In December 1990, US secretary of
state James Baker described Syria as "a major Arab country who
happens to share the same goals as we do". In December 2004, US
President George W Bush said, "Syria is a very weak country, and
therefore it cannot be trusted." The huge difference in US
policy toward Syria over these 15 years shows, if anything, how
difficult it is today to mend a very fractured and perhaps
irreparable relationship.
At the end of World War I, the US
became a dream for many Syrians, as the land of equal
opportunity, freedom and democracy. Coming out of 400 years of
Ottoman occupation, the Syrians were enchanted by the 14-point
declaration of president Woodrow Wilson. In 1919, Wilson
dispatched a fact-finding commission to Syria to inquire on
public opinion toward establishing a French Mandate in Syria.
The team, known as the King-Crane Commission, toured Syrian
cities and villages, meeting with Syrians from all walks of
life.
The result was an overwhelming
majority refusing a French Mandate in Syria, claiming that if
they were to be tutored on nation-building and democracy by a
foreign power, they would prefer that this be done by the United
States. Today, 86 years later, if a fact-finding commission were
to arrive in Damascus, sent by Bush, it would find results very
different from those of 1919. This article tries to show where
and why things went wrong between Syria and the US.
Feeble involvement in Syrian
affairs (1943-70)
US interests in Syria began to crystallize in 1943 when US
president Franklin Roosevelt decided to create a sphere of
influence in the Middle East through countries such as Syria and
Saudi Arabia. He lobbied for international recognition of
Syria's need to become independent from the French Mandate, for
the election of Shukri al-Quwatli, a nationalist leader from
Damascus, as president in 1943, and for Syria to be a founding
member of the United Nations in 1945.
Love for the United States was
paramount in Syria and, in 1947, ignited by their political
leaders, many students stormed the Communist Party headquarters
in Damascus, destroying it just because its occupants "were the
enemies of America".
Relations
hit rock-bottom during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and under
Harry Truman, in 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
toppled the democratically elected regime of Quwatli,
considering it an obstacle to US interests in the Arab world.
Quwatli had refused three US
demands: to sign an armistice with Israel, grant passage rights
to a US oil company through the Syrian desert, and crack down on
the Syrian Communist Party. The CIA propped up General Husni al-Za'im,
a dictator by all accounts, as president, and after fulfilling
all three requests that Quwatli had refused, he too was toppled
by the Syrian army. Za'im outlawed and persecuted Syrian
communists and signed an armistice agreement with Israel in July
1949.
The CIA was involved in another coup
attempt during the second era of Quwatli in August 1957, which
failed and resulted in Syria asking US ambassador James S Moose
to leave Damascus, along with architects of the failed coup:
Howard Stone, the US military attache in Syria, Robert Malloy,
the second secretary of political affairs, and Francis Jetton,
the vice consul in Damascus.
Quwatli recalled his ambassador
Farid Zayn al-Din from Washington. President John F Kennedy
enjoyed excellent relations with Damascus, supporting the coup
d'etat that toppled the union regime in 1961 and courting the
post-Nasser regime of President Nazim al-Qudsi (1961-63), who
had been Syria's first ambassador to the US in 1945.
The temporary Syrian-American
honeymoon in 1961-63 was cemented by the poet and ambassador
Omar Abu Risheh, who promoted his country well in Washington.
Conflicts rose again when in March 1963, the Qudsi regime was
toppled by the Ba'ath, and General Amin al-Hafez, Syria's new
president, pursued an anti-American and anti-Western agenda.
This was repeated, with more radicalism, during the regime of Dr
Nur al-Din al-Atasi and Salah Jadid, the military strongman of
Syria in 1966-70. The two countries remained at opposite ends
over the issue of Israel, passing through very troubled times in
1967 and 1973, until the Gulf War broke out in 1991.
The early years (1970-90)
When the Gulf War started, Syria was on America's blacklist
because of a failed attempt by one of its intelligence officers
at blowing up an Israeli airplane at Heathrow Airport in London
in 1986. Syria's late president Hafez al-Assad, realizing that
the days of the USSR were numbered, searched for channels to
ally himself with the US, with whom he had enjoyed a cordial
relationship in the 1970s.
After the Arab-Israeli War of 1973,
and during the disengagement talks between Assad and secretary
of state Henry Kissinger in April-May 1974, the two men met for
a total of 130 hours, developing admiration and respect for each
other. Kissinger then served as an intermediary for
Syrian-Israeli disengagement talks in Washington, between
Syria's chief-of-staff Hikmat Shihabi and Israeli defense
minister Moshe Dayan.
Assad then met US president Richard
Nixon in Damascus (in June 1974), who remarked in his memoirs
that the Syrian president was a "tough negotiator but he has a
great deal of mystique, tremendous stamina, and a lot of charm.
