Letter from Syria

No question about it, the world is becoming increasingly homogenised — not only, indeed not so much, in big things such as democracy and free trade as in small.

No question about it, the world is becoming increasingly homogenised — not only, indeed not so much, in big things such as democracy and free trade as in small. No snippet of news illustrates this more clearly than the ban on smoking in public places introduced last month in Syria. A few years ago, it seemed exotically health-conscious to legislate against the cigarette in Britain, let alone in nations across the Channel traditionally addicted to café society and dangling Gauloises. Now clearly it is only a matter of time before al-Qa’eda start putting up ‘Smoke Free Zone’ notices around their training camps in the wastes of Waziristan.

In Damascus, which we visited a matter of days before the new law came into force, this is going to have quite an impact.