Destination Damascus

 “I see more tourists every year,” smiles tourist guide Abdul Razzak Homsi when asked about the prospects of his business. “Three years ago, museums in Damascus were empty. Now Europeans are queuing at the gates.” Statistics from the Syrian Ministry of Tourism show that in the first five months of this year, the number of “tourist arrivals” in Syria rose to 3.1 million, a whopping 65 percent increase compared to the same period a year earlier. The figure is divided into three groups: Arab foreigners (1.7 million), non-Arab foreigners  (900,000) and Syrian expatriates (600,000). Although “tourist arrivals” is a loose definition — the ministry simply measures all arrivals and calls them tourists — unless Damascus suddenly became the world business conference capital, tourists are evidently flocking into Syria in large numbers. Tourism was “a bit static” in the years following the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri,