Joshualandis Domain Overview🔒 SSL Verified

Table of Contents

• ↓ Search
• ↓ Categories
• ↓ Syria Comment on Facebook
• ↓ Blogroll
• ↓ Returning to Hafiz al-Assad’s Syria: Bashar Heads Back to the Future in 2020
• ↓ Posted by Joshua on Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
• ↓ Top Alternatives to joshualandis.com

6-Month Traffic Trend Estimate

Official Contact & Profiles

Visual representation extracted from joshualandis.com

Content Snippets from joshualandis.com

"When president Bashar al-Assad assumed power in July 2000, he led Syria on a trajectory of gradual and limited reform. He eased restrictions on the economy. He allowed for greater foreign influence in Syria by encouraging foreign investment, licensing private banks, and pushing tourism. He let considerable light into Syrian society by legalizing satellite dishes, the internet, and relaxing restrictions on the media. To set these reforms in motion, he had to clip the wings of the security bosses, who frowned at his willingness to open the doors of the country. They complained that they would be the ones expected to clean things up once trouble started. They pointed to the Damascus Spring as an early example of how things could go badly wrong. But Bashar al-Assad was convinced that he could win the loyalty of the Syrian public, particularly its youth, if he could modernize along the lines of Turkey or China. To this end, he alternated between two development plans: one was the Five Seas Vision that he elaborated after a visit to Turkey in 2004. It was to turn Syria into the key transport and trading hub of the region. The other was a version of the China Model that was designed to build a “social market” economy that would allow Assad and the Baath Party to retain political control."

"Syrian authorities also loosened their grip on society for a number of reasons completely beyond their control. The U.S. invasion of Iraq and its promise to reform the Greater Middle East dealt a major blow to regional stability. By 2004, Washington was demanding that Syria relinquish its traditional control over Lebanon, cease interference its elections, stop supplying arms to Hizbollah, and withdraw troops that had been stationed in the country since the 1976. Damascus viewed this U.S. effort to roll back Syrian regional influence and cut it off from its allies to be made in Israel, as it seemed design to end pressure on Israel to return of the Golan Heights. Even more ominous, it seemed to be a prelude to destabilizing the country and regime-change, if not a full on invasion."

"To contain U.S. military intervention in the region to Iraq, Assad opened his country to the hundreds of Salafi-Jihadists who were seeking a way into Iraq to fight the American occupiers. Damascus’ new permissiveness toward Islamists would have the effect of awakening the Islamist currents in Syrian society that had been so violently suppressed in the 1980s. Young Syrians from every walk of life, whether university students or farmers, became mesmerized by the new jihad in Iraq that championed heroic narratives of adventure, revolution, and revenge. Youth were electrified. Students at the University of Damascus, eager to show solidarity with the fighters in Iraq, began to dress in Afghan garb. Washington’s pressure campaign on Syria led to its forced withdrawal from Lebanon on the heels of the Hariri assassination."

Key Topics & Focus Areas for joshualandis.com:

Search

Categories

Syria Comment on Facebook

Blogroll

Returning to Hafiz al-Assad’s Syria: Bashar Heads Back to the Future in 2020

Posted by Joshua on Tuesday, March 31st, 2020