Originally Posted by number_6
Isn't Syria one of the (few) countries that have filtered internet access? So your email has to go through the government servers and be authorized by the censors, before it gets delivered to the recipient. They may not allow anonymous email through, but who knows what their criteria may be. In any case it is fair to assume that internet access is sporadic and many emails would not make it through, for various reasons.
I thought that a country had to be quite a bit more totalitarian to filter citizens' communications, but perhaps you have a point. Just knowing that email is not a guaranteed-delivery medium I've sent faxes as well, with no success, but of course if the government decides they're going to control communication they might as well intercept those as well. But there's probably a less sinister explanation, e.g. the fax is out of paper but no one ever faxes anyway.