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Syria's Diplomatic Isolation Grows
Time, USA,
January 5, 2008
By Nicholas Blanford
BEIRUT, LEBANON
Syria will have
few friends at the table Sunday when Arab foreign ministers
convene in Cairo to discuss the crisis in Lebanon, which has
been without a president for six weeks.
Most Arab
governments blame Syria for the political impasse in
Lebanon, using its Lebanese allies to block the election of
a new head of state, and the Cairo meeting is expected to
call on Damascus to wield its influence to end the crisis.
Diplomatically,
it has not been a good week for Syria. President George W.
Bush, who tours the Middle East this week (Syria is not on
his agenda), said on Friday that there needs to be a "clear
message to the Syrians... that you will continue to be
isolated, you will continue to be viewed as a nation that is
thwarting the will of the Lebanese people." Bush's comments,
coming days after he said that his "patience had run out"
with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has further dampened
speculation of a U.S. re-engagement with Syria following
Damascus's invitation to the Annapolis peace summit in
November.
Crucially,
Syria also has lost, for now, a potential friend on the
other side of the Atlantic. French President Nicolas Sarkozy
announced last week that Paris was severing contacts with
Damascus until Syria facilitates an election in Lebanon.
Sarkozy's ultimatum effectively ended an intense bout of
diplomatic mediation in December, when senior French envoys
shuttled between Paris, Beirut and Damascus to attempt a
compromise deal between feuding Lebanese factions. Although
the U.S. is recognized as the most powerful broker in the
Middle East, France's historical ties to Lebanon and Syria
grant it considerable influence in those two countries.
Sarkozy's
irritation with Syria now matches that of his predecessor
Jacques Chirac, who went from being one of Assad's strongest
friends in the West to one of the young president's
bitterest critics. In 1998, Paris became the first Western
capital visited by Assad in an official capacity, two years
before he became president. Chirac also was the only Western
head of state to attend the funeral of Assad's father,
President Hafez al-Assad in 2000. He dispatched a close aide
to Damascus to serve as French ambassador and a team of
technocrats to assist Assad's reform efforts. Rafik Hariri,
then Lebanese prime minister and close friend of Chirac, was
instrumental in building France's relations with Syria,
hoping in exchange that Damascus would ease its tight grip
on Lebanon. That was not to be, however, and by 2004 Chirac
had lost patience with Damascus and joined the U.S. in
demanding a withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. After
Hariri was assassinated three years ago in a truck bomb
explosion — for which Damascus is widely accused —
French-Syrian relations went into the deep freeze.
Similarly,
Sarkozy's efforts to engage Syria appear to have foundered,
and, in a calculated swipe at the Syrian regime, he
immediately followed his announcement of severed contacts
with a promise to release funds for the international
tribunal being established in the Netherlands to judge the
accused killers of Hariri.
"Clearly,
Sarkozy is annoyed and feels he has been burned by the
Syrians, which means I don't think we will see any European
country engaging Syria for some time," said Andrew Tabler,
the Damascus-based editor of Syria Today magazine.
How this will
effect Syria in the weeks and months to come remains to be
seen, but it does mean that with the absence of an effective
mediator, Lebanon's political woes are unlikely to end
anytime soon.
* Syria is a
close ally with Islamist Iran. The ties between them and
their common interests are so powerful they are not going to
be split apart.
Does this sound
like the kind of regime that should be courted by a U.S.
senator?
Of course, Mr.
Specter could say that this is precisely why he had to go to
Damascus: in order to defuse such a dangerous enemy.
Yet there are
three problems here that led to Mr. Specter instead to
unintentionally give aid and comfort to Syria's regime.
First, there is
no serious reason to believe that such an endeavor could
succeed. A number of senators - including Mr. Specter
himself - and leaders from other countries have visited
Damascus and gotten nothing. Former French President Jacques
Chirac said that experience in dealing with Syria taught him
that talks were a waste of time and his successor, Nicolas
Sarkozy, as well as President George W. Bush said the same
thing about the time Mr. Specter was arriving in Damascus.
Second, the
Western effort for some years has been to isolate and
pressure Syria in order to try to scare Damascus into
becoming more cautious. By going to Syria, Mr. Specter made
the Syrians feel as if the effort was failing and that they
merely need hold out in order to intimidate the West into
surrender. Such responses are clear in the statements made
by Syrian leaders and media. For example, al-Ba'th newspaper
asked in an editorial why the U.S. government still
pressured Syria while members of Congress were visiting
Damascus and "confirming the importance of its role in
solving the region's problems."
Third, the way
Mr. Specter went about his self-styled mission was
disastrous. He praised Mr. Assad and vouched for his good
intentions. Why should a U.S. senator provide alibis for one
of the world's leading terrorists? As the Associated Press
summarized Mr. Specter's message, "Syrian President Bashar
Assad is ready for peace with Israel, an influential U.S.
senator said Sunday after talks with the Syrian leader." How
does Mr. Specter know what Bashar really thinks? He only
knows what Bashar told him in order to get a public
relations' victory.
"There is a
sense that [Mr. Assad] is ready and the Syrian public
opinion is ready (for peace)." What does Mr. Specter
possibly know about Syrian public opinion? If one was to
judge by what the government tells its people on a daily
basis, no such conclusion is possible. Mr. Specter could at
least limit himself to saying that Mr. Assad claimed he was
ready for peace rather than endorsing that view personally.
To make matters
worse, Mr. Specter basically took Mr. Assad's side against
the U.S. government. If the United States wanted to do so,
he insisted, it could broker an Israel-Syria peace. Without
going into all the reasons why this is wrong, one could
simply point out that this means the U.S. government is
responsible for the lack of peace.
On two specific
points, the Syrians literally and obviously fooled Mr.
Specter.
According to
Mr. Specter and his colleague, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Mr.
Assad promised to release seven dissidents jailed after
attending a meeting endorsing fair treatment of Lebanon by
Syria. After the two Americans announced the pledge - as
proof of Mr. Assad's wonderful intentions - Syria officially
denied that any such promise had been made.
A better
indication of the regime's nature is that the day after Mr.
Specter's talk with Mr. Assad, a Syrian dissident, Faeq
al-Mir, was sentenced to three years in jail. What was Mr.
Mir's crime? He sent condolences to a Lebanese
parliamentarian regarding a Lebanese politician murdered by
Syria. Will Mr. Specter learn anything from this experience?
But there's
more. Mr. Specter and Mr. Kennedy bragged that Syrian
officials showed them an alleged agreement with France that
was going to make possible a successful election of a
president in Lebanon. As the two Americans were talking
about this "success," the French and Lebanese government
announced that no such agreement existed. Indeed, as a
result of Syria's breaking its promises, Mr. Sarkozy
announced he would hold no further talks with Assad.
If not so
tragic, the follies of Mr. Specter in Syria would be
amusing. But too many Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Israelis
are paying with their lives or freedoms because of the
Syrian regime's policies to make his performance tragic.
Will Mr.
Specter at last learn that the Assads and their regime are
not to be trusted?
Barry Rubin is
director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of
International Affairs. His latest books are The Truth About
Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The
Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). |
