You Have Joined the Syria Network

Facebook, the social networking site that quickly became a favorite pastime of college students the world over, recently found itself on the wrong side of the law—Syrian law. (That whooshing sound you’re hearing is sighs of relief from your fellow Torch readers outside of Syria at the moment.)  Reuters reports Syrian Facebook users have concluded that the Syrian government, under the direction of President Bashar Assad, shut down access to Facebook within Syria. The regime has been silent since the ban apparently came into effect.

The regime’s silence did not stop Syrians like Dania al-Sharif, a women’s rights advocate in Syria, who suggested that the Syrian government acted out of a desire to suppress free association: “Facebook helped further civil society in Syria and form civic groups outside government control. This is why it has been banned.” Ammar al-Qurabi, the head of the National Association for Human Rights, noted that while officials claimed that a fear of Israeli subversion prompted the ban, “the real reason for blocking the forum is because it provides for criticism of the authorities,” adding that one Syrian prison now has a ward for Internet political criminals.

As Calev Ben-David of the Jerusalem Post writes, “Although the blocking of Facebook is but one element in a recent clampdown in Syria that includes far more serious actions - such as the arrests, and subsequent lengthy jail sentences, of several human-rights activists - it is a particularly ironic one, given that Bashar Assad was once chairman of the Syrian Computer Society.” Syrians hoping for an age of Internet freedom when Assad took over for his father in 2000 have found their dreams largely crushed.

Syria is not the first nation to crack down on its Internet users, of course, as its actions were preceded by similar acts from China as well as various other authoritarian regimes. During the recent protests in Myanmar, the ruling military junta shut down Internet service providers and cell phone towers. USINFO reports that the junta employed the “nuclear option” to prevent the transmission of information into or out of the country: “Ultimately, the Burmese opposition’s activities were so effective that the military junta decided to unplug the country’s only two ISP cables to Rangoon and Mandalay,” the two largest cities in the country. 

The Syrian case, however, is particularly relevant given that Syria has sent an envoy to the peace conference currently taking place in Annapolis. Syria is primarily interested in the restoration of the Golan Heights, territory annexed by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967, but also hopes to gain some leverage in future diplomatic negotiations by showing a willingness to participate in the process. Though Israel and Palestine agreed at Annapolis to commit themselves to the completion of a peace agreement by the end of 2008, Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal noted that other nations had a stake in the process as well. The Associated Press has quoted him as saying, “We have come to support the launching of serious and continuing talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis that will address all the core and final status issues. These talks must be followed by the launching of the Syrian and Lebanese tracks at the earliest.”

Syria’s standing in the eyes of the United States—the chief architect and arbitrator of the Annapolis conference—might improve if, as suggested by Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, the Syrian government recognizes that the best possibility of recovering the Golan Heights comes not through supporting Hamas—which called for a boycott of the conference—but through negotiations over the disputed territory. Syria’s attempts to wrest the Golan Heights by force have earned the country the enmity of many Western nations; its attempts at forcibly stifling free expression over the Internet will certainly not win the country any friends, either.
Like anywhere else on the Internet, Facebook is a marketplace for ideas. Ben-David notes that a variety of different groups emerged from the Syria Facebook network. Some support the current regime while others oppose it; others are decidedly less political in content, such as “Syria has the best schwarma” or “Rugby in Syria.” Regardless of the nature of the groups, however, a government whose repression is so complete that it even censors social networking sites faces trouble at the negotiating table when the United States is hosting the conference.