[HCDX] American radio wins fans in Syria

["Terry Krueger" <tocobagadx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

American radio wins fans in Syria


Archive
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 15, 2003


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SYRIAN-IRAQI BORDER -- Now playing on your 1260 AM dial --
it's Radio Sawa!

Launched a year ago, Sawa is drawing a wide audience in the
Middle East with its snappy blend of pop music and
Arabic-language newscasts. The approach is clever enough
that few listeners realize Sawa is a creation of the U.S.
government, aimed at improving America's image in a hostile
region.

"It comes from London," says Mousanna, a young Syrian taxi
driver, when asked what he knew about the station.

Mousanna says he first heard Sawa -- it means "together" in
Arabic -- while visiting the Syrian capital, Damascus. When
he got home to Deir Ezzor, a city in eastern Syria, he told
his fellow cab drivers about it and now they all tune in.

On a recent trip with two American passengers, Mousanna said
he likes Sawa because it plays "a lot of nice, slow songs"
as well as livelier fare by Jennifer Lopez, one of his
favorites, and the Spanish group Ketchup.

He also likes the newscasts, which have reported on the
Iraqi crisis in a factual way but tend to downplay the huge
international criticism of the United States.
[Times photos: Jamie Francis]
A tailor irons the last of the day's repairs at his shop in
the old city of Damascus.

One example: The 7:15 p.m. news Monday led with a segment in
which America's biggest supporter, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, discussed the timetable for Iraq to disarm. The
female announcer only briefly mentioned that France and
Russia oppose a war before moving on.

Radio Sawa is the brainchild of Norman J. Pattiz, a U.S.
broadcast executive who visited the Middle East in early
2001 and found that few people were listening to the Voice
of America Arabic service. Its dry, analysis-heavy format
had little appeal in countries like Syria, where much of the
population is under 30.

Radio Sawa's music-and-news approach was conceived before
Sept. 11, but the terrorist attacks -- along with the sudden
prominence of the Arab channel Al-Jazeera -- prompted
Congress to approve $35-million to get Sawa on the air
sooner than planned.

Critics question whether Sawa will help improve perceptions
of the United States, as most listeners seem more interested
in the music than the news.

But if Mousanna is any judge, the station is growing more
popular by the day, even if he and others don't know who's
behind it.

"I love it," he said, turning up the volume.


* * *
Like most Syrians, those in the eastern part of the country
oppose a war in Iraq. Many have relatives there: Mousanna's
father, a widower, plans to marry a cousin who lives near
Baghdad.

But there's another reason for the opposition: War could
mean an end to cheap Iraqi oil.
A blind man who makes his living praying with the sick and
troubled lays his hands on two boys at Omayyad Mosque in
Damascus. His prayers are available for pennies each.
In Abu Kamal, a dusty town just across the border from Iraq,
Syrians can get diesel oil for 16.5 Syrian pounds -- about
32 cents a liter -- compared with 24 pounds elsewhere in the
country. That means a savings of $20 or more filling up a
gas tank.

Nor is there any need to hunt for a gas station. Dozens of
street vendors dispense diesel from blue plastic jugs
through aluminum funnels.

The diesel enters Syria in defiance of U.N. sanctions
imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Syria was
part of the allied coalition in the Gulf War, but later
patched up relations with Saddam Hussein. The two countries
enjoy a thriving trade -- much of it black market.

With Baghdad just 250 miles away, hundreds of Syrians drive
into Iraq every day to sell clothing, appliances and other
goods. They bring back oil and dates, Iraq's
second-most-popular export.

Coming from the other side of the border are the battered
orange-and-white taxis of Baghdad. Most of them carry Iraqis
who will stay with Syrian relatives during the war; the
taxis return to Iraq with bottled water and supplies for
those planning to stick it out.

People on both sides of the border are Sunni Muslims who
share a simple lifestyle nurtured by the Euphrates, the
fabled river that flows from the plains of eastern Syria
into Iraq. Those ties make the Abu Kamal border crossing
Iraq's friendliest, most accessible link to the outside
world.

The Iraqi-Kuwaiti border has been closed since the '91 Gulf
War, and Turkey shut its border recently in anticipation of
a new war. Getting to Baghdad from Jordan or Saudi Arabia
requires a drive across hundreds of miles of desert. It is
also possible to cross the mountains or desert from Iran,
though relations between it and Iraq have been sour since
the two fought a devastating war in the '80s.

But in Abu Kamal, the crossing is quick and easy, and fear
of war has not diminished the bustling traffic between Syria
and Iraq. In a rare example of optimism, Abu Kamal expects
even more trade -- the town is widening and improving the
main highway to the border.


* * *
Iraq isn't the only Middle Eastern country that doesn't get
along with some of its neighbors. To get an idea of the bad
blood between Syria and two other countries, just look at a
Syrian road map.

Along the Mediterranean coast, the map shows Antakya and
Iskenderun as part of Syria. In fact, they are officially
part of Turkey although Syria claims the area was stolen
from it in the late 1930s.

(Interestingly, Iskenderun is the port through which the
United States planned to deploy thousands of troops before
the Turkish Parliament rejected the idea. Turkey and Syria
may not agree on which nation Iskenderun belongs to, but
they are united in their opposition to war.)

Like most road maps, the Syrian one also shows parts of
neighboring countries. But given Syria's longtime enmity
toward Israel, which captured the Golan Heights in the 1967
Mideast war, Israel is nowhere to be seen. Instead the area
is labeled Palestine. That might explain why you can't make
a phone call to Israel from Syria -- as far as Syrian
mapmakers are concerned, the Jewish state doesn't exist.




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---[End Commercial]-----------------------
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