Damascus becomes Arab cultural capital for 2008

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2008

DAMASCUS (AFP) — Damascus heads into a new year as the cultural capital of the Arab world for 2008, hosting a year-long series of theatrical and musical events, along with talks by renowned intellectuals.

American linguist and leftist intellectual Noam Chomsky, Czech writer Milan Kundera and Lebanon's famed songstress Fairuz are among the personalities coming to Syria as Damascus assumes the cultural mantle from Algiers.

But not everyone welcomes the planned events, with Syrian writer Ibrahim Haj Abdi calling them "ephemeral cultural festivities."

"Syrian intellectuals might have believed these promises (by the organisers) if only they had been accompanied by efforts to free one of the country's most important intellectuals, Michel Kilo," he wrote in...