In the Lion's Den

by Andrew Tabler

  In Damascus, the mood ironically turned suddenly more authoritarian. No journalism visas were issued for foreigners during the last two weeks of June, which delayed my first post–Syria Today visit to Damascus. From June 22 to 25, Syria allowed IAEA inspectors to visit the site bombed by Israel in September 2007 at Al Kibar.24 While no details were known about the site, satellite photographs showed that the regime had cleared the rubble and constructed a square-shaped building in its place. The inspectors visited the site to take samples, then visited the country’s research reactor outside Damascus, a facility that had been declared to the IAEA in keeping with the country’s safeguards agreement.

  The regime intensified its crackdown on the Damascus Declaration as well. Syria’s state security services arrested more than forty activists following a meeting held by the Damascus Declaration on December 1, 2007. The meeting, which attracted more than one hundred sixty Syrians, resulted in the creation of the Damascus Declaration’s “National Council”—the body of opposition and pro-democracy groups that activists had attempted to set up in the spring of 2006, shortly before the outbreak of the Lebanon War. Those elected to the National Council were detained and charged in January 2008 with breaking provisions of Syria’s Civil Code, including “weakening national sentiments,” “spreading false information,” and actions “encouraging conflict among sects.” Included in the group was Dr. Fida al-Hourani, a gynecologist and the woman elected as the National Council’s first president. All were transferred to Syrian prisons, where their lawyers claimed they were tortured. In October 2008, the National Council was collectively sentenced to two and a half years in prison.25

  With Assad in Paris and Syria talking to Israel in Ankara, the way now seemed open for Syrian contact with the United States. In the last two weeks of July, the US-based organization Search for Common Ground hosted a group of Syrian pundits and academics in Washington. Tom Dine, a former head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had formed what he called the US-Syria Working Group to “find ways to overcome the very bad state of US-Syrian relations.” Search for Common Ground had visited Damascus in July 2007 on the advice of Robert Malley, head of the Middle East section of the International Crisis Group. It was the only think tank to have an official office in Damascus, which was staffed by Peter Harling, a Frenchman with extensive experience in Iraq.

  The chief of the Syrian delegation was Samir al-Taqi. In the year leading up to the meeting, the center’s previously humble offices along the Mezze highway in Damascus had more than doubled in size. Also on the delegation was Samir Seifan, a former economic adviser to President Assad and one of the country’s “new guard” reformers who were sidelined in the years after Bashar’s rise to power. Rounding out the delegation was Sami Moubayed, a historian at Syria’s Kalamoun University and the founder of the English-language magazine Forward.

  Visitors from US think tanks and newspapers packed the hall at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy to hear what they had to say. While a number of Syrians or people closely associated with Syria had visited Washington during the Bush administration’s isolation of the regime, the Syrian participants’ close ties to their government meant that their visit signified not just Track II negotiations, but something closer to “Track 1.5.” In his opening remarks, Dine said that the visit was designed “to find ways to build trust, to find ways to overcome the very bad state of US-Syrian relations.”26

  Al-Taqi laid out Syria’s position at the start: the Bush administration’s attempt to isolate the Syrian regime had failed, and its huge effort to destroy the regional state system had given rise to nonstate actors such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Al-Taqi added that the situation was getting “very, very, very risky” and that the region needed a “safety network” involving the United States “to hug it, to prevent it from collapsing.” He added that if the Bush administration’s “confrontational attitude is withdrawn vis-à-vis Syria,” which he added had been “very much fabricated,” then Syria was ready to be a “solution provider.”

  During the question-and-answer session, various participants asked questions about what Syria believed that solution might look like. On the question of what Syria would do concerning the IAEA’s recent investigation into its alleged nuclear program, al-Taqi predicted that Syria would fully cooperate, as something about Israel’s bombing of the facility seemed “funny.” Using a metaphor, al-Taqi said that Israel had “killed a man, buried him, and then accused him,” and he compared the allegations to Colin Powell’s testimony before the Security Council on Iraq’s WMD program prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On Syria’s relationship with Hezbollah, al-Taqi refused to say if Syria would cut off arms to Hezbollah, but instead he said that Syria would be “cooperative” if Lebanon found that “it’s time to gradually integrate Hezbollah within the army.” Concerning Iraq, al-Taqi said that the Syrian government no longer saw its biggest danger from Lebanon but from a “federal confessional state in Baghdad, a weak confessional state.” In dealing with all these major issues, however, al-Taqi said, “Unless there is a real perspective towards peace, all the other elements of the conflict will continue to be there. There is no prepayment…. Syria will not close all, any of its opportunities just in case, you never know.”

