Is it ethical to travel to Syria?
A few weeks ago (September 2021) the Syrian government officially announced the reopening of its borders and the renewed issuance of tourist visas after almost two years of pandemic hiatus. Many news outlets out there have mistakenly interpreted the event as the first aperture of the country towards international tourists since the start of the Civil War (2011). As a matter of fact, however, Syria has been open for tourism since 2016: the latest closure of its borders (2020) was attributable to the COVID outbreak and had little to do with the dwindling armed insurgence ravaging the northern fringes of the country. Soviet Tours has been offering tours to Syria since 2017, actually being the first non-Arab operator to reopen the destination to international guests after the conflict broke out in 2011. Well… regardless of this often-overlooked fact, the moral question always arises: is it ethical to travel to a country like Syria?
This is a long standing issue, which has already been discussed in the past in relation to the act of visiting countries such as Israel or Myanmar. Truth to be said, we find this to be a very sanctimonious and shallow form of criticism, to which we have both a short and a long answer.
SHORT ANSWER | No, there is nothing unethical in visiting Syria in a respectful and responsible manner. There are, indeed, several forms of unethical travel - such as loud booze holidays to Spain, repugnant stag tours to Southeast Asia, appalling human safaris in Ethiopia and culture-erasing mass tourism all over the world - but none of them falls within our rather conservative spectrum of values, practices and principles.
LONG ANSWER | We are fully aware that some of the states and regions we travel to are ruled by authoritarian regimes, while some others are currently ravaged by bloody conflicts that have brought horror and despair to the civilian population. However, especially in the case of Syria, we see a few critical assessment problems that we ought to address.
First of all, we are facing, for the umpteenth time, a Double-Standard approach. “It is immoral to offer tours to a country ruled by an authoritarian regime” someone would say; sure… then what about visiting countries like Turkey, the UAE, Egypt or even Thailand? Why is their authoritarianism less hideous than the Syrian one? Are their governments really milder and not so bloodthirsty as the Assad’s? Try to ask the Kurds in southeastern Turkey, the enslaved construction workers in Dubai or the opposition activists in Cairo and Bangkok: if we condemn travel to Syria on moral grounds, then, following the same morale, we shouldn’t travel to basically 90% of the world countries, yet we don’t see the same kind of criticism towards the hordes of German and British holidaymakers in Antalya or Sharm El-Sheikh. And before you say it: this is not plain whataboutism, this is simply exposing the hypocrisy through which this matter is often handled in the journalistic discourse. “It is immoral to offer tours to a country (hundreds of) thousands of people are escaping from” someone else would argue; well, you might be right, but then let’s apply the same moral sanctimoniousness against those Westerners travelling to India, Mexico or Guatemala, countries where millions of people are emigrating from in search of jobs and better socio-economical conditions. “It is immoral to offer tours to a country where you will be shown only one side of the truth” would counterattack the staunchest critics; ok, we see where you are coming from, but isn’t this – again – a fact that is valid for the vast majority of countries out there? When visiting an über-touristic destination such as Brazil, are you allowed to witness the repression against indigenous activists fighting for the preservation of the Amazon rainforest? When travelling to Australia, will they let you visit the Pacific Ocean detention camps they keep asylum seekers confined in? Why shall we single out Syria then? Furthermore, touring Syria is very different than travelling around North Korea: you will be surprised to find out how many non-conventional places you will be able to visit and how many genuine and non-contrived experiences you will be able to make. For most women, men and children living in a conflict zone or under the yoke of an authoritarian regime, the odd encounter with a foreign visitor represents a unique chance to meet someone from the "outside world". From the tourist’s perspective, a direct contact with the local population also constitutes a precious and rare occasion to understand a country directly from the feelings and the thoughts of its inhabitants, thus bypassing the inevitably biased coverage and the often misinformed reports of mainstream media. Moreover, responsible tourism has represented and could represent again a safe and uncontroversial source of revenue for the local population and that's especially true for countries like Syria, where a large chunk of the population used to live out of tourism before the conflict broke out. We exclusively work with local guides that would be left without a source of income if we decided to cancel our tours. Boycotting the tourism industry in these areas would only lead to a further isolation of their population. We also strictly adhere to two golden rules: 1) we'll never practice war tourism, as it is a distasteful voyeuristic way of snooping around the tragedies of others and 2) we'll never ever get involved in politics, as we strongly believe that down-to-earth human relationships are way more important than loud and inconclusive talks about ideological matters: community-based responsible tourism is, in fact, a powerful tool to establish an unbiased cultural exchange between local people and foreign visitors.
Finally, even if you reject all the arguments enlightened above, there is an underlying computation problem behind the misconception that tourism could finance the Syrian regime. The revenue that the tourism industry nowadays generates and – most importantly – the percentage of the total amount that is actually taxed – thus landing in the hands of the government – represent a relatively negligible source of income for the echelons of the Syrian Arab Republic: the country doesn’t (currently) base its economy on tourism. We are not speaking about the Maldives here. And that’s also why tourism is one of the few trade sectors that is not subject to EU and/or United Nations sanctions. Boycotting community-based responsible tourism to Syria won’t yield any political or economical result, let alone lead to a democratization of the country or to a structural change of its power apparatus. The only crop we will harvest by spurning tourism to Syria is a further impoverishment and seclusion of the long-suffering citizens still inhabiting this splendid land of ancient cultures, biblical history and gentle people.
VISIT SYRIA
DISCLAIMER – Soviet Tours does not work with (or for) the Syrian Ministry of Tourism or any other government agencies of the Syrian Arab Republic. Neither monetary transactions nor any kind of formal or informal communications are currently taking place (or have taken place in the past) between Soviet Tours and the Syrian Government or any of its branches or any other internationally sanctioned state or private entities within the Syrian Arab Republic. The local guides we collaborate with are all freelancers and/or solo traders and – to our best knowledge – are not associated in any form with the Syrian Government or any of its branches or any other internationally sanctioned state or private entities within the Syrian Arab Republic. The use of our company’s logo/name and/or extracts from our website by the Syrian Government or any of its branches or any other internationally sanctioned state or private entities within the Syrian Arab Republic has not been authorised by Soviet Tours. Das Anbieten/Vermitteln/Veranstalten/Durchführen von Reiseleistungen nach/in Syrien stellt keinen Verstoß gegen bestehende EU/DE Sanktionen dar, da der reine Fremdenverkehr für touristische Zwecke – sofern es keine Zusammenarbeit mit sanktionierten Organisationen/Behörden besteht – eine der wenigen Sparten der syrischen Wirtschaft ist, die von den besagten Sanktionen nicht betroffen wird.