In Washington, policy makers struggled to make sense of Syria’s moves, especially as tensions continued to rise in Lebanon. The renewed term of the country’s president, Émile Lahoud, had expired the previous November, leaving Lebanon in a constitutional vacuum. French president Nicolas Sarkozy launched a diplomatic initiative with Damascus to gain its support for the election of a successor. It bore early fruit: Lebanese parties and Damascus agreed on the commander of the Lebanese Army, General Michel Suleiman, to succeed Lahoud.
However, as the initiative unfolded, Hezbollah, with the support of Damascus, continued to insist on a “guaranteed third” of the deputies in the Lebanese cabinet. This would ensure Hezbollah’s veto over all government decisions, most notably the tribunal into the death of Hariri. Since Hezbollah had suspended its participation in the cabinet in November 2006, Prime Minister Siniora’s government had ruled without Shiite participation—which was something it legally could do, but which did not conform with the Lebanese state’s tradition that all of the country’s seventeen sects had to participate in government in order for it to be legitimate.
When Lahoud’s term ended on November 23, he left the powers of the Lebanese presidency in the hands of the Suleiman-commanded Lebanese Army. After a number of attempts to reach a negotiated settlement, Sarkozy broke off talks with Damascus at the end of December.
Those advocating the “wedge theory”—engaging Syria and promoting peace with Israel to cut Syria off from Iran and Hezbollah—saw Mughniyeh’s assassination and its aftermath as a sign that Syria was preparing to back away from Iran. Back in November, the United States had invited Syria to attend the Annapolis peace conference, and Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, attended the meeting. Since then, however, there seemed to have been few signs that Syria was preparing to bury the hatchet with its old foe, Israel.
Information on Syria quickly became a source of great contention. At an event hosted at Washington’s Henry L. Stimson Center on April 23, 2008, I delivered a presentation opposite Daniel Levy, an advocate for peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, and Emile El-Hokayem, who put forward a tough line on Damascus. My presentation outlined recent events that showed Damascus was pushing back on Iranian influence in Syria. When it came to US policy, however, I said that US sanctions were having mixed effects. On the one hand, more US consumer goods, such as iPhones, software, and computers, were available from reexporters in Dubai and Lebanon, significantly watering down the effect of the US trade ban on Damascus. On the other, Washington’s recent move to sanction President Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf, for “regime corruption” had made significant waves in Damascus, especially among the country’s business elite.7
The next day, a version of my comments made it into the pages of the Kuwaiti Arabic daily Al Rai. While covering my comments on Syria’s relationship with Iran was fine, the paper quoted me on the United States’s sanctioning of Assad’s cousin—it was “very smart, as the regime relies on him a lot”—which was going to get me in trouble. Making matters worse, I didn’t even remember saying those words.
Later that same afternoon, I attended a hearing on Capitol Hill for the Syrian opposition in exile. As I walked up to the hearing room, an Arabic television channel was interviewing Ammar Abdulhamid, my former colleague from MAWRED who had moved to Washington and headed the MEPI-funded Tharwa project. He had recently met President Bush at the White House as part of a delegation from the Syrian opposition. His wife, Khawla Yusuf, ran up to me, pointed her finger in my face, and shouted, “You! You! Why did you say you bought an iPhone in Damascus?” When I answered that I had and it was simply the truth, she shouted, “It doesn’t matter! Everyone is talking about it!” It seemed that no matter what I said about Syria, I was taking flak from both the regime and its opponents.
Other news on Syria that day would eclipse the conference, however. The CIA had briefed Congress on the site that Israel bombed in eastern Syria the previous September. A six-minute video showed that the site, located near the Syrian town of Al Kibar, was similar in structure to a North Korean–designed, gas-cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor—the same model that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were trying to shut down outside Pyongyang. Only North Korea had constructed such nuclear reactors in the past thirty-five years.
The video included not only satellite photography—common to presentations on North Korea and Iraq’s WMD programs—but detailed still photos of the reactor under construction. One picture even showed the director of Syria’s nuclear program arm in arm with his North Korean counterpart; in the background of the photo was a car with Damascene license plates. The video reported that the reactor’s water-pumping station along the Euphrates had been completed at the end of August 2007, meaning that the reactor was close to operation.8
The Syrian embassy in Washington immediately issued a statement denouncing the “campaign of false allegations,” saying it was designed by the Bush administration to “misguide the US Congress and international public opinion in order to justify the Israeli raid in September of 2007, which the current US administration may have helped execute.” The statement added that “this manoeuvre on the part of this administration comes within the framework of the North Korean nuclear negotiations.”9
While analysts and journalists were reviewing the announcement, the Syrian embassy in Washington called a press conference the following afternoon at the residence of Syrian ambassador Imad Moustapha. He said that the CIA had “fabricated” the pictures, and he predicted that in the coming weeks the US story about the site would “implode from within.”
When I returned to Damascus a few days later, I found that most people had chalked up the nuclear video to Washington’s efforts to pressure North Korea to negotiate on its nuclear program. The release of the video had come at the end of a two-day meeting between US and North Korean officials in which Washington failed to reach an agreement with Pyongyang.
Syria tried to undermine the credibility of US intelligence as well. In an April 27 interview in the Qatar daily paper Al-Watan, President Assad said, “Does it make sense that we would build a nuclear facility in the desert and not protect it with anti-aircraft defences? … A nuclear site exposed to (spy) satellites, in the heart of Syria and in an open space?” Assad added that the building was an unused military building—which was the same explanation that the Syrian government had made following the attack.10
The spin didn’t stop there. Syria’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Sami Khiyami, told The Guardian newspaper that US intelligence was unreliable, referring to secretary of state Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program—allegations that ultimately proved untrue.
Samir al-Taqi, the director of the Orient Center for International Studies, a think tank rumored to be closely associated with Syria’s foreign ministry and security services, told Syria Today that Syria would “make a full disclosure because they have the best defence: innocence. Syria will be able to demonstrate that it has adhered to all of its international obligations.”11 He questioned why the United States had waited so long to present the evidence: “If there had been any real evidence about a Syrian nuclear facility, the US and Israel would have gone straight to the UN because that would have been the most difficult thing for Syria to deal with. The fact that they bombed first and therefore destroyed any of their supposed evidence is proof they had no proof.” He blamed the video’s release on neoconservatives in the Bush administration. “They want to sink any possible peace accord and I think one is really possible. The Syrians are serious about it and it is the first time since Rabin that an Israeli leader has acknowledged the return of the Golan is the price Israel must pay for peace,” he said.12
As the number of issues between the United States and Syria grew, the regime became increasingly sensitive to criticism. When I returned to my desk at the Syria Today offices following my Washington trip, I noticed that so
mething was out of the ordinary. Staff members seemed a bit reticent to talk, and some seemed to be staying away from work. After a few days, a friend told me that someone from the Palestine Branch of Military Intelligence (“Palestine” referring to Israel) had stopped by the Syria Today offices to talk with people about my political beliefs.
I began asking around, and sources told me that someone from the Syrian embassy in Washington had reported me to Syrian intelligence regarding my presentation and a recent article I had written on the Syrian opposition. This was not a complete surprise—in the spring of 2007 I had a professional dispute with Joshua Landis, whose blog, Syria Comment, had become noticeably closer to the Syrian regime’s line following the Hariri assassination and the 2006 war in Lebanon. It was a small but important matter; Landis had cited one of my articles in his autumn 2007 journal article on the Syrian opposition to prove his assertion that a Syrian opposition figure, Michel Kilo, had met the Muslim Brotherhood two days after Hariri’s assassination. My article did not make that claim, as I could not prove the assertion and was sensitive to the fact that Kilo, who was standing trial at that time, could be affected. After a number of attempts to settle the matter, I asked the journal for a clarification, which they granted.13 Landis is widely known to be close to Imad Moustapha, whom Landis quotes regularly on his blog. Only a few weeks before the Palestine Branch showed up at Syria Today, I interviewed Moustapha during work on a report on US-Syrian relations for the International Crisis Group. During the interview, the kind and welcoming Moustapha that I had known in the past seemed annoyed by my presence.14
The Palestine Branch was Syria’s strongest intelligence agency. Just saying its name was enough to send shivers up the spine of any Syrian, as the agency dealt with espionage from Israel. Suddenly I was caught in a dilemma: if I left Damascus and spoke openly about what I knew, I would almost certainly be cut off from my professional livelihood. But if I stayed in Damascus, I would have to toe the regime’s new hard lines on the nuclear file, on jihadists infiltrating Iraq from Syria, and on the deteriorating human rights situation in the country. As I didn’t know where the new red lines would be set, the chances were high that I would trip over them, putting not only my own position in Syria in jeopardy but my colleagues at Syria Today in jeopardy as well.
It was time for me to go. I tendered my resignation to the magazine’s owner, Abdul Ghani Attar, moved my base of operations to Beirut, and began writing this book.
After nearly five months without a president in Lebanon and sixteen months with a capital divided between the tent cities of the Hezbollah-led opposition and the prime minister’s palace, tensions in Beirut finally came to a boil in early May. Walid Jumblatt, then a pillar of Lebanon’s pro-independence government and sharp critic of Syria and Hezbollah, accused the latter of using cameras to monitor the runways at Beirut’s international airport. It was a sensitive area—it was located in the Lebanese capital’s Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs and was allegedly one of the group’s ports for arms shipments from Iran. Jumblatt also accused Hezbollah of operating its own fiber-optic telephone network, which could be used to monitor the calls of private citizens. A few days later, the Lebanese cabinet ordered a judicial investigation into the network. They also fired General Wafiq Shuqeir, the head of security at Beirut airport and a close ally of the Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, whose political movement, Amal, was aligned with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah immediately branded the inquiry into the fiber-optic system an “act of war,” as the organization’s military wing relied heavily on the network to communicate with its forces throughout the country. Hezbollah fighters quickly set up checkpoints and roadblocks throughout Beirut. They met only token resistance from private security guards hired by March 14 leader Saad Hariri. Hezbollah also overran the Hariri-owned Future Television in west Beirut, setting its offices on fire. Hezbollah forces quickly surrounded Hariri’s mansion in the suburb of Koreitem as well as Jumblatt’s nearby offices at Clemenceau.
In the space of a few hours, Hezbollah had completely taken over west Beirut, dealing Siniora’s government a blow to its already embittered prestige.15 Siniora issued a statement calling the takeover a “bloody coup” aiming “to return Syria to Lebanon and extend Iran’s reach to the Mediterranean.”16 Fighting continued in and around Beirut for six days. The Lebanese Army stood by and watched, refusing to get involved. The reaction of both Damascus and Washington indicated that both wanted a negotiated settlement to the crisis. President Assad branded the eruption of violence an “internal matter,” while Secretary of State Rice simply said that “the United States stands by the Lebanese government and peaceful citizens of Lebanon through this crisis and provides the support they need to weather this storm.”17
Two weeks later in Qatar, Lebanon’s factions met face to face, along with representatives from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. On May 21, 2008, an agreement was hammered out whereby General Michel Suleiman would immediately be elected president of Lebanon. Until the next parliamentary elections, which would be held in June 2009, the Lebanese cabinet would include eleven of the sixteen ministers from the Hezbollah-led opposition bloc, thus giving it a “blocking third plus one” of deputies and allowing them to veto any cabinet decision, most notably the Hariri tribunal.
As soon as word reached Beirut of the agreement, Hezbollah and its opposition supporters immediately began pulling down their tent cities in Beirut’s central Martyrs’ Square. The following morning, the army arrived, rolled up the barbed wire, and took down the opposition banners and posters. One of the last to be removed featured the head of Secretary of State Rice superimposed on the body of a school teacher; her eyes and mouth had been poked through. Sitting in front of her, wearing a dunce cap, was Fouad Siniora. The top of the poster read A LESSON IN THE NEW MIDDLE EAST.
As the Lebanese Army ripped down the barricades in Beirut, Israel announced that it would begin indirect peace talks with Syria under Turkish mediation. For months there had been rumors of Track II (civilian talks blessed by the authorities) and other secret talks between the two countries. A month before the showdown in Beirut, Assad had told the Qatari daily Al-Watan that Damascus and Jerusalem had been exchanging messages via Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan since April 2007. A statement from Prime Minister Olmert’s office in Israel said that “both sides have declared their intention to hold these talks openly…. They decided to hold a serious and continuous dialogue, with the intention of arriving at an embracing peace treaty, in accordance with the framework [laid down by the 1991] Madrid peace conference.”18
The first round of talks, held on June 15 and 16, reportedly ended with a “positive atmosphere.” Both sides played down talk of direct negotiations, as they needed to work on a number of technical issues concerning the border. While details of the talks remained restricted, a Turkish source told the Israel daily Haaretz that “the talks are being held on the basis of an agreement in principle that Israel will withdraw from the Golan Heights in return for normalization of relations between Syria and Israel. The nature of that normalization, its extent and stages will be discussed at a later stage.”
While the parameters of the potential agreement were nothing new—these more or less matched the last round of talks in Geneva in May 2000—the big news was that France was creating a diplomatic path for Assad to Washington. The Turkish source added that an invitation by President Sarkozy to the July 14 Bastille Day celebrations could be “a significant launchpad for furthering the process; however Assad is expecting American mediation and this can only happen following the presidential elections in the United States.”19
When Assad arrived in Paris, Syrian TV broadcast video footage of him and Asma walking along a line of bronze-helmeted honor guards with swords drawn. A day before the Syrian first family’s arrival in Paris, Assad and the Lebanese president Michel Suleiman had agreed to open embassies in each other’s capitals for the first time, a decision that Sarkozy describ
ed as “historic progress.” While Assad came up short on the details of demarcating the border between the two countries—a much larger hurdle, as it underlined the issue of Shebaa Farms and the justification for Hezbollah’s arms—Sarkozy saw Assad’s decision as an opportunity to dangle the Syrian president’s possible Western-oriented future in front of him.20
While most coverage focused on Assad meeting Sarkozy in front of the cameras, other shots included his wife at the Pompidou Center and the Louvre, looking glamorous and very much relieved to be back in the limelight.21 Sarkozy was launching his new “Union for the Mediterranean,” which nominally included the countries of the European Union and both Israel and Syria. Following the military parade on the Champs-Élysées, the paparazzi focused on Assad and Olmert as they weaved through the crowd on the VIP grandstand, each trying to avoid publicly shaking the hand of the other. At times, they were a mere five feet apart. At one point, after a brief conversation with the Emir of Qatar, while Olmert spoke with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Assad was left awkwardly standing alone in the grandstand.22
While Assad’s isolation was effectively over, not everyone was happy about his presence in Paris. A group of French veterans accused Syria of supporting the 1983 bombing of the French paratrooper barracks in Beirut—which occurred simultaneously with the attack on the US marine barracks near Beirut’s airport—and said that Assad should not have been invited to France’s national festival celebrating human rights. An opposition Socialist Party leader, François Hollande, said that Assad “tainted” the ceremony, citing Syria as one of the most repressive regimes in the Arab world.23
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