  After al-Taqi finished his talk, Sami Moubayed took the microphone. He described the problem between the United States and Syria as a “difference in perception. If the Bush administration has been saying we are agents of destabilization … if that is correct … that means, by default, we are agents of stability as well.” To prove his point, Moubayed said that Syria had “played a role” in setting free BBC reporter Alan Johnston, who had been kidnapped by Hamas, as well as the fifteen British sailors who had been captured by Iran in 2007. Echoing al-Taqi’s talk, Moubayed said that Syria’s number one priority had shifted to Iraq, where Syria now had an interest “to play a stabilizing role.” He concluded by saying, however, that there were limits to what Syria could do to patrol Syria’s 605-kilometer frontier with Iraq. “So, to the best of our abilities, we have been trying to keep a secure border.”27

  When the group returned to Damascus, they brought with them a notable sense of triumphalism. The US-Syria Working Group had traveled to Houston, Texas, where they were hosted by Edward P. Djerejian, head of the James L. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and the former ambassador to Syria who had helped build the last period of “constructive engagement” during the 1990s. Djerejian told his visitors an anecdote about his discussion with the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin about the highlight of his career: his appointment as US ambassador to Syria. Rabin wished Djerejian luck and warned him to be careful of “loopholes” in what the United States was offering Syria, as “Hafez al-Assad will drive a truck through it.”

  Picking up on Djerejian’s theme, Moubayed penned an op-ed entitled “Driving Trucks Through US Loopholes,” which outlined how Bashar had “driven a truck” through US policy in the Middle East. On Iraq, Moubayed said that the United States had failed to bring security to Iraq and that Syria could offer to help the United States with exiled Iraqi Baathists in Syria “through dialogue, or aggressively, by threatening … to return many busloads of Iraqis to [prime minister Nouri] al-Maliki’s Iraq.”

  Concerning Iran, Moubayed said that US isolation had driven Damascus into the arms of Tehran but that the United States could now capitalize on that by using Syria as a broker with Tehran to convince it to stop enriching uranium. On peace with Israel, Moubayed said that isolation hadn’t worked and that a peace accord between Syria and Israel would be a “complete strategic package that would redefine the balance of power” in the region.

  Echoing al-Taqi’s comments in Washington, Moubayed said Syria would not break its ties with Hamas and Hezbollah but would instead play the role of “back-channel to people like Hamas’ exiled leader Khaled Meshaal and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.” Moubayed also warned Israel not
to drag its feet, as “non-state players may work hard at changing the mood in either Israel or Syria to drown the peace treaty…. The Syrians aren’t suffering if peace is not signed; it is Israel that suffers.”

  On Lebanon, Moubayed declared complete victory, calling the Doha Accord ending the standoff “tailor-made for the Syrians,” as they had got all they were asking for and “pro-Syrian figures were brought back to government and Michel Suleiman, a pro-Syrian general, was made president.”

  Concluding his story, Moubayed used a quote from the comment section of Syria Comment. A Syrian who lived abroad had recently returned to Damascus and wrote about what he saw: “I found people going about their daily lives as they did before, but this time with a strong sense of Syrian pride of standing together and surviving the storm that was hatched in the dark alleys of the White House. The feeling was that the whole world conspired against them and the Syrians finally won.”28

  EPILOGUE

  THE EXPECTATIONS GAP AND THE ADVENT OF THE ARAB SPRING

  As the sun prepared to set on October 26, 2008, over the farms of Al-Sukkariya, a Syrian enclave five miles west of the Iraqi frontier city of Qaim, three US helicopters hovered over a group of buildings. According to reports by Syria’s state news agency, a number of US troops descended “from helicopters and attacked a civilian building under construction and opened fire on workers inside—including the wife of the building guard—leading to [the deaths] of eight civilians…. The helicopters then left Syrian territory towards Iraqi territory.”1 One witness in the area, who was somehow able to log onto the BBC website despite the regime’s close monitoring of Internet traffic in the country, said that those killed were from the al-Mashada tribe, which has members near the Iraqi city of Tikrit—the hometown of late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the heart of the Sunni insurgency in the country. The mystery source said that the people there were “very relaxed, laid-back people, not very religious—there’s no Mujahideen from this tribe. The guard and the woman who died were very simple people.”2

