It's sure hard to communicate with Damascus!
 

I'm trying to start my next ONE in DAM. For AONE3 it's about the cheapest "real" place you can start, thanks to BMED being eligible, and easy to get to from lots of places (including CMB). But so far I can't get anyone to reply to email or fax. I hate using the voice phone for stuff like that - language, time zone, and connection quality put it at the bottom of my list - but I'm getting desperate.

I've tried the BMED handling agent, the BA office, and four TA's who either had web pages claiming to be GSA's for a OW carrier, or were recommended to me. Zip replies from all. A few days ago I noticed that Cathay had an agent in the city and emailed them with my usual question. I was shocked to get an immediate reply, "Tell us your itin and we'll get you a price", but alas it's been several days since I did that and they've gone silent.

Does anyone here have any insight into what's going on and how to successfully communicate with that part of the world?

I realise you're an experienced xONEx traveller but it is not uncommon for pricing request to take many days for ITNs which are not starting in immediate future...my last query with BA took almost around a week to be priced (and communicated back)...

Yup, understand that. Last re-issue took CX NA most of a week. But I have higher hopes for a bit more feedback when dealing with a GSA - "we got your email and have submitted it", for instance. After a couple of days I in fact emailed again to ask if they'd gotten my itin, and got no reply to that. So there has to be some mechanical problem, or maybe I'm missing some important social grace that instantly identifies me as unwashed and unworthy, or something.

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.