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Arab leaders are receptive to reopening ties to Syria, but tourism cannot be commanded from the top: it must be deserved. It requires an attractive infrastructure, cultural and historic sites, comfortable accommodations. In 2010, just before the start of the Syrian Civil War, 8.5 million tourists visited Syria; they brought in revenue estimated at LS 30.8 billion (US$8.4 billion, at 2010 rates), and accounted for 14% of the country’s economy. By 2015, the number of tourists had declined catastrophically, by more than 98%, to 170,000. Now that almost all of the country has been subdued by Assad’s army, that relative peace has led to a rise – a very slight rise — in tourist numbers..
Another handicap to increasing tourism to Syria is the other war in which Syria is involved: the war between Israel and Iran, that is being fought in Syria, where Iran continues to try to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Israelis, from the air, try to destroy those weapons shipments. Just in the past few weeks Israeli jets have struck the Aleppo Airport twice. Why would Iran stop its arms smuggling, or Israel stop its bombing campaign to prevent those arms from reaching Hezbollah? How attractive a tourist destination is a country where its two major airports are constantly under threat of being bombed.
A half-million civilians were killed in the war. Also. half the population of 22 million is either now living in wretched conditions in refugee camps outside of Syria, or living as displaced persons inside Syria, in slightly less wretched conditions. Many apartments and houses lie in ruins or at best, emptied of their owners, subsist in dilapidated abandonment. They cannot be an attractive sight for tourists.
And what of the tourist sights? Palmyra, a Roman site that was once the greatest tourist attraction in Syria, was mostly destroyed by ISIS between 2015 and 2017. ISIS militants destroyed the Temple of Bel, the Temple of Baalshamin, the Arch of Triumph, and part of a second century Roman theater — all major landmarks of the ancient city. Statues in Palmyra’s museum were toppled and mutilated. Khaled al-Asaad, the 82-year-old head of antiquities in Palmyra, who had pleaded with ISIS to spare the site, was executed by its fighters. After all, Palmyra belonged to the pre-Islamic period, the Jahiliyya, or “Time of Ignorance.” It had no worth. It deserved to be destroyed.
Fighting between Assad’s forces and the rebels also destroyed the Old City of Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The famed Umayyad Mosque was completely ruined, turned into rubble, and its minaret toppled.
Here is a list of Syrian sites damaged or destroyed by army or militia occupation, by shelling or by looting:
Army or Militia Occupation:
o Medieval tombs of Mohammed bin Ali and Nizar Abu Bahaaeddine, blown up in June 2015
o Temple of Bel, blown up in August 2015
o Temple of Baalshamin, blown up in August 2015
o Tower of Elahbel and several other ancient tombs, destroyed between June and September 2015
o Monumental Arch, largely destroyed in October 2015
If the Syrians think that they can interest tour operators in Jordan and Lebanon to again include Syria in the multi-country package tours that were offered before the war, they are likely to be disappointed. Why, when Syria is so much less attractive as a tourist destination now than it was before the war, and with so much of the country, and virtually all of its historic sites, in ruins, would either Lebanon or Jordan want to share their tourist revenues with Damascus? Jordan has Petra, “the rose-red city half as old as time,” and other Nabatean sites, as well as Crusader castles, still untouched, while Lebanon is full of historic sites, from Roman ruins to Crusader castles at Baalbek and Byblos. For now, Syria can only offer some beaches. That’s not much; better ones can be found in Lebanon and on the Red Sea.
Finally, why would Saudi Arabia, that is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars to transform the Kingdom into a major tourist destination by creating a vast complex on the Red Sea, and hoping to attract millions of visitors from all over the world, want to do anything to help build back Syria’s devastated tourist trade? The Crown Prince doesn’t want to help the competition; he wants to crush it.
In three or four years, we will have a much better idea of how many tourists the Syrian government has managed to attract to view it in its ruined state. There is little reason to think the results will impress.