  The following morning, however, US sources quietly confirmed the death of someone far more complex and lethal: Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih, an Iraqi national sanctioned by the US Treasury Department back in February for “facilitating and controlling the flow of money, weapons, terrorists, and other resources through Syria to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).” A US military official said the raid demonstrated that US forces were “taking matters into [their] own hands” to shut down the networks of al-Qaeda-linked foreign fighters moving between Syria and Iraq and using the former as a safe haven.3 In the coming days, reports emerged that the attack was one of a dozen of previously undisclosed US special-forces raids on al-Qaeda militants in Syria and Pakistan.4 The details of the raid differed from the line that Syrian members of the US-Syria Working Group had sold in Washington the previous summer. If Syria’s primary interest now focused on Iraq—over fears of sectarian strife in that country spilling into Syria—what were al-Qaeda fighters still doing camped out on its territory?

  Damascus responded by closing the Damascus Community School—the American academy attended by Damascus’s elite that had remained formally unlicensed since its establishment in 1957 as part of a general effort to keep Syria out of the Soviet camp in the Cold War.5 The state also closed the American Cultural Center, which was housed in a building adjacent to the US embassy in Damascus and which organized community outreach and hosted the weekly and very popular “American movie night.” The center was preparing for a US election party, scheduled for the early hours of November 5 as the polls closed in the United States. The regime also closed the American Language Center (ALC), which is associated with the US embassy.

  The center’s closure was also the preemptive end of my relationship with Syria. I had planned to travel from Beirut to Damascus to attend the event and write about people’s reactions—a natural scene to conclude this story and set the stage for what I thought would be a reconciliation between Damascus and Washington. Following the attack, however, the regime clamped down on visas for Americans, and I stayed in Beirut. I never had a chance to say good-bye to my friends in Damascus or my colleagues at Syria Today.

  A little over a week later, on November 4, the American people elected Barack Hussein Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States. His early campaign promises to engage unconditionally with Iran and Syria led many close to the Syrian regime to believe that the new president would quickly come knocking on the doors of Damascus. Two days later, Syria’s state-run newspaper Al-Thawra ran an article saying that Syria “extends its hand” to president-elect Barack Obama. Sami Moubayed—the editor in chief of Forward, the English-language monthly magazine, and a member of the US-Syria Working Group—also penned the piece “Abu Hussein’s Invitation to Damascus.” He wrote that Damascus would “use its weight in the region to moderate the behavior of non-state players like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, and find solutions for the US standoff with Iran over its nuclear program.” In return, Moubayed listed ten things that Obama had to do to be “greeted with open arms in Damascus, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.” While Moubayed later insisted that his article reflected only his own views, journalists and analysts widely regarded them as reflecting those of the Syrian regime.6 The requirements included the following:

  The appointment of a US ambassador to Syria. This would be accompanied by greater room to maneuver for Syria’s ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, who was spurned by the Bush administration because of his criticism of how Bush treated Syria.

  An end to the anti-Syrian rhetoric coming from the White House and the State Department since 2003. That would automatically reduce the anti-Syrian sentiment in the US media.

  Recognition of Syria’s cooperation with Iraq on border security.

  Cooperation with Syria to deal with the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria.

  The lifting—in due course—of the sanctions that were imposed on Damascus.

  The abolition of the SAA.

  Willingness to sponsor Syria’s indirect peace talks with Israel, currently on hold in Turkey. That was something Bush curtly refused to do since the talks started in April 2008; he claimed that Syria was more interested in a peace process than a peace treaty. Syria is sincere, and the new White House must acknowledge that to deliver peaceful results in the Middle East. The United States’s willingness to serve as an honest broker could make the talks successful, the Syrians believe. Its participation could transform the talks from indirect to direct negotiations. Syria is determined to regain the occupied Golan Heights (taken by Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967), and Obama must help Syria achieve that if he is sincere about change in the region.

  Recognition that no problems can be solved in the Middle East without Syria with regard to the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Lebanese. Bush launched his famous “roadmap” for peace between Israel and Palestine, but he bypassed the Syrians. If another roadmap were to be launched, Syria would have to be included.

  Help Syria combat Islamic fundamentalