as i've mentioned before, i've been quietly planning a trip to syria next fall. by "planning" i mean: (1) talking about it a lot, and (2) buying a single guide book. i haven't gotten around to a more serious commitment to the trip (e.g. buying a plane ticket) because i wanted to see what happened at this week's baath party conference in damascus.
the conference ended yesterday and heralded the announcement of several reforms: the legalization of independent opposition parties, citizenship for syrian kurds, scaling back some of the more sweeping criminal provisions of syria's state of emergency law, and the election of a new generation of party leaders. the reforms were pretty modest, but they still are significant for an authoritarian place like syria. and, as i mentioned, i have been waiting to see what came out of this conference for some time so that i could start getting my own plans in order.
but in the american press news of all of those political developments were buried this morning by the bush administration's announcement that syria had a "hit list" of lebanese political figures.
is there really a hit list? who knows. the administration is quoting anonymous lebanese sources who probably have an incentive to talk trash about syria (and how would lebanese people know about a secret syrian list of lebanese targets?) the article further notes that "word of a 'hit list' had been 'circulating among the Lebanese,' but that no one in the administration had actually seen such a list and that its existence could not be independently verified."
if it's been circulating for some time, why make this announcement today? because of these unverified reports released by the bush administration, reports of syria's political reforms were much harder to find. i only found them because i was looking specifically for it in foreign news sources. and if i wasn't aware that something was scheduled to be announced today, i would not have known to look.
is this an intentional ploy to bury potentially positive news about syria? if so, it's an odd choice. normally the bush administration backers would be all over this stuff. they usually like to attribute any political reforms in the middle east as fall-out of the american invasion of iraq (as if political changes never occurred in the region prior to 2003). but maybe the bush administration is more committed to marginalizing syria than to crowing about marching freedom. at least when the marching is in a place as eeeeeevil as syria.
