Syria News Wire

The rumours are back, but this time with official backing: Syria will soon have a third mobile phone network, joining Syriatel and MTN.

It was initially supposed to happen a few years ago, but no operator was appointed. Then in 2008, there were rumours that Kuwaiti mobile company Zain, or Turkcell wanted to take over Syriatel, and again, that didn’t happen.

This time round, it looks likely that the bidding process will actually open, and a company will win the contact. But will it make any difference. Since they launched, the pricing structures of Syriatel and the second network (initially known as 94, then Areeba, and now MTN) have been identical. When one company launches a new product, the other creates exactly the same thing with a different name. There has been no competition – as far as consumers are concerned MTN and ST might as well be one company.

The hope is that with a third company, restrictions on price competition will be lifted, and the new entrant will be able to undercut the existing players. The question is, who will run the third network? Zain looks like it is in the strongest position, being one of the region’s biggest mobile phone operators. And it is loved by consumers. Its customer service is legendary in a region where the customer seems more of an inconvenience than a client. Zain regularly answers questions on Twitter, and its call centres can actually resolve problems.

So even if the price restrictions aren’t lifted, could Zain shake up Syria’s mobile environment?

Two days after making wild unsourced allegations that Israel is planning to attack Hizbollah factories in Syria, Kuwaiti gossip rag Al-Rai is at it again.

This time the ‘newspaper’ claims that Hizbollah and Syria have created a joint military command to attack Israel. But here’s the kick: the unsourced report claims that Hizbollah will place anti-aircraft missiles inside Syria.

So we are supposed to believe that Al-Rai has anonymous contacts within the Israeli military, Hizbollah and the Syrian army. At the same time.

Al-Rai is playing a very dirty, very dangerous game. These two articles seem to be an attempt to stir up an Israel-Syria conflict. First by saying, hey Syria, Israel wants to attack you. And then by saying, hey Israel, Syria’s ready to fire on your aircraft.

Israel has waged a bitter campaign for 60 years to get Jerusalem recognised internationally as its capital city. Not one single country maintains an embassy there – not even the United States – pending final status negotiations between Israel and Palestine.

The UN, the US, the EU and almost every country in the world considers East Jerusalem to be Palestinian territory occupied by Israel. Apple, however, thinks differently, and considers the whole of Jerusalem to be in Israel.

A few months ago it was all so different. Apple accepted international opinion, and in the weather app on the iPhone, gave two options: West Jerusalem, Israel, or East Jerusalem, West Bank. Matthew Teller wrote about a campaign by some Israeli bloggers to get that changed. The Israeli ambassador to Washington even wrote a letter of protest (he must be a busy man). Lo and behold, the Israeli bulldozing campaign won. The whole of Jerusalem is now Israel, and there is no longer an East Jerusalem option.

This is a story about two Kuwaiti newspapers: Al-Rai and Al-Seyassah. People often hail Kuwait as having one of the most free media scenes in the Arab World. But there’s a difference between free and diverse.

You see, in Kuwait, as in Lebanon, there’s a huge range of private broadcasters and newspapers – especially given the size of these two tiny countries. But that doesn’t mean there is a free media. Each of the organisations is owned by a powerful family. In Kuwait there are a dozen wealthy, influential tribes, and in Lebanon, most broadcasters and publications are controlled by political parties (which in turn feel the heavy hand of an influential family – the Junblatts, the Jajas, the Gemayels, the Hariris).

So when a Kuwaiti newspaper publishes an ‘exclusive’, people pay attention. Unfortunate

ly though, these publications lack professional standards. Al-Seyassah led a campaign against Syria at the height of its isolation, making various wild claims which apparently came from within the Syrian government. The problem was that each of these claims was based on an anonymous source.

Now Al-Rai is at it too. It says that Israel is planning to attack Hizbollah factories inside Syria. And you guessed it, it relies on an anonymous source from within Israel. Compounding this unprofessional attitude, an Israeli paper, Haaretz, has republished these astonishing rumours about its own country without any fresh source – no confirmation, denial or even a ‘no-comment’ from the Israeli military.

Someone in Al-Rai is up to something, possibly starting what they hope will be a self-fulfilling prophecy about an Israeli attack on Syria. Or it could be nothing more than sheer unprofessionalism. We have to hope it’s the latter.

To most people outside of the US, the controversy over the Muslim cultural centre a few blocks away from Ground Zero doesn’t make much sense.

I can’t imagine another country in the world where this would’ve been an argument, where this issue would’ve been manipulated, or where millions of people could be so manipulatable.

Needless to say, the arguments haven’t had much airing outside the US, aside from the basic positions of both sides. So up steps the legendary Charlie Brooker to tell us what is really going on. This is the Ground Zero Mosque discussion, UK style.

“The planned “ultra-mosque” will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin’s call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for “victory” is.”

Read the rest here.

It has taken years for our bickering Arab rulers to realise it, but uniting our region benefits us all.

Europe is the model for every economic union in the world. The EU is the most deeply integrated region on earth, with a highly developed political, social and economic system.

The Gulf has done pretty well, bringing together the oil economies into a free trade zone known as the GCC. But the rest of the Arab World lags decades behind, despite the professed desire for unity coming from most of our leaders’ mouths since independence in the early 20th century.

Now, though, the unity train has once again left the station, fuelled this time by Turkey. Ankara has pushed for more liberalised cross-border trade and is removing visa requirements for citizens of regional countries. The knock on effect is that those regional countries are also signing bilateral agreements between each other. So what started out as a Turkey-Jordan and Turkey-Syria deal has ended up in Syria and Jordan agreeing a similar treaty.

Now that Jordanians no longer require visas to enter Syria, the number of people crossing that border has tripled, from one-third of a million in the first half of 2009, to almost one million in the same period this year.

More unity, more benefits.

The First Islamic Sharia Judge of Damascus, Adel Bunduk has just announced that Ramadan will begin on Wednesday in Syria.

That means Syria joins Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf states in starting the holy month tomorrow. Oman starts on Thursday.

Lina Sinjab meets Madina FM’s delightful breakfast presenter Honey Al-Sayed and looks at how Syria’s media environment is opening up.

Then she talks to Forward magazine’s Abdulsalam Haykal to discuss economic liberalisation, visiting Amjad Maliki’s new venture, The Khan, just off Medhat Pasha and City Centre mall.

And in the Guardian, Stephen Starr and John Wreford have the best dispatch as Damon Albarn brought the Gorillaz to the Damascus Citadel.

This is me attempting to explain the niqab ban in a two-way on Ireland’s Newstalk radio yesterday.