Discovering MENA and other thoughts

Syria officially opened its presidential campaign on Sunday May 11th, and the cities and towns under the regime's control are filled with billboards and posters presenting portraits of President Bashar Al-Assad. Others, such as the ones hung in Thawra Street in the center of the capital, show either his portrait dressed in a grey suit and blue shirt or the Syrian flag overlaid with the word "together" and the President's signature. In Damascu's Sabaa Bahrat neighbourhood, one billboard proclaims: "We won't close our eyes until we have said yes to the ophthalmologist" - Assad is an eye specialist by training - "We vote for you, 2014". Elsewhere, posters read "our Bashar, we will not accept a president other than you. We have chosen you, you have our loyalty". The campaign is also flooding online media with messages of support for Assad - by the first morning, the Facebook account had garnered 65,000 likes and the Twit...

You know I'm not the pessimistic kind of person, but the opposite. Nonetheless, every time I take a glance at what is happening in Syria, I am increasingly disheartened. For months the conflict has been dragging on, with hundreds killed each day and thousands fleeing towards neighboring countries (or worse still, returning to Syria out of desperation at the sight of the outrageous conditions the gigantic refugee camps put them in). Let's not forget about the xenophobic feeling towards Syrians citizens that is mounting throughout the region, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan, tiny countries truly incapable of giving shelter and providing staples to the ravaged families that get to their countries. Xenophobia out of sectarian hatred, xenophobia out of fear of spillover, xenophobic out of anger at what they consider is putting stability of the whole region under threat. People talk about a lost generation in Europe. Try figuring the future of a generation whose children cannot g...

Incredibly useful information taken from here  (the rest of the analysis is quite interesting, too): "'Alawi" is the term that 'Alawis (also called 'Alawites) usually apply to themselves ; but until 1920 they were known to the outside world as Nusayris or Ansaris. The change in name - imposed by the French upon their seizure of control in Syria - has significance. Whereas "Nusayri" emphasizes the group's differences from Islam, "'Alawi" suggests an adherent of 'Ali (the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad) and accentuates the religion's similarities to Shi'i Islam. Consequently, opponents of the Asad regime habitually use the former term, while its supporters use the latter. 'Alawis today number approximately 1.3 million, of which about a million live in Syria. They constitute some 12 percent of the Syrian population. Three-quarters of the Syrian 'Alawis live in Latakia, a province in the northwest of Syria...