By David Bender

    Last week I was in Cairo for several days to visit some friends.  Cairo is a city of extremes.  Compared with Damascus, it is richer and poorer, more worldly and more provincial.  Stylish malls and restaurants in Cairo are of a quality that simply does not exist in Damascus; but the poverty in the slums and shantytowns of Cairo is also rarely found in Syria.  The high end in Egypt is much higher than in Syria, but so too is the low end much lower.

    Egypt is a place that is connected to the world.  While the Internet is still slow and sometimes censored in Syria, the Egyptian government provides unfettered free dialup service to everyone in Egypt.  In my friend’s apartment (in an admittedly wealthy area of Cairo), there were some six wireless signals I could pick up.  The newspapers are filled with offers for home DSL installation; in Syria prices are high and availability is low for broadband.  Egypt Air flies to far more destinations with far greater frequency than Syrian Arab Airlines.  Unlike in Syria, Egyptian businesses have access to global capital markets and Egypt’s stock market, while tiny for a country of 80 million, is well established.

    However, Egypt has a level of poverty that simply does not exist in Syria.  While the gap between rich and poor in Syria has grown somewhat in recent years, it is still a far more egalitarian place than Egypt.  Even the poorest neighborhoods in Damascus have paved roads, utilities, and fairly clean streets; but in Cairo even near the center city or touristy markets in Khan al-Khalili, streets are in disrepair with piles of rubbish and crumbling buildings everywhere.  Farther out of the city, rural migrants live in shantytowns with sand streets.  While there are some Syrian towns out in the desert areas towards Iraq that are mired in poverty, in the cities of Syria there is little of the crushing poverty that exists throughout Egypt.

    Similarly extreme, the Syrian educational system, while hardly known for its excellence, is competent.  More importantly, education in Syria for decades has now been available to the whole population.  In Egypt, wealthy private schools and the American University in Cairo are as fine as any in the world.  But Egypt’s basic level of education is lacking.  Fewer than half of Egyptian women can read (and only slightly more than 68% of men can).  In Syria the literacy rate for men is nearly 90% and for women it is 64%.  

    This assessment bodes very well for Syria.  Syria has been isolated for much of its recent history; yet it still compares well with Egypt, which has enjoyed excellent relations with the West for nearly three decades.  When Syria decides to reorient itself (and when the US allows it to do so with a degree of dignity), Syria will be poised to, as one Syrian recently told me, “become a Middle Eastern Taiwan.”

    While such is perhaps overly optimistic, Syria does a have a remarkable opportunity that Egypt largely missed.  Despite decades of poor economy policy, dreadful diplomatic relations with most of the world, only limited economic agreements with the European Union (and currently under US sanctions), nearly no foreign aid (a result of being on the State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism), and a stifling political system at home, Syria is not a country sliding into greater poverty.  The economy is growing—if too slowly to keep up with population growth—and living standards have risen noticeably since Bashar came to power in 2000.  New restaurants and stores are opening all the time in Damascus and there has been a noticeable rise in the number of private businesses.  

    Thus, despite all of Egypt’s trade agreements, foreign aid, tourist dollars, and political support from the West, the average Syrian and Egyptian does not have a significantly different standard of living.  Whether this a credit to  Syria or a criticism of Egypt is unclear, but the point is that when Syria makes a move to come in from the cold (something I believe is inevitable) it could potentially be in an excellent position to start becoming a far more successful country.