Springtime in Syria

It's only been a month since I was last in Damascus, but a palpable sense of change is in the air. It's not political (despite the fact that it's election season) but economic. The city feels like it's just starting a spending spree. There are new cars everywhere, blocking traffic and adding that much more pollution to this athma-inducing town. Boutique hotels are springing up in renovated villas in the Old City. The local ladies seem a little more in step with global fashion trends (chimney pipe jeans, flat shoes) --- and a little less like long Arab lost extra's from Saturday Night Fever. Such is the trend that the press is talking about the "Beirutization" of Damascus. In other words, after years, nay, centuries of being out of it, one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities is trying again to be cool.

Though hipness and legitimacy are still along way off, all this new money and new confidence are signs that US attempts to isolate Syria are failing. Not just because Nancy Pelosi showed up in town earlier in the week. Turns out there are plenty of people who want to do business in Syria. Most of them oil-rich investors from the Gulf. But the Iranians are here too, and have just opened a new factory to produce the first joint Iranian and Syrian automobile -- the Sham Car. The Russians have always appreciate the chance to sell weapons to Syria, continuing a Cold War tradition. Now Chinese businessmen are starting to show up too, attracted by a large, under-served domestic market and one of the few industrial labor forces in the Middle East.

Not that Syria is economically out of the woods. The country is still hamstrung by Soviet-style central planning, corruption, and a moribund reform process. There's a demographic time bomb about to explode as young Syrians come into the workforce looking for jobs that the state system can't provide, and an oil industry -- Syria's main source of wealth -- in steep decline. Oh, and there's just this small problem of the raging civil war next door in Iraq.

In fact, rather than being Beirutified, Damascus could be on the verge of being Baghdadified. There are at least a million and a half Iraqi refugees in Syria, Damascus streets are filled with Iraqi accents, and a neighborhood popular with Iraqis that's now called Falluja. Some of the refugees are middle class and have money, which is pushing up rents and real estate prices. (That's one reason local landlords have so much new money.) But many are poor and angry and can't find work. For the Syrian government, the race is on to keep the money flowing in, or be overwhelmed by internal social and economic problems. All bets are off, but I know one thing for sure -- I won't be buying a Sham Car.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Damascus