Die Fernfahrer-Dörfer im Qalamûn/Syrien

Abstract

Since the end of World War II transit goods have been transported on a larger scale from west to east across the Arabian peninsula on the roads of the Arab Republic of Syria. The Arabian transit agreement, together with various legal measures taken by the Syrian government, result in an unconventional situation: although the haulage firms are based in Damascus, the haulage vehicles are nominally bought by Syrian-Kuwaiti dummy firms, registered in Kuwait and handed on to Syrian firms or Syrian citizens via cession of exploitation rights. The innovation of the long-distance lorry driving trade in the Qalamun region goes back to stone merchants and stone haulage contractors respectively of the Christian settlement of Saydnaya. Sumach merchants and bus drivers are the first to adopt that trade. The innovation of transit trans ports takes up evolved economic structures and traditional behaviour patterns of the population and fills them step by step with modified and new contents. In all the villages of the Qalamun region the first thing the long-distance drivers invest in is in building, rebuilding or extending houses, in agricultural projects and in buying high-quality consumer goods. In the eighties, the long-distance drivers of the Qalamun continue to hold their dominant position in the transit goods transport trade in spite of the declining volume of transit transports. This is due to their switching over to articulated lorries with cold storage trailors, their taking advantage of alternative ways of earning money (smuggling), and last but not least the unconventional ownership and possession conditions regarding their vehicles.