Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Barry Rubin

There was a great item on the Harry’s Place blog by the anonymous Davem who spent a long time in Syria studying Arabic. (If you haven’t read his long “Syria Diary” posted on the site some months ago, you have missed what is probably the best piece of first-hand reportage from that country in a long time.)

Now Davem has written a shorter item about some of his experiences. In it he quotes a high-ranking Syrian official as insisting that there is freedom of speech in Syria, and that people are only arrested for subversive actions. The problem is the same official had earlier spoken as follows:

Riyad Na’san al-Agha: Of course. I accept the placing on trial of whoever curses the resistance [Hezbollah]. I accept the placing on trial of anyone who wants to take part in the Greater Middle East plan, with which the United States controls our nation. I agree with the placing on trial of anyone who questions the identity of this nation, anyone who wants to shatter national unity to racial and ethnic pieces, and anyone who wants to instigate tensions between the different minorities.

In other words, he says: if you say something we will put you on trial; likewise if you “want” to take part, if you “question,” or if you “want to instigate.” In other words, we will imprison you for thought crimes.

One of the responses to the post was from an angry Syrian named Jabar, who complained about one of the anecdotes told by Davem. Davem had recalled that he had gone to hear a well-known Syrian comedian who, in the middle of the show, shouted out the name of former Syrian vice-president Khaddam, who had fled the country (probably one step ahead of being suicided by Bashar al-Asad), headed for Paris, and joined the opposition. Davem recorded that the audience laughed nervously, but he cited the event as evidence that there is a little freedom of speech, if only to serve as a pressure valve to let Syrians blow off steam.

Jabar, however, says that he went twice to the comedian’s show and it was not true that he had just said the name. No, afterward, the comedian had denounced Khaddam from the stage as a running-dog flunky of the imperialists or whatever terms they are using nowadays. In other words, Jabar wanted it to be clear—speaking with pride—that there was not even the tiniest space for free speech. In the best Stalinist fashion, he had to insist that everyone at all times loves Big Brother with no deviations.

If academics actually listened to what the leaders, officials, and mouthpieces of Middle East dictators said—many more examples can be cited—many of the fantasies (or outright repetitions of regime propaganda of which so large a portion of regional studies often seems to consist) would dissolve.

Isn’t this called working with primary sources?