But Syria in 2023 is nothing like Syria was before its civil war, when tourists from GCC countries came to Syria to enjoy the cooler seaside air, given the stifling summer heat in their own countries. Much of Syria’s population of 22 million has been scattered during the decade of war: six million Syrians have fled the country, and are unlikely to return as long as the man who drove them out, Bashar al-Assad, remains in power. Another five million have been internally displaced, now living in “temporary” shelters far from where their houses had been. And more than a half-million civilians were killed in the war. That civil war resulted in massive destruction all over Syria. Bridges, roads, apartment buildings, hospitals, museums, churches, mosques have all been damaged or destroyed. Many houses are no longer fit for habitation. Many Syrian cities look like Berlin in 1946: a state of total ruin. It is not a place that many pleasure-loving tourists would wish to visit. It has been estimated that merely to put Syria back in the state it was in before the civil war would cost $400 billion –money Syria does not have, and will not receive from anywhere. Not even its ally Iran can be of much help, for the Islamic Republic is itself enduring a collapsing economy and has no more money to spare on propping up others; it has even had to cut its subsidy to its most loyal allies, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Besides, Iran is not happy that Syria is making overtures to the Arab states, and has been welcomed back into the fold of the Arab League after all the aid the Islamic Republic had extended to Assad during the civil war. Iran had assumed it would be able to keep Syria entirely within its orbit, as part of a “Shi’a crescent” extending from the Shi’a Houthis in Yemen to the Iraqi Shi’a militias,, to Syria with its Alawite-led army (the Alawites are a branch of Shia Islam), to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Arab leaders are receptive to reopening ties to Syria, but tourism cannot be commanded from the top: it must be deserved. It requires an attractive infrastructure, cultural and historic sites, comfortable accommodations. In 2010, just before the start of the Syrian Civil War, 8.5 million tourists visited Syria; they brought in revenue estimated at LS 30.8 billion (US$8.4 billion, at 2010 rates), and accounted for 14% of the country’s economy. By 2015, the number of tourists had declined catastrophically, by more than 98%, to 170,000. Now that almost all of the country has been subdued by Assad’s army, that relative peace has led to a rise – a very slight rise — in tourist numbers..
Little can be done to make Syria a more attractive destination as long as heaps of rubble can be found all over the country, where houses, apartment buildings, hospitals, libraries, office buildings, government offices, factories, and farms once stood. It will take many years – longer than the decade it took to destroy it – to put Syria back into a state where more than a handful of tourists will want to visit. And there is no assurance that anything like enough money will be forthcoming from the GCC countries, the only ones, among the Arab and Muslim lands, that have some money to spare. So far, despite the improvement in ties to Damascus, they have not promised to give Syria anything.
Another handicap to increasing tourism to Syria is the other war in which Syria is involved: the war between Israel and Iran, that is being fought in Syria, where Iran continues to try to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Israelis, from the air, try to destroy those weapons shipments. Just in the past few weeks Israeli jets have struck the Aleppo Airport twice. Why would Iran stop its arms smuggling, or Israel stop its bombing campaign to prevent those arms from reaching Hezbollah? How attractive a tourist destination is a country where its two major airports are constantly under threat of being bombed.
Visitors are not the same thing as tourists. Most visitors to Syria come for work or to look for work, others come to visit family. Of the 1.5 million visitors who came to Syria in 2022, the Syrians themselves admit that only 500,000 were tourists. If Syria had 385,000 visitors in the first quarter of this year, how many were tourists? Following the 2022 calculation that one-third of visitors are tourists, about 130,000 were tourists, in the first quarter of 2023, and Syria will have about 520,000 tourists in 2023, as opposed to 500,000 in 2022. Not exactly an impressive performance.
A half-million civilians were killed in the war. Also. half the population of 22 million is either now living in wretched conditions in refugee camps outside of Syria, or living as displaced persons inside Syria, in slightly less wretched conditions. Many apartments and houses lie in ruins or at best, emptied of their owners, subsist in dilapidated abandonment. They cannot be an attractive sight for tourists.
And what of the tourist sights? Palmyra, a Roman site that was once the greatest tourist attraction in Syria, was mostly destroyed by ISIS between 2015 and 2017. ISIS militants destroyed the Temple of Bel, the Temple of Baalshamin, the Arch of Triumph, and part of a second century Roman theater — all major landmarks of the ancient city. Statues in Palmyra’s museum were toppled and mutilated. Khaled al-Asaad, the 82-year-old head of antiquities in Palmyra, who had pleaded with ISIS to spare the site, was executed by its fighters. After all, Palmyra belonged to the pre-Islamic period, the Jahiliyya, or “Time of Ignorance.” It had no worth. It deserved to be destroyed.
Fighting between Assad’s forces and the rebels also destroyed the Old City of Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The famed Umayyad Mosque was completely ruined, turned into rubble, and its minaret toppled.
Here is a list of Syrian sites damaged or destroyed by army or militia occupation, by shelling or by looting:
Army or Militia Occupation:
- Palmyra World Heritage Site), tank occupation, statues and reliefs damaged.
- Apamea (Tentative World Heritage Site), damaged by bulldozers used by looters digging into the citadel mound for treasure.
- Bosra (World Heritage Site), damaged by tanks.
- Tell Rifa’i or Tell Rifa’at, damaged by soldiers using it as a camp.
- The Chateau de Chmemis in Salamyeh, shelters for tanks excavated at the base of the citadel.
- Khan Sheikhoun, shelters for tanks on the slopes of the tell.
- Tell Afis, damaged by encampments.
- Tell A’zaz, damaged by installation of heavy weaponry.
- Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi monastery, possibly damaged during army search.
- Kafr Nubbel rock shelters, damaged during searches for deserters.
- Qal Markab, damaged by installation of heavy weaponry.
- Tell Nebi Mend, damaged by installation of heavy weaponry.
- Homs Qal, tanks and heavy weaponry installation.
- Qal Hama, tanks and heavy weaponry installation.
- Sidi Yahia mosque, tanks and heavy weaponry installation.
- The Museum of Hama: “According to sources in Syria, the well-known regional Museum of Hama situated in the town of Hama, north-west region of Syria, fell victim to looters. Notably, an intricate gilt bronze statue, dating back to the Aramaean era, is now missing.”
- The Raqqa Museum, also known as the Qala’at Jabar Museum, was looted on 1 May 2012. Stolen items included three figurines of the goddess Ishtar and pottery dating to the third millennium BC.
- Roman mosaics were looted from Apamea, its Roman floors were ripped up with bulldozers.
- Two capitals from the colonnade of Decumanus, the main (Roman) road in Apamea, were removed.
- The Museum of Deir ez-Zor — looted.
- The Maarat al-Numan Museum — looted.
- Beit Ghazaleh Museum of the city of Aleppo — looted.
- Several buildings and structures in or near Palmyra:
o Medieval tombs of Mohammed bin Ali and Nizar Abu Bahaaeddine, blown up in June 2015
o Temple of Bel, blown up in August 2015
o Temple of Baalshamin, blown up in August 2015
o Tower of Elahbel and several other ancient tombs, destroyed between June and September 2015
o Monumental Arch, largely destroyed in October 2015
- Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Der Zor, blown up in September 2014
- Virgin Mary Church in Tel Nasri, blown up in April 2015
- Monastery of St. Elian near Al-Qaryatayn, destroyed in August 2015
Iran’s economy is in no condition for Iranians to travel as tourists anywhere. If Russians want to visit the seaside, they have the beaches of Sochi, better than anything in Syria, and Putin, who would not want them to spend money abroad, has ways to discourage such tourism. As for Chinese tourists, their top tourist destinations are all in southeast Asia, and Chinese beaches are famously pristine, unlike those in Syria that now contain the effluvia of more than a decade of war, including the ruins of seaside hotels. As for the oil-rich GCC countries, their tourists are used to luxury travel, and prefer the Riviera to any spot in the Middle East. But among tourist destinations in the Middle East, it is Lebanon, the “Paris of the Middle East,” that has most attracted them.
Israel is not “targeting the Syrian economy.” It is trying only to prevent Iran from using bases in Syria as way-stations for the delivery of its weapons to Hezbollah. That’s why it has been bombing sites where the weapons arrive, at the Aleppo and Damascus Airports, and the truck convoys that take those weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
If the Syrians think that they can interest tour operators in Jordan and Lebanon to again include Syria in the multi-country package tours that were offered before the war, they are likely to be disappointed. Why, when Syria is so much less attractive as a tourist destination now than it was before the war, and with so much of the country, and virtually all of its historic sites, in ruins, would either Lebanon or Jordan want to share their tourist revenues with Damascus? Jordan has Petra, “the rose-red city half as old as time,” and other Nabatean sites, as well as Crusader castles, still untouched, while Lebanon is full of historic sites, from Roman ruins to Crusader castles at Baalbek and Byblos. For now, Syria can only offer some beaches. That’s not much; better ones can be found in Lebanon and on the Red Sea.
Finally, why would Saudi Arabia, that is now spending hundreds of billions of dollars to transform the Kingdom into a major tourist destination by creating a vast complex on the Red Sea, and hoping to attract millions of visitors from all over the world, want to do anything to help build back Syria’s devastated tourist trade? The Crown Prince doesn’t want to help the competition; he wants to crush it.
In three or four years, we will have a much better idea of how many tourists the Syrian government has managed to attract to view it in its ruined state. There is little reason to think the results will impress.
