A year of revolution in Syria
Exactly one year ago today, my wife and I flew to Damascus to start a 10-day holiday in Syria and Lebanon. Some of our friends thought that we were crazy. But we had booked the holiday six months before, nobody had told us there was going to be an Arab Spring, and at the time everything was quiet in Syria.
In fact, the trip went very smoothly with no security issues. We saw fewer uniformed police than if we had been at home in London (they were probably in plain clothes), there were no demonstrations, and nobody would talk politics with us. Once we reached Lebanon, we found soldiers and armoured personnel carriers in Beirut and politics was on everyone’s lips.
You can read an account of our trip here.
It was only a week or two after we left Syria that the demonstrations started. I assumed that they would be quickly put down, but the brave people of Syria have continued to protest against the dictatorship of the Bashar al-Assad regime and, according to the United Nations, around 7,500 have now been killed by the regime’s security forces. The height of the conflict has been in the besieged city of Homs through which we drove.
Sdaly there will be much more bloodshed before the regime is overthrown and then huge difficulties in the establishment of a democratic alternative, but we wish the Syrian people well. They deserve better.