A makeover for Syria's interim leader?

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0:30to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

0:46Estás escuchando The Fifth Floor. The Fifth Floor, ¿revió? ¿Ves? ¿Ves? ¿Ves? ¿Ves? ¿Ves? ¿V? ¿V? ¿V? ¿V? ¿V? ¿V? ¿V? This is The Fifth Floor, at the heart of global storytelling with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Farhanak Amidi.

1:16It's been a year since the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the country continues to face huge challenges around security and reconstruction. Both inside Syria and internationally, attention is focused on the new president, Ahmad al-Shara, a year into his presidency now. BBC Monitoring's Samia Hosni has been watching him very closely, and she's with me in the studio right now. Samia, welcome to the fifth floor. It's great to have you with us. Hello. So you're from BBC Monitoring, and that's exactly what you've been doing. You've been monitoring Ahmad El Shara. What are you seeing?

1:57A significant makeover in his public persona. Since he assumed power in December last year, we've seen a change in his appearance. The first day when he announced Assad's fall, he was wearing a military uniform, and he had a long beard, which is a nod to his militant past, because radical Muslims usually have long beards. This is one of their hallmarks. Then a few days later, he appeared in TV interviews, dressed in a suit and a tie and a trimmed beard. Yeah, I remember that, Clef. It was really striking. Which is a sort of positioning himself between the hardliners, the austere look of Islamists and hardliners, and the clean shaven look of the mainstream Muslims.

3:01Politicians and non-Salaaf. So he's in the middle, but it is still a big shift. Huge shift. We've seen like a steady stream of video clips on social media, showing him playing pool, shooting basketball hoops. So we have a clip of him. Let's have a listen.

3:38So, Samia, what is happening there? Where is this and what is happening? He was cracking a joke. He was in Washington in November. He met a group of Syrian expatriates. He was sitting on the podium and right next to him was the U.S. envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack. And somebody on the podium dropped something and he immediately picked on the situation and he cracked a joke. and you could hear the audience laughing. And how is this persona different from what you used to see before? Well, while he was ruling the province of Idlib in the northwest of Syria, it was obviously a small community, a small area with a homogenous population.

4:26They're mostly Sunni Muslim Syrians. It was a conservative, religiously conservative society. there was no strict enforcement of Sharia. There was a kind of enforcement, but kind of like a relatively moderate enforcement of Sharia. But it was still much more conservative than the rest of Syria under Assad. Yeah. So now he's ruling Syria. So it's a diverse society, a bigger diverse society with Christians, non-Sunni sects like the Allies. and the Druze, and then he has the Kurds. It was supposedly a society with, I would say, secular, open value system. So now Ahmed al-Shara moves to Damascus. So it's a different setting.

5:22So he is kind of like projecting this image of I'm a moderate, I am a unifying leader. I'm for everyone. He goes out, he shakes hands with people, but not with women. He appointed a woman in the 23-member cabinet, but she's the only woman and the only non-Muslim woman in the cabinet. She's Christian. She's Christian. She is a Canadian Syrian national. She was a human rights activist, which is interesting. Some critics say that she's just there as part of this rebranding and as part of the makeover. What purpose does this new image actually serve? I think his main priority or one of his main priorities is to get international legitimacy, international support, basically Western support.

6:24because with Western support, he would get things like sanctions lifted. He would get investments. He would get loans. And that would help him, of course, with reconstruction. Yes. So his main target, I think, is the international scene, the world. Yeah. The West. And it's been successful. He was in Washington. He's in Washington. and I think Congress voted to repeal the Caesars Act, therefore to lift sanctions. So yes, he was successful. He's been successful. And let's talk about the First Lady. It's quite rare with Islamist mentality like his to have your wife out in public. But we have a clip from his wife.

7:16Let's have a listen.

