Always first on the scene, Kate Clark had taken time off from reporting for us to learn Arabic in Syria when the whole region exploded last week. Here she tells us what life is like on the ground.
Everyone, everywhere in Damascus is following the news from Lebanon, all the time. There is talk of little else, but the war. In shops, taxis, restaurants and homes, Syria has become a news-obsessed country. Beirut is only a two hour drive from here and many Syrians have friends or family in Lebanon.
Most people believe they and the Lebanese belong to the same nation, divided by colonial boundaries. Small wonder then that the response to the television pictures of civilians suffering in the Israeli bombing is visceral; people wince like they might if they saw a relative in pain.
Popular resentment at the way the Syrian army was unceremoniously kicked out of Lebanon last year has disappeared. There are now 50,000 Lebanese refugees in Syria, some staying in hotels and schools and other public buildings, many being put up by friends, family and acquaintances. Syria has become the only way out of Lebanon and Damascus is full of people who have paid the hugely inflated taxi fares to escape.
Walking around the Old City of Damascus with its narrow alleyways, covered suqs and jasmine flowers scenting the air, there is little sign of the Italian flags that were flying everywhere during the World Cup barely a fortnight ago. Many Syrians supported Italy, “We’re from the same stock,” many people explained. “We’re both Mediterranean people, we have the same mentality.” That cosy feeling of being part of a global football mania has given way to a darker tension and sense siege. Syrians are worried: waves of crisis are crashing over their region - Iraqi chaos to the east, Israeli/Palestinian conflict to the south and now Lebanon being bombed to the west. Undermining the last shred of stability is the finger of blame being pointed at Damascus by Washington and London for supporting Hizbollah.
After the last week of war, that support is now popular as well as official: Hizbollah flags are flying in many places and in the Old City, pictures of the group’s leader, Nasrullah, smile out at the population from walls and windows. He is seen as a hero, an Arab leader who at last is inflicting pain on the old enemy, Israel, in a way that Arab armies have always failed to do. “Were you happy to see the Israelis killed in Haifa?” I was asked by one shop-keeper in the ancient covered market of the Hammidia Suq. Everyone else in the city seems delighted at every attack. Walking through the Old City tonight, there were newly spray-painted Israeli flags on the ground, so that people could walk over them. No-one I’ve spoken to believes Israel is legitimately defending itself. That’s partly because Israel is viewed as the aggressor, unfairly hurting Lebanese civilians and partly because few Syrians view Israel as a legitimate state in the first place. Plus, in Syria, this campaign looks just like another front in the War on Terror - or, as many people believe it to be, the Western onslaught on Islam.
Syria is normally one of the friendliest countries in the world, a place where people ask you if you need any help and invite you for tea or to a family wedding at the drop of a hat. This summer, there is a slight chill in the air.
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