All-in-all he is a man of substance, and at his age [Assad was
44], he will be a leader to be reckoned with in this part of the
world."
Nixon's visit to Syria served both
men's interests well. For Nixon, it came in the midst of the
Watergate scandal, giving him a chance to achieve international
acclaim as a peacemaker while he was being disgraced in
Washington. For Assad, it was great public relations for Syria,
to be visited, for the first time ever, by a US president.
Nixon's successor Gerald Ford, who came to power in August 1974,
was in the White House when Assad decided to send his troops to
Lebanon in 1976.
Ford sent Assad a message, through
his ambassador Richard Murphy, saying that Israel would consider
Syrian involvement in Lebanon as a "very grave threat" to
itself, warning him not to venture. Kissinger, who stayed on
from the Nixon administration, outflanking the inexperienced
Ford, had other plans for Syria. Instead of telling Syria, "If
you go in, so will Israel," as Ford had done, Kissinger said,
"If you don't go in, Israel certainly will."
He reasoned that Syria's
intervention in Lebanon would weaken the Syrian army and divert
Assad's attention from the Golan Heights. As a result, the US
said nothing when Syrian tanks crossed the border into Lebanon
on the night of May 31-June 1, 1976.
When
Jimmy Carter came to the White House in 1977, he invited Assad
to Washington, but Assad refused, believing that the new US
president would be no different from his predecessors regarding
the Arab-Israeli conflict. Wanting to find a solution to the
Middle East crisis, Carter insisted on meeting Assad in neutral
Geneva in May 1977.
Their highly publicized meeting also
added points to Syria's international standing, elevating Assad
to new heights. He commenced the seven-hour meeting with a long
lecture on Arab history, current insecurity of the Arab world,
and Israeli expansionism. Carter took notes. Cooperation between
both men broke down, however, when Assad refused to join
Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat's peace initiative in 1978, then
angered Carter by embracing the Iranian revolution of 1979.
President Ronald Reagan was highly
critical of Syria throughout the 1980s, and his successor,
president George H W Bush, wanted to punish Syria for its
alliance with the mullahs of Tehran, accusing it without
evidence of the bombing of the US Marine Corps contingent at
Beirut's airport in October 1983, which left 241 dead, and the
bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, killing 17
Americans.
Yet, in light of the Gulf War, Bush
realized that as much as he would have loved to punish Syria for
its anti-Israel and anti-American activities, he needed Syria to
prevent the occurrence of similar activities. Damascus, Bush
believed, was needed in Operation Desert Storm because it gave
his war great legitimacy and because otherwise it had the
ability to destabilize the Middle East.
Assad, eager to comply, met with
Baker for the first time on September 14, 1990, signaling the
start of a 10-year honeymoon between Damascus and Washington.
Then, on November 23, Assad met with Bush, who requested Syrian
support in Desert Storm, and promised to hold an Arab-Israeli
peace conference once Kuwait was liberated.
When the Gulf War broke out in
January 1991, Bush made sure that Israel stayed out of the
conflict, so as not to anger or lose the Syrians, forcing Israel
to practice self-restraint when Saddam Hussein showered Tel Aviv
with Scud missiles. The US president got upset with Israeli
finance minister Yitzhak Modai, who claimed that Washington
would have to pay Israel US$2 billion in compensation for the
Scud attacks it had tolerated for the sake of Syria.
In response, Bush refused to channel
$400 million in housing-development loans to the Israeli housing
minister, who was none other than now Premier Ariel Sharon,
earmarked to settle Russian Jews coming in from the USSR in the
West Bank and Gaza. Giving them a free hand in Lebanon was
another reward by the US administration to the Syrians; a reward
for Assad's participation in Desert Storm. A satisfied Syria
smiled at the initiatives and gestures of the US.
Assad's honeymoon with
Washington (1990-2000)
As Bush promised Assad, the Madrid Conference took place in
October 1991, but Syrian-Israeli negotiations amounted to
nothing. In 1994, he gave a speech at Tufts University and said,
"Syria's role is important to American interests." Two years
later, Baker gave another speech at Tufts, saying: "Had it not
been for Syria's approval and positive position, adopted by
president [Hafez] al-Assad, the peace process would not have
been launched."
President Bill Clinton tried again
to court Syria, meeting with Assad twice in 1994, one being
during a historic visit to Damascus. He noted that Syria "is the
key to the achievement of enduring and comprehensive peace" in
the Middle East.
Clinton supervised, and drained
himself, in talks between Syrian ambassador Walid Moualim and
Israel's Ehud Barak in 1994, and in more talks between Shihabi
and his Israeli counterpart Ammon Shahak that same year, and in
1999 he hosted foreign minister Farouk Shara and Barak in the
White House.
