CORCORAN: The Muslim call to prayer resonates through the old crusader chapel, a reminder of who ultimately prevailed here. This is a 12th century crusader castle, Krak des Chevalier. Whoever held this mighty fortress, controlled the gateway to Syria.

For weeks, tour guide Abdul Musselman listened to the faint blasts of a modern war in Lebanon barely twenty kilometres away.

The war in Lebanon is very close, it’s very personal.

ABDUL MUSSELMAN: Yes, yes it is many problem.

CORCORAN: Where are all the tourists? Why aren’t the tourists here now?

ABDUL MUSSELMAN: Cause now we have the war, it’s a problem tourists come here.

CORCORAN: Normally this is one of Syria’s top attractions, yet Abdul Musselman is far from dejected for he feels he’s living a great moment in history. Above the gate are what he calls ‘the lions of Syria’, Syria’s late President Hafez Al Assad, his son and successor Bashar, and now they’re joined by Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

ABDUL MUSSELMAN: In Arabic his name is “three lions”, you know, he’s Al Assad, Al Assad is male lion.

CORCORAN: Here Nasrallah is a lion, he’s a hero?

ABDUL MUSSELMAN: Yeah, yeah he’s a strong man. Hassan Nasrallah is very important for Islam.

CORCORAN: And for Syria?

ABDUL MUSSELMAN: Yes, yes, yes.

CORCORAN: The long road to Damascus, the closer you get the clearer the message that ruling this country has long been a family business. Hafaz Al Assad reigned with an iron fist for thirty years until his death in 2000, when he was succeeded by his son Bashar, a London-educated doctor. Omnipresent father and son have been joined, even upstaged, by this bearded Lebanese cleric - an unprecedented move in the iconography of Syrian politics.

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, self-proclaimed victor of Lebanon’s month long war that shattered the reputation of Israel’s military invincibility, now he’s fast becoming the hero of the Arab street.

MAN SELLING PICTURES AT STALL: The pictures are new. There’s a big demand – we keep running out of them.

CORCORAN: For Cabinet Minister Bouthaina Shaaban, Hezbollah’s hero is Syria’s hero.

DR BOUTHAINA SHAABAN: [Minister of Expatriates, Syria] I think now we discover that Israel is a huge myth and it tries to win the war before it start and the most important thing that happened in the last month is that people who believe in themselves, who believe in their territories could do miracles.

CORCORAN: For the Syrians, there’s more at stake than just pan Arab pride. Both Syria and Iran invested heavily in making Hezbollah more than just another photogenic parade-day guerrilla army. Notably absent from Hezbollah’s pre-war marches through Beirut, were the Iranians who supplied the money and the missiles that rained down on Israel. Also missing, the Syrian advisers who provided vital logistic support.

Well there’s now a peace deal of sorts in place, will Syria continue to provide arms to Hezbollah?

DR BOUTHAINA SHAABAN: Well Syria first is not providing arms to Hezbollah. I think the starting point of western opinion started with a huge under estimation of Hezbollah.

CORCORAN: But the rockets that rained down on Israel, they came from Iran. The anti tank missiles that destroyed so many Israeli tanks in Southern Lebanon, they came from Syria.

DR BOUTHAINA SHAABAN: Well I don’t know about that but the weapons could come from anywhere. This is not the issue where the weapons came from. You know planes of American bombs came to Israel. Israel has a huge military arsenal. It’s not the issue where the weapons come from. The issue is why is this aggression, why is this war. The real issue is why there is no peace in the Middle East.

CORCORAN: Many others see a very different agenda at play here in Damascus. The only problem is speaking out against the regime or the ruling Ba’ath Party can often lead to arrest, exile or worse. One critic who is prepared to emerge from the shadows is Ayman Abdel Nour. He talks with the knowledge of an insider, an adviser to the younger President, Bashar Al Assad, Nour says he quit when promised reforms failed to eventuate.

Why haven’t you been arrested like so many before you?

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: [Economic consultant] There is many different views here in Syria according to the intelligence and the government and the Ba’ath. There’s many says we cannot arrest everybody. And second, we don’t want to arrest anyone who is popular because we will make a hero from him.

CORCORAN: Ayman Abdel Nour says that Syria is now taking a huge calculated risk by courting radical Islam. The evidence of this strategy? Up on the billboards for all to see.

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: With the Islamic power, the political Islam power in Syria…

CORCORAN: So this is new is it?

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: This is new and he sent them a message that also all the conservative Sunni which they are mainly the majority of the Syrian people he wants to gain their support for him.

CORCORAN: So what does it actually say?

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: That Syria is protected by God.

CORCORAN: For the profoundly secular Assad regime, which had long worked hard to keep Syria’s diverse Muslim and Christian factions in check, it’s quite a change of direction to be now harnessing the power of political Islam.

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: Just look around you and you see eighty per cent are wearing veil, instead of ten per cent in 60’s when the Ba’ath took power, it was ten per cent only women wearing veils. Now it’s ninety per cent.

CORCORAN: Ayman Abdel Nour says the strategy is to send a very clear message to Israel and the US. Do business with this government because the alternative is far more frightening.

Do you think the government is playing with fire?

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: Yes of course and they know that and they know the danger they put themselves in and they are trying to deal with it. They know, the regime knows.

CORCORAN: It’s a gamble.

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: It’s a gamble but to black mail or to send a clear message to US, it’s either us or you are to deal with those fanatics, radicals.

CORCORAN: Down at Friday prayers, one of Syria’s leading Sunni clerics talks of jihad or holy war. Like all Muslim leaders here, Sheik Mohammed Habash, chooses his words carefully.

SHEIK MOHAMMED HABASH: [to congregation] We have spoken about ten ways of jihad – spiritual jihad, jihad of the sword, and by force.

CORCORAN: While Syria’s regime sponsors extremists in other countries, Islamic militancy at home has always been swiftly repressed as many older worshippers remember all too well. In the early 80’s, a fundamentalist Muslim uprising was brutally crushed, leaving up to thirty thousand dead. Emboldened by Hezbollah’s stand in Lebanon, Sheik Habash says there are now growing calls for the creation of a Syrian Hezbollah style force, to take the fight to the Israelis.

SHEIK MOHAMMED HABASH: [Sunni leader] There is more than one way to defend for ourself. There is official army and there is guerrilla war. Our people here, our people here is very eager to guerrilla war like the resistance in south of Lebanon.

CORCORAN: Sheik Habash proclaims himself a moderate who is prepared to negotiate with the Israelis but the war in Lebanon has radicalised Syria’s youth.

SHEIK MOHAMMED HABASH: Israel created a new generation, unlike this, this kind of generation is ready to attack, to destroy Israeli state, believe me that was not before. Before one month we can call by high voice to peace process and to make a chance to two states in the Middle East but now, believe me we have no chance.

CORCORAN: But has the policy of harnessing the fundamentalists backfired? Ayman Abdel Nour says it’s the regime which has been carefully exploited by Islamic extremists through business deals and marriage.

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: I assure you something, the biggest danger for the regime in the eyes of the top regime people is radical Islam, the radicalist in Syria.

CORCORAN: So why don’t they go back to the old days as the elder Assad would have done and arrested everyone in the middle of the night?

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: They are doing that but they cannot do it because it’s very powerful now and it’s intellect with the army people. They have now a common interest with business. They are maybe working in the same business in the same factory and maybe they are, there’s now a marriage between the army and the intelligence people with some families so it’s not very easy like before.

CORCORAN: These calls if you like for the creation of a Hezbollah style movement here in Syria, they’re coming from the mosques. Do you have a problem here with Islamic militancy?

DR BOUTHAINA SHAABAN: You know I think, you know I think the term ‘Islamic militancy’ is also a term that I object to. I think what we are talking about is that we are talking about a feeling that the Arabs feel humiliated, feel degraded, that they feel they do not accept occupation.

CORCORAN: Sheik Habash says his followers are demanding the return of Syrian land occupied by Israel and if the government isn’t prepared to go to war, there are others who will.

They feel motivated by Hezbollah, to do something similar?

SHEIK MOHAMMED HABASH: Yes.

CORCORAN: With Golan Heights?

SHEIK MOHAMMED HABASH: Yes this is exactly what our people are looking for. Maybe the government, the government now control everything and the government now maybe forbid to find any attack in Golan Heights but I can tell you honestly government and our leadership cannot still forever in control for everyone.

CORCORAN: For Syrians, all roads lead to the Golan Heights, a short drive south of Damascus. It’s been occupied by the Israelis since the 1967 war. Twice the Syrians have fought the Israelis here, both conflicts ending in defeat and humiliation. Years of delicate negotiations with Israel over the return of Golan, collapsed in 2000. The regime likes to bring visitors here to what’s left of Quinetra, the last town under Syrian control. Under a United Nations brokered peace deal in 1974, the Israelis withdrew but not before destroying most of the town. Government spokesman Mohammed Ali says Quinetra is a memorial to an unfinished war.

So how many buildings were actually destroyed? How much of the city looks like this?

MOHAMMED ALI: Ninety eight per cent. We will rebuild the city but we need complete liberation. We left it like this as a live witness to Israeli barbarism and savagery.

CORCORAN: On the Golan Heights, the mist breaks to reveal a bristling Israeli surveillance post, a modern day Krak des Chevalier, where the imposing defences are electronic rather than stone. They Syrians vow that one day, this too will fall.

MOHAMMED ALI: For Golan, we will retrieve it because our nation has experienced different kinds of occupations. Some of these occupations lasted for hundreds of years but then all occupations left so a few years in the age of nation’s mean nothing.

