During the Cold War, the lack of agents and reliable information on the ground in the Soviet Union forced the US to seek out the workings of government from small signs. It was called Kremlinology, the study of how appointments or demotions, or even seating arrangements, might prefigure larger changes in mood of the Soviet leaders.
And still thus in Damascus. With the failure of yesterday's Rome summit to come up with anything substantial, and Israel suffering its worst day of casualties against Hizbullah, Israel and the US will need to start looking for non-military solutions. And that road leads back to Damascus and to President Bashar al-Assad.
Assadology, for want of a better word, is a game journalists and diplomats here play, trying to work out the mood of the Palace from small signs. Syrians play it every day, wondering whether the gradual opening up of the regime is a crack through which to peer, or a gap through which to walk.
Take the last two weeks, since Israel started its attack on Lebanon. Almost immediately, the servers accessing Hotmail.com were blocked. They still haven't come back up, so internet cafes are forced to play a risky game of changing proxy servers every day to evade the ban and evade the law. "Without hotmail, there are no customers," said one cafe owner. Yahoo.com is intact, although yahoo.fr, the French site, was briefly blocked. Gmail is still functioning. What could it mean?
They are trying to control news sources, is the standard suggestion. Perhaps. Asharq al-Awsat, one of the big pan-Arab daily newspapers, has also had its website blocked. But the other two pan-Arab dailies, al-Hayat and al-Quds, have not. Is this the Palace indicating a preference? Western media outlets have not been blocked and even An-Nahar, a Lebanese newspaper that often takes an anti-Syrian line, is still available.
It's all a mystery. TV, too, has taken a step backwards since the bombs next door: from a relatively open programme schedule and only mildly pro-regime news, to blanket news coverage of Lebanon and Gaza, patriotic analysis and stirring music. Even the faces of the analysts have got older, though the presenters are still young and glamorous.
The explanation, one might conclude, is that the government is trying to influence the news agenda for its purposes, to make sure destabilising reports are not aired. And yet the biggest good news story of the past two weeks - of the past year, in fact - has been hushed up. Syria's response to the influx of Lebanese refugees has been striking, even exemplary. Open borders, free transport, free food, free housing, free medicine. Syria could hardly have done more. Yet when one Syrian journalist, last week, asked how many refugees were in the country, he was warned not to delve into the story. Finally, on Monday, the Ministry of Social Affairs called a press conference and pointed out how perfect and smooth everything was. No gaps, no cracks, no dissent.
Foreign powers will be trying to read the Damascus regime too. This week, Syria's information minister, Mohsen Bilal, warned Syria would not "stand by with arms folded" if Israel's land invasion got too close. The hawks of US, British and Israeli politics, who want the destruction to go on for weeks, will surely be wondering exactly what that comment meant.