Hafez al-Assad was, in effect,
brilliantly making peace with the United States, more so than
Israel. Talks between both parties continued until the Geneva
Summit in March 2000, where Assad refused to accept Barak's
offer, claiming that it did not restore all of Lake Tiberias,
demanding all or nothing. Assad died a few months later, on June
10, 2000.
The US initially supported the rise
of his son, Dr Bashar al-Assad, to the presidency, sending
secretary of state Madeline Albright to attend Hafez Assad's
funeral. The outgoing Clinton administration and incoming one of
George W Bush praised the new Syrian leader as a pro-Western,
educated and cosmopolitan reformer who would work to
revolutionize his country.
Syrian-American relations after September 11
After September 11, 2001, Assad contacted Bush, pledged his
support for the US "war on terrorism", and his intelligence
service cooperated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to
track down al-Qaeda members in Europe.
Some of them had been former members
in the Muslim Brotherhood that tried to topple the Assad regime
in 1982. Bush beamed when Syria provided information on Maamoun
al-Dirkizinli, who controlled the Hamburg bank account of al-Qaeda,
and when it arrested Mohammad al-Zummar, a Syrian-born Osama bin
Laden loyalist who had recruited members for the September 11
attacks.
In a gesture of goodwill toward the
Syrians, the US did not veto the election of Syria to a two-year
rotating seat at the UN Security Council. US official William
Burns reassured the Syrians by saying that the cooperation of
Damascus in the hunt for al-Qaeda had "helped save American
lives". In another gesture of goodwill toward the Syrians, Bush
refused to meet the Maronite patriarch of Lebanon, Mar Nasrallah
Boutros Sfeir, who came seeking an audience in Washington in
February 2001.
Sfeir
had spearheaded the opposition to Syria's role in Lebanon since
Assad's death in 2000, and wanted US coverage for his campaign;
something that neither Bush nor secretary of state Colin Powell
agreed to give him. Ironically, today, as tension is rising
between Syria and the US, Bush invited Sfeir to the White House,
and met with him on March 16, to demand a total end to Syrian
hegemony over Lebanon.
Relations between Syria and Bush
began to deteriorate when the war in Afghanistan started in
October 2001, turning into a bloodbath for the Afghans, while
failing to arrest or kill bin Laden. Syria voiced its objection
to the war, refusing to join, as it had done with Desert Storm
in 1991, and had high objections to the simultaneous atrocities
committed by Sharon in the Occupied Territories.
Syria encouraged Hezbollah to carry
out its own attacks in response from south Lebanon, but came
short of being listed as a "sponsor of terrorism" in the
post-September 11 order because of the lobbying of Lebanon's
late prime minister Rafik Hariri in Washington. Assad remained
adamant, however, refusing to clamp down on Hezbollah or expel
the Palestinian resistance from Syria.
Bush responded at first by
side-stepping Damascus in Middle East diplomacy. In March 2002,
Vice President Dick Cheney went to the Middle East to help solve
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and refrained from stopping in
Syria during his 12-day visit, wanting to show that the road to
peace does not pass through Damascus.
Syria snapped back during a visit by
Powell to Damascus, where he was not seen off to the airport by
al-Shara. A few weeks later, Bush refused to meet Shara when the
Syrian minister was in Washington.
Then came the war of Iraq in March
2003, and Syria's support for the Iraqi resistance unleashed
hell in Washington against the Assad regime. Many volunteers did
cross the wide Syrian-Iraqi borders (605 kilometers), joining
the resistance and getting arms from the outgoing Iraqi
government.
Syria did not send any fighters to
Iraq, nor did it facilitate the infiltration of such guerrillas.
It did not stop them, however, during the early war days, in
fear that they would unleash their anger within Syria against
the government and against fellow Syrians.
And this is in fact what happened
when a group of militant Syrians, angered and defeated by the US
invasion of Iraq, carried out a terrorist operation inside Syria
in April 2004, striking at a UN building in Damascus. In his
parliamentary speech on March 5 this year, Assad said that when
asked to control Syria's borders with Iraq right after the war,
he told the Americans, "We said that was impossible." He argued:
"In the 1980s, the Iraqi regime used to send us lorries [trucks]
loaded with explosives in order to go off in Damascus killing
thousands of people; and we could not control our borders at
that time. How can we prevent individuals infiltrating the
borders, specially that we don't have the high technology
necessary for that job."
A speech by Syria's Mufti Ahmad
Kaftaro, calling on Muslims to take up arms against US forces in
Iraq (made during the war) enflamed the situation against Syria
in the US. The Syrians were accused, on the same day that
Baghdad was occupied, of having provided assistance to the ex-Ba'athist
regime in Iraq, and welcomed its top leadership to Syria.
This proved to be untrue since in
the upcoming months each and every one of Saddam's cronies, with
the exception of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, were nailed like rabbits
inside Iraq. Assad replied, "Some of them were in Syria but were
expelled during the war." He stressed that many might have
crossed under fake passports, asking the US to provide names and
information, but that the US had been very uncooperative on this
matter with Syria.
Sabaawi Ibrahim, Saddam's
half-brother, who had been in Syria, was recently handed over to
the Iraqis by Syria in February. Assad pointed out, "Of course
we don't regret handing them over because they were responsible
for crimes perpetrated in Syria in the 1980s or 1990s."
In 2003, however, fed up with
playing cat-and-mouse with the Syrians, the US Congress began to
toy with the Syrian Accountability Act. The Americans began to
use the issue of Lebanon to put additional pressure on Syria,
demanding that it withdraw its army from Beirut. Syria, thinking
that it could escape this crisis just as it had evaded every
other conflict with Washington since 1948, reacted very
passively to the act. When it was passed by Bush in December
2003, the Syrians were shocked, but put on a brave face, saying
that they would not be affected by US sanctions, knowing
perfectly well, however, that they were to suffer from political
isolation if relations were not mended with the US. Some
speculated that it was already too late for a rapprochement.
In 2004, Syria's row with Washington
increased as a Sunni insurrection broke out in Iraq, led by Abu
Musa al-Zarqawi, leader of the Iraqi al-Qaeda branch. Bush
immediately pointed fingers of accusation against Syria,
claiming that the Damascus regime was also involved in funding
Saddam's ex-officials in an uprising against the Americans.
Then, in late 2004, the US media
said that recruits were being trained, armed and funded in Syria
to fight the Americans in Iraq. The new pro-American Iraqi
leaders didn't make things easier for the Syrians, with Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi saying that he had photographs of leading
Syrian officials with the insurrection leaders, and Defense
Minister Hazem al-Shaalan saying that an Iraqi woman, trained in
Syria, had tried to assassinate him at his office in Baghdad.
Syria cried foul play, and worked
hard to prevent infiltration through its borders. This was
acknowledged by Richard Armitage, who came to Damascus this
January and told the Syrians that they were doing well in terms
of maintaining border security.
It was hard to believe that the
Syrians would support an insurrection in Iraq, because they fear
that chaos in Iraq will spill over into their own territories.
It is also very illogical that a senior Syrian official would
incriminate himself and have his photograph taken with members
of the Iraqi resistance. Yet all of the accusations fired
against Syria were part of the war of words, which became a
daily routine, since 2003, between Damascus and Washington.
Then came the assassination of
Hariri on February 14, for which the US put blame on Syria
because it controlled security in Lebanon. Without a shred of
evidence, US politicians and media began to accuse Syria of
Hariri's death. Whether Syria had done it or not, they wanted
Damascus to pay the price for Hariri's murder.
America's
problems with Damascus had really began when in late 2004, Syria
insisted on renewing the mandate of President Emile Lahhoud, its
No 1 man in Lebanon, for three years, defying Lebanese public
opinion and France, and which meant amending the Lebanese
constitution.
France, a traditional patron of
Lebanon, ended its animosity with the Bush White House and took
the matter to the United Nations, passing UN Resolution 1559
that called for Syria to withdraw its 15,000 troops from
Lebanon. At first, Syria refused to comply on 1559, refusing to
withdraw from Lebanon, or sever its relationship with Iran,
Hezbollah or the Palestinian resistance based in Syria.
Bush responded to the gridlock in
Syrian-US relations by recalling his ambassador Margaret Scobey
to Washington, 24 hours after Hariri's death, with no time frame
on when she would return. As tension mounted on Damascus, Assad
appeared before the Syrian parliament on March 5 and announced
that the Syrian army would be leaving Lebanon, in compliance
with 1559.
Since then, the Syrian army has
withdrawn to the Bekaa Valley and crossed the border into Syria.
Now, with the issue of Lebanon off the Syrian-US negotiating
table, many neo-conservatives are seeking more ways to pressure
Assad further.
On March 8, in the House of
Representatives, a bill was introduced that is yet to be
referred to the Committee on International Relations, calling
for "assistance to support a transition to democracy in Syria
and restoration of sovereign democratic governance in Lebanon".
It reads: "The president is
authorized to provide assistance and other support for
individuals and independent non-governmental organizations to
support transition to a freely-elected, international recognized
democratic government in Syria."
The Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, the most influential Middle East think-tank in the
US, which greatly influenced the policies of Reagan, George Bush
Sr and Clinton, recommends: "Start talking about democracy,
human rights, and the rule of law inside Syria." The plan for
Phase 2 of the Syrian-US crisis is to create problems for Syria
within Syria, now that Bush has succeeded in getting it to stop
interfering in the affairs of Lebanon and Iraq.
Assad is currently walking a very
thin tightrope in his relationship with Washington and,
depending on his performance, Syrian-American relations will
either flourish, as they did in the 1990s, or remain at
rock-bottom.