can be visited on the road between Deir ez-Zor and Abu Kamal (which was bombed early this year by American war planes flying crossing from Iraq).

The report also shows that from 1919 until 1949, there was always a Jewish deputy in the Syrian parliament. To read the full text of the Jews-in-Syria report, you can visit www.fw-magazine.com:

• He is not my enemy: Jewish and Palestinian Syrians living in peace in Old Damascus
• Culturally Syrian, Religiously Jewish: Jews who call Syria home
• Syrian Jews role in the anti-French movement

 

 

Syrian students banned from using supercomputer at KAUST University in Saudi Arabia

Syrian students denied academic access to IBM supercomputer at KAUST due to US sanctions

• Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) honors US political restrictions over internationally-set academic freedoms and integrity

Damascus (October, 2009) –  The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), the new world-class research university in Saudi Arabia, has denied 15 students access to cutting-edge technology inside its premises due to sanctions against Syria.

Accordingly, KAUST’s breakthrough IBM supercomputer, called Shaheen (Arabic for falcon), will be allowed for all students from all nationalities except for Syrians. The Shaheen, one of 14-systems around the world and the largest in Asia by far, will be off-limits to Syrian students and researchers in what can be seen as a breach of academic freedom.

In a scoop editorial by Abdulsalam Haykal, CEO and publisher of Forward Magazine in Syria, the writer revealed: “It’s a shame that the 15 Syrian KAUST students are not allowed to use the Shaheen. Why? American sanctions had to be observed in the agreement between KAUST and IBM. Syrian students were told that it was not a KAUST decision, rather one that related to the state of affairs between the US and Syria.”

Haykal continued to say, “KAUST is then forced to bend to politics, and act against academic freedom.”

KAUST breach of academic integrity comes from the fact the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled on several occasions that, “[A university] can determine for itself on academic grounds, who may teach, what may be taught, how it should be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”

Forward Magazine, Syria’s leading English monthly and an offshoot of Haykal Media, announced early October it will be lobbying in US and Saudi circles arguing against such “unacceptable academic discrimination.”

Haykal Media’s Forward Magazine launches Syria Banker ’09 guide

Launch of Syria Banker '09 at the Dedeman Hotel on August 2, 2009 (Sunday), by Haykal Media's Forward Magazine

Damascus, (SANA) – Haykal Media launched on Sunday at Dedeman Hotel the Syrian Banker ’09 guide by Forward Magazine. The supplement provides services to the market and clients such as retail loans, loans for companies and commercial facilitation in order to help finance trade and industry.

The supplement also contains information on Syria, banking activity and economic changes. The guide is written in English by Syrian writers, in addition to interviews with Syrian economists.

AUGUST 02, 2009

H. Sabbagh