Region | Syria
Young Syrians anxiously watching US race
"If I were an American, I would vote for [Barack] Obama because, being a black man who grew up in the US, he knows the meaning of injustice! A man who has felt injustice would never practice it against others."
- By Sami Moubayed, Correspondent
- Published: 23:39 August 27, 2008
Damascus: "If I were an American, I would vote for [Barack] Obama because, being a black man who grew up in the US, he knows the meaning of injustice! A man who has felt injustice would never practice it against others."
These were the words of Nour, a 20-year old girl from the posh district of Damascus, studying at the Faculty of Political Science at Damascus University.
The fact that he has Muslim roots, and his middle name is Hussain, make the Democratic presidential candidate in the United States, all the more attractive to thousands of young girls wearing the hijab, not only in Syria but throughout the Arab world.
She laughingly adds, "His father's name is Hussain; meaning Obama's name is Abu Hussain!" A classmate from the same faculty angrily writes her off as naive, "Obama is no different from George W. Bush. He is just younger, speaks better, and is black. The fact that he has Muslim roots mean that if they don't kill him before he wins, he will be very anti-Muslim, to prove that he is not a terrorist! All it takes is a crazy man with a gun!"
Between both views, young Syrians are anxiously watching the presidential race to see who will win: Barack Obama, who has promised to engage their young president but never met him, or John McCain, an elderly man who had been to Damascus in 1984 and met its former president Hafez Al Assad, and who is seen by ordinary Syrians as nothing but an extension of George W. Bush.
Begging Olmert support
Maher, a barber in the Salhiyeh neighbourhood of Damascus, angrily continues work, sniping away with his scissors, "What difference is it going to make for me, if either of them win? We never got anything but trouble from the United States. Didn't you see what Obama did in Israel? He got down on hands and knees, begging support from Olmert!"
Riad, who sells books on the streets a few blocks down the road, adds, "I have been getting requests for Obama's memoirs The Audacity of Hope. Clearly the Syrians are interested but it has not yet been translated into Arabic."
Momentum
Meanwhile, Syrian newspapers continue to run front page news on Obama's campaign, although the momentum died down after his latest visit to Israel and more recently, after he selected Senator Joe Biden as his running mate, given the latter's well-known views on a federal partition of Iraq.
That had not been the case, when the Syrian media was showering Obama with praise, as someone who would correct all mistakes done to Syria by the Bush White. Two months ago, Syria's leading English monthly Forward, even ran a cover story - clearly hoping for a Obama victory - asking, "What Michel Obama can learn from Asma Al Assad?"
Earlier, when Obama's senior policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National security advisor under Jimmy Carter) came to Syria in February 2008, he spoke to Syrian university students, and received a very warm applause when he referred to Obama as "President Obama."
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