Syrian elite enjoy the good life

 By MICHAEL STOTT and SAMIA NAKHOUL 

IT might sound absurd to talk about normal life in Syria after two years of civil war which have killed more than 70,000 people and left five million more destitute and homeless.

Yet in the neighbourhood of Malki, a tree-lined enclave of central Damascus, a wealthy group of elite, pro-government Syrians still enjoy shopping for imported French cheeses, gourmet hand-made chocolates and iPad minis in the well-stocked, recently built Grand Mall and in nearby boutiques. 

Such are the parallel realities of a conflict in which, for all the gains made by rebels and the current chatter about US “red lines” crossed that might ultimately draw in Western might, President Bashar al-Assad is holding his ground in the capital, bulwarked by his own foreign allies and by many Syrians who fear his end could prove fatal for them too. 

And so life goes on.

In Malki, sprinklers water the manicured lawns outside their blocks of million-dollar apartments. Maids and drivers cater to their every whim and birds sing in the trees. Fuel for their BMWs and electricity for their air-conditioning is plentiful and the well-guarded streets are free of loiterers.

“Look at this display and you feel all is well, life is good and everything is here,” an elegantly dressed Hiyam Jabri, 50, said as she placed her order at the delicatessen counter in the mall’s main supermarket.

Malki residents continue to enjoy material comforts and abundant supplies of imported goods, even as millions of their compatriots subsist on food handouts.

The United Nations World Food Programme estimates it is feeding 2.5 million people inside Syria – a 10th of the population – and a further million who have fled the country, offering them subsistence rations of flour and rice.

“We are trying to keep up with the enormity of the crisis and the impact of the brutality,” the WFP’s deputy regional emergency coordinator Matthew Hollingworth said in the capital.

Most of those whom his staff help “haven’t been displaced once but sometimes twice, three times”. Food is so scarce for those uprooted by the fighting that rations intended to feed a family of five are being shared by three families.

Even in Malki, though, the air of normality is an illusion, as unreal as the oft-repeated assertions of government officials that victory is near and Assad still controls almost all Syria.

Scratch the surface of the illusion and the normality quickly becomes anything but.

Pasted to the lamp post outside the elegant chocolatier Ghraoui, whose interior boasts award certificates from France, is a wad of black and white fliers. They are printed by families and they mourn sons and husbands killed in the war.

It is a war, however, that seems to be going nowhere fast.

Recent days have shown again the reluctance of the United States and its allies, in the face of evidence Assad’s troops may have crossed President Barack Obama’s “red line” by using chemical weapons, to intervene militarily against him – not least as some rebels have espoused the cause of al-Qaeda.

Among the few independent outsiders seeing at first hand the mosaic of opinion and suffering in Syria, many aid workers lament that international discourse has become a monotone debate on supplying weapons, with little push for a negotiated peace.

A distant thump of artillery fire serves as a reminder that, just a few kilometres away, fierce street-to-street battles are being fought. – Reuters