TravelChick

Syrian Social National Party

I meet with a young Syrian woman to do a language exchange once or twice a week: I help her study English and she helps me with my Arabic. Yesterday when I went over to her house she excitedly told me that her father was going to be interviewed on tv in an hour so she wanted to know if it was okay if we watched it. I said sure, we sat down to work on her reading, and then when it came to my time, I asked her why her father was being interviewed.

It turns out he's a member of the Syrian Social National Party, a political party that was only recently once again allowed in Syria. I asked her what the party stands for and she told me that they advocate a greater, unified Syria that would include Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, and Kuwait. Their flag is the flag I had seen at the support rally in March and been unable to identify, so it was quite exciting to learn more about the party and find out that my friend is a supporter of it.

I had quite a few questions for her, like why she thought these areas that are currently separate states and territories should be under one government, why they should be one country. She emphasized her belief that these areas should be unified because they have a common history and language.

There was so much I wanted to ask her: how many people support this idea? How do the Kurds figure into this? What about Jerusalem? that I forgot some other, important questions, like what did she think about the pullout of Syrian troops from Lebanon? What implication does that have for the party's agenda? How does the party plan to bring the 'greater Syria' about?

It was fun to talk about this topic and I hope I get to talk to her about it some more but it talking politics in the Middle East still often makes me a little anxious. I still don't know my way around Middle Eastern politics that well and I definitely have strong opinions on American politics, but sometimes I feel like what I perceive as my curiosity about politics in the region is taken as criticism of political activity here.

posted by Travel Chick @ 10:02 AM