7:30Where is she and what is she talking about? She was delivering a speech at her graduation ceremony at the University of Idlib. Idlib is the province where her husband was based and he ruled for several years. And it was actually the stronghold of the war against Assad. So she's educated herself. How common is it to see a woman from an Islamist background like that to be so public? Like rarely. I mean, it's it's I wouldn't say it's common. It's an exception. And I think it's part of his social media campaign, part of his publicity campaign. His makeover is to project this image that I'm open. I'm even allowing my wife to make public appearances and to be on camera and to attend events.

8:31She travels alone as well outside of the country. She travels alone, she attends international events, and her news are reported by Syrian media. So I think it's a curated campaign. But of course, this curated social media campaign is reinforced by a network of influencers. We see them on Facebook and on X, people with hundreds of thousands of followers. Promoting him. Promoting him. Some of them were citizen journalists during the Civil War. Some of them were media professionals pushing the official narrative, the messaging, and defending him and rebuffing criticism by his critics. And the interesting thing is that the Information Ministry has a dedicated department to help influencers, giving them all sorts of help, licenses to operate, facilities.

9:40Assad relied mainly on state media and privately owned media owned by his loyalists. loyalists. Would you say that we should believe his claims that he's a moderate? I think to judge any kind of politician or any leader, we have to look at what he does more than what he says. We have to look at what he's been doing since he assumed power. So it's basically the actions and measures and policies that he's taken since then, since December, has just created this impression that he's caught in a tug of war between uncompromising demands of his Islamist constituency and demands of governing a diverse society.

10:36So he's torn between those two tendencies. Also his handling of sectarian unrest and crisis on the coast in western Syria We saw an outbreak of violence against the Alawite minority Which is Assad's minority And in Swaida, which is a Druze-majority province in southern Syria And we saw how these bouts of violence spiraled into deadly unrest where civilians were killed. Of course, the authorities say, oh, it's not us. It's the remnants of the Assad regime and unregulated security personnel. So people who they cannot account for within their own rank. And that is a major, major challenge. And we saw also the major terrorist attack on the Orthodox Church in Damascus.

11:44Of course, it was blamed on ISIS, but that still gives us an idea of what's happening in Syria, despite his attempt to kind of normalize the situation. And what about like more conservative moral codes and values and Sharia law and stuff? Because Damascus was a city with a vibrant nightlife and people were into fun. I've been to Damascus myself and I remember there were cabarets and nightclubs open like till late and people are just music everywhere. Is that still the vibe of the city? I would say not so much. I mean, I think it's, I mean, his government doesn't say we're enforcing Sharia. But his Islamist base is angered by the slightest kind of so-called liberal measure.

12:46So what we've seen so far, they banned what they call inappropriate swimwear, for example. That's one example. They were tolerant of a campaign by a hardline Islamist to promote the full veil. So he campaigned for a distribution of one million burqa across Syria. And they just tolerated that. There was a plan to introduce very controversial education reforms, like omitting any reference to ancient deities and a famous ancient queen, Zenobia, and to change the terminology in religious education textbooks. But then there was a big backlash, but then they said, oh, no, no, we're looking into that.

13:41We're going to review the plan. But I think they do things secretly without kind of making a big thing out of it. Yeah, these are just some of the things we see that do not ogre well. Yeah. And how do Syrians broadly view him at the moment, one year on? Well, obviously, he has a constituency of religious conservative Sunni Muslim people, because that's his main support base. But there are also so many kind of sections of the populations that are not happy and that feel alienated. the Alawites, the Druze, the Kurds in the Northeast, and, of course, the hardliners. They're not happy either. Because they view him too moderate.

14:36Yeah. Thank you so much, Samia. That was very interesting. Samia Hosni from BBC Monitoring.

14:46You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This is The Fifth Floor, and I'm Farahniar Community.

15:30The special administrative region of Macau on the south coast of China is sometimes referred to as the Las Vegas of the East. The gaming hub attracts tourists from all over the world, as well as from mainland China and Taiwan, where gambling is generally illegal apart from state-run lotteries. But amid the glitzy casinos and hotels, something new has opened. Macau's very first luxury resort hospital. It's all part of a push by Beijing to diversify the economy and capitalize on the medical tourism industry, which is booming in many places across Asia. My colleague Osman Chia, who is based in Singapore and has visited Macau is here to tell us more about this.

16:18Osman, welcome to the fifth floor. Hello, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you. So just paint a picture of what Macau is like. For anyone who's been to, for example, Las Vegas, I think you'll be able to relate to that sense of awe when you see the tall skyscrapers of Macau, their huge casino hubs in the centre of the city. You'll see plenty of neon-lit buildings and it's very glacy, is very glamorous, but it's also juxtaposed with a very different state of living for a lot of locals in Macau. Just outside the main city where the casinos are, you'll see fairly run-down flats that are far from the kind of buildings that you see in the centre of the city.

17:00There's lots of contradiction. And it used to be a Portuguese territory until the late 1990s. When you walk around Macau, do you see signs and buildings from the Portuguese era as well? Yeah, there are a lot of Portuguese influences throughout the city. So you have street names and very different from the kind of street names that you see in mainland China and in Hong Kong and that part of the world. I remember when I was visiting with my family, there was a monument of St. Paul's that's in the middle of a shopping district. And it sticks out like a sotan because it's such a unique structure. Yeah, so European.

17:36You don't expect to see it there. Yeah, so European. There are cobblestone streets as well that's still preserved in the middle of the city. So it's very different from what you see from anywhere else in mainland China. And one of the grandest casinos in the middle of the city is called the Casino Lisboa. So it very much is a callback to Macau's Portuguese roots. In the intro, I said that Macau is kind of known as the Las Vegas of the East. But in fact, it has taken over Las Vegas when it comes to gambling. Do we know how much revenue comes from the gambling industry? It is estimated to have taken more than 3 billion US dollars in tax revenue from the gambling industry.

18:16And we know that previous estimates have said gaming revenue accounts for around 80 % of Macau's tax revenue. So you can imagine how significant the gaming industry is to Macau. Wow. Now let's talk about medical tourism. What is medical tourism? So basically medical tourism is people traveling to have medical treatment or to receive medication in another country. So this is a really up and coming and really booming industry. So estimates have it that it's going to be worth anywhere more than$100 billion by the early 2030s. So I think a lot of countries in the world, especially countries in Asia where medical treatment is significantly cheaper than what you get in the West.

19:01These countries like Turkey, India, Singapore and Thailand, they've really tried to build a medical tourism sector. So in India and Thailand, for example, where treatment is anywhere like one third of the price in the West, they've created special visa categories to try and attract foreign tourists to come to their country for medical treatment. So it's really a big sector that many Asian countries especially are trying to capitalize on. There's also a huge market for cosmetic surgery. And this is exactly what the hospital that's being set up in Macau is targeting. They're targeting people who want to stay in their resort for a slightly longer period of time for cosmetic surgeries.

19:49So they're very much targeting this segment of tourists who come to Macau for cosmetic surgery. You can come there for MRI checks and advanced scanning as well. And, you know, I can think of worse places to be than in a fancy resort, you know, while you're undergoing a medical treatment. So I think that's the whole concept of this. So this new resort hospital, it's opened in this area called Studio City, which is kind of like a Hollywood themed casino. Quite a clash, isn't it? Yeah. And in Studio City, it's got different themed streets where people can stay. And this is anywhere above like$300 a night.

20:35And there's also a huge, there'll be almost cinema where people can enjoy and stay. It's really like a huge complex and a huge hub full of different things that people can do on top of gambling. And now it's brought a hospital. Very interesting. So where does this pressure come from to diversify the economy? When did this happen? After China stepped in in the late 1990s, it has very much tried to diversify Macau's economy beyond gaming. I mean, as we said just now, gaming accounts for about 80 % of Macau's tax revenue. And I think they've learned the lessons from COVID-19, which is that's not sustainable because during COVID-19, the economy pretty much collapsed.

21:17The casinos were shut. No tourists were coming in. And in China, there was a huge lockdown. and the majority of tourists in Macau are from China, mainland China. So China is leading this push to diversify Macau's economy beyond gaming into other sectors. So there's this one plus four concept that they're trying to build in Macau. So on top of gaming, they want Macau to be known as a finance hub, a tech hub, a healthcare hub, as well as an event space. And that's something that Las Vegas has become known for, organizing these huge events and conventions to draw people. And in turn, you also bring people to the gaming casinos, you bring people to all sorts of other tourist revenue streams in Macau.

22:00So that's really the crux of that push by the Chinese Communist Party to rebuild and rebrand Macau. Macau represents basically a playground for the rich. How does that fit into the ideology of China's political party, the Communist Party? So I think the Chinese Communist Party, they've really tried to crack down on vice and illegal gambling activities. It so often comes tied together with a large gambling industry. So we've seen a lot of stories of people getting arrested for facilitating cross-border gambling and all sorts of other vices. So I think it's all part of a cleanup that China is trying to lead.

22:43And where are people predicting the medical tourism industry heading in the future? There's a huge sector that I think many countries, especially in Asia, they're going to try to go after this pie. So we're seeing in countries like Malaysia, there is a ministry in the government specifically built just to support the medical tourism industry. Not all countries that I mentioned have this, but it's just a sign of how they're seeing this huge demand in medical tourism. That was Osman Chia speaking to us from Singapore. Now let's head to the state of Punjab in India, where 17-year-old Janvijindal has recently achieved five Guinness World Records in freestyle skating.

23:29She was able to perform, amongst other things, 32 360-degree rotations in 30 seconds, whilst balancing on her inline skates. Oh, man, my head is spinning already. BBC reporter Sarabjit Singh Dhaliwal went to meet Janvi and her parents to learn more about her journey on wheels. Hi, my name is Janvi Chandal. I'm 17 years old and I'm the youngest girl in India to have the maximum number of Guinness world record. Janvi Jindal started practicing freestyle skating when she was 8 years old. This is a discipline that involves mastering spinning and jumps on inline roller skates. My skating journey was very unexpected.

24:20I was shopping in a center. She told me she still remembers the first time she fell in love with skating. She was at a shopping center and saw a pair of rollerblades. She tried them on, with her dad sporting her. He gave a little push from behind. She remembers the moment she started finding her balance. Her dad, Manish Jindal, decided to buy those skates for her. He thought I should let her do what she want to do. Little did he know that the gentle push he gave her all those years ago would set her on a path to break world records. Freestyle skating is not very popular in India and there are no coaches or classes in Chandigarh, the city where Janhvi is from.

25:14She learned everything she knows on the internet watching videos of professional skaters from abroad. At first, her mom, Devya, was not really happy with Janvi's new hobby. Janvi kept falling over and getting injured. So, understandably, her mom was worried about her. But as time went on, Janvi got better and better and her mom got on board as well.

25:45Janvi said her extended family He questioned her parents why are you letting her scarce but if she gets hers. But if she ends up with scars, it will be difficult to get her married. But Janavi said her dad stood firm.

26:05Janavi's dad, Manish, spent several hours every week training with Janavi. Manish says that Janavi is very determined and her dedication paid off. Janhvi managed to achieve 5 guinness world records.

26:26Janhvi said that to become a record holder, she had to perform 72 spins in 1 minute on one wheel only, while set balancing the other foot up in the air. Just thinking about it make me feel a bit dizzy, but Janhvi is not stopping there. Our plan is to try for even more records in the upcoming months. Since news of our achievement come out, Janbi been contacted by a lot of girls who would like to learn how to skate. She's really happy to help them out and hopefully their path will be smoother than hers because they now have a role model to look up to.

27:10Sarabjit Singh Dhaliwal reporting for BBC Punjabi that's all we've got time for today if you want to let us know what you think about the show or you have questions for us send an email to the5thfloor at bbc.co.uk we love hearing from you you can write to us at the5thfloor, all one word at bbc.co.uk

27:36You've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

28:06listener questions and how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.