Saddam no longer a joke for Syrian satirist

Saddam no longer a joke for Syrian satirist

David Hirst

Thursday August 21, 2003

The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>

The Syrian Ba’athist regime is struggling to prevent a rising tide of
agitation for across-the-board reform and democratisation from turning
into a flood.

For one of the last fraying Arab versions of the theoretically
socialist, one-party state, repression is proving less and less effective.
Censorship has always been at the heart of this struggle, exemplified by
the story of the publisher Ali Farzat and his satirical weekly,
Addomari. Farzat is a cartoonist of international repute who has won
many awards. His work has appeared in the Paris daily Le Monde.
But Farzat has not been honoured in his own country. He founded
Addomari, the Lamp Lighter, during the Damascus Spring - the cautious
liberalisation which followed the death in 2000 of President Hafiz
Assad, who had ruled with an iron fist for 30 years, and the accession
of his son Bashar.

It was the first privately owned publication to be licensed in the 40
years of Ba’athist rule and was an instant success; with a circulation
of 75,000 it sold many times more than the three "official"dailies.
The Damascus Spring didn’t last but, despite official harassment,
Addomari survived. The Syrian public is as hostile as any in the Arab
world to the US invasion of Iraq, and as scornful of US claims to be
bringing democracy to the region. Butin an implicit response to the
nervousness these claims have induced in almost every Arab autocracy,
the pressures for reform has picked up again.

Addomari was in the thick of it, but Farzat simply went too far. He
continued to attack a perennial target of his, Saddam Hussein, even as
Americans and British prepared to invade his country.
He portrayed Saddam and his portly generals stuffing the Iraqi people,
as cannon fodder, into the barrel of a gun, and haranguing a crowd of
hungry and ragged citizens: "They have come to plunder your palaces,
your riches, your businesses and your oil."

Doing just that had not been a mistake 12 years before, when, in the
previous Gulf war, the US led an international coalition to free Kuwait.
On the contrary, it had been patriotic duty. For in those days there was
no more vicious inter-Arab feud than that which pitted one Ba’athist
regime against the other - and Syria had joined the international
coalition.

This time, however, with Syria strongly opposed to the war, mockery of
Saddam became mockery of a sister Arab country in her darkest hour. The
authorities vilified the self-same cartoons.
And in a country where an unofficial street gathering of more than three
people is illegal, angry citizens now "spontaneously" converged on
Addomari’s offices in protest. The young President Bashar, who betrays
reformist intentions which the old guard around him busies itself trying
to subvert, is said to have a soft spot for Addomari.

Perhaps that is why the executives of this "hereditary Ba’athist
Republic", as reformists call it, hesitated to close such a popular
publication outright. Officially, there is no censorship in Syria. In
practice, through the state control or domination of printing,
distribution and the flow of advertising, the ministry of information
can block any publication it wants.

And since the offending cartoons appeared it has deployed these
bureaucratic devices to the full, virtually shutting Addomari down.
Then, in an Orwellian touch, the ministry of information warned Farzat
that if he failed to bring out the required number of issues over a
three-month period he would forfeit his licence.

"On the one hand, it was ordering me to publish," he said. "On the other
I couldn’t, because it wouldn’t allow the printing house to print it."
The three months is now up. Farzat managed to find a private printer to
do the job. Issue No 115 of Addomari focused almost exclusively on
Syrian domestic affairs, on corruption, bureaucratic oppression, human
rights abuses and incompetence.

These issues, not Saddam Hussein, had always been its basic fare. It
emblazoned the word democracy across its front page in the form of
prison manacles. But issue No 115 did not reach much of the public.
Officially, that was not censorship. It was just that, once again, the
state-controlled distributors declined to distribute it.

The prime minister set his seal on the affair, withdrawing Addomari’s
licence because of its "violation of the laws in effect" - mainly its
three-month failure to appear. Undeterred, Farzat says he will put his
paper on the internet - where, with some 600,000 Syrian users and the
flowering of opposition websites, the Ba’athists are fighting - and
losing - another battle for control.