Damascus - Sayyida Ruqayya Shia Mosque, Men Worshipping Shrine
This is what Syria (The Syrian Arab Republic) looked like at the end of 2007, 7 years after President Bashar al-Assad took power on 10 July 2000 after uncontested elections in which other candidates were banned, succeeding his father Hafez al-Assad who had led Syria for 30 years and had passed away in office a month before. The President of Syria still was the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces as well as General Secretary of the ruling Ba'ath Party. Since my first visit in Syria in August 2000, when the country was mourning President Hafez al-Assad, I could witness some change: the country had opened up to foreign goods -while you couldn’t even find a bottle of Coke 7 years before, restoration of the historical patrimony was under way, Japanese cars had replaced overaged run-down vehicles, and some kind of freedom could be felt; in the same time, Islam had risen in what used to be a secular regime. Yet, the Ba'ath Party’s control was still well in place, the regime’s and the Alawi pro-Iran & pro-Hezbollah propaganda were ubiquitous, and what could have seemed at first like a country starting to look like Lebanon still was under a (slightly more subtle -or modern?) government control than before. Most of the historical places and monuments I shot in 2007 have now sadly been forever destroyed by the Civil War which has been ongoing since 2011 -not to mention the humanitarian disaster in the country and the atrocious sufferings of its people.
Size: 3872px × 2592px
Location: Damascus, Syria, The Syrian Arab Republic, Middle East
Photo credit: © François-Olivier Dommergues / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 2007, al-assad, alawi, alawites, arab, architechture, architecture, baath, baathist, control, dictator, dictatorship, east, ha, hafez, hijab, history, holy, islam, islamic, middle, mosque, muslim, party, pilgrims, pro-hezbollah, pro-iran, propaganda, regime, religion, republic, shia, shias, syria, syrian, tradition, traditional, tre