CORCORAN: Golan is patrolled by a thousand United Nations peace monitors. Their anxiety growing over calls for a Syrian jihad here. Fearing any comment may inflame the situation, no one from the UN will talk to us. The powers of the peace monitors in such a conflict remain unclear. Their job is to maintain a buffer zone, separating the national armies of Israel and Syria. The UN worries that it would have no authority in confronting a guerrilla force. Everyone here feels the legacy of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah.

MOHAMED ALI: Here we have Syrian checkpoint, UN checkpoint and Israeli checkpoint.

CORCORAN: It’s all very, very close here isn’t it?

MOHAMMED ALI: Yes.

CORCORAN: Why is Hassan Nasrallah up there?

MOHAMMED ALI: All Arabs are important for us because we all support each other and defend the rights of all Arabs.

CORCORAN: Is it all part of the same struggle or are they separate?

MOHAMMED ALI: We the Syrians, from our point of view, we have one cause.

CORCORAN: And that is?

MOHAMMED ALI: The occupation of Golan.

CORCORAN: Attempting to gauge genuine public opinion in Syria is difficult. In this centrally controlled society, a brave few take on a risky dissident role, while people like director Najdat Anzour work within the system.

We find him on location of his latest production, a thirty episode TV series. Syria is a land of political metaphors and the theme here is ‘fear’. Set in an unnamed country, in the distant indeterminate past.

NAJDAT ANZOUR: It reflects our society in the Arab world. When we have something… the fear you know, we discuss the fear - how the people fear from something that doesn’t exist. We explain to them through the drama here. First of all if you want to be… you want to get your freedom, you have to get the fear out from your soul.

CORCORAN: The story centres on ordinary people, forced to distinguish between good and evil. A metaphor he says for the dilemmas faced by Syrians. For years, Najdat Anzour has worked carefully, not to cross the so-called ‘red line’ by criticising the regime, the President or the feared intelligence services. But now he says the prospect of reclaiming Golan, has created an extraordinary national unity.

NAJDAT ANZOUR: Everybody, even myself, I feel better now. Everybody feels better because before all the wars with Israel we lost everything. Now we feel that we can stand up again. I think this war will not stop very soon. There’s a lot of bad days waiting, but in the end the victory will come.

CORCORAN: Within days of the cease-fire in Lebanon, President Bashar Al Assad is starring in a production of his own, a nationally televised address to the Syrian journalist union. We are barred access. Apparently there’s no room for foreign media. The Syrian press and the Ba’ath Party faithful listen as their leader bathes in the reflected glory of Hezbollah’s battles and taunts Israel.

PRESIDENT BASHAR AL ASSAD: Therefore we say to the Israelis that you have experienced humiliation in the recent battles in Lebanon. Your weapons, warplanes, rockets and even your atomic bombs will not protect you in the future.

CORCORAN: For some, this performance highlights Assad’s real agenda, that Syrian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon has always been about just one thing – pressuring the Israelis to return the Golan Heights.

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: Syria its interest is to gain the Golan back. They cannot open a direct clash and war with Israel. We cannot win. They know that. So for this we will make the war on other lands, which is in Lebanon - through supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, through supporting the resistance in Iraq, through supporting Hamas and jihad in Israel, which make all these cards. So when you have all these cards you can maybe secure a place in the table of negotiation to say I can calm all this down in exchange of balanced and fair and just peace.

CORCORAN: But the question now is, can Damascus emerge from this latest brinkmanship as a winner? Or is Syria now sliding slowly towards another war?

DR BOUTHAINA SHAABAN: When people have a right, they have to reclaim it. We would prefer to get the Golan Heights through negotiations. We would prefer to make peace through negotiation not through war and we have been trying hard to make peace through negotiations. It’s Israel, backed by the US, who refuses to make peace unless they make us subservant to the Israelis, something that we would never accept. We would rather die than be humiliated.

SHEIK MOHAMMED HABASH: If you study the situation deeply you can find that we are going for more violence and more bloodshed in the Middle East.

CORCORAN: If a Syrian Hezbollah does take to these hills, Ayman Abdel Nour believes Damascus will offer covert encouragement while publicly distancing itself from what it euphemistically calls a non-government organisation or NGO.

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: They will try, as they play it in Lebanon, to separate or disengage so they will differentiate themselves, this is an NGO like Hezbollah and we cannot control it and this came as an answer for the request of all the Syrian citizen. This is how they will play it. They started two, three month ago.

CORCORAN: And how dangerous is this for Syria to if you like initiate?

AYMAN ABDEL NOUR: This is, it will depend in the Syria, in the Israelis if they are going to buy this as an NGO or a regime, the Syrian regime.

CORCORAN: Back on the set, Najdat Anzour is directing a bloody climax to his series, as the ordinary people of his fantasy village are caught up in an apocalyptic confrontation between two kings.

NAJDAT ANZOUR: This is our target, the fear you know because everybody has some kind of fear – fear for the future, fear for the present.

CORCORAN: And of course this not a real country, this is a fantasy.

NAJDAT ANZOUR: Exactly [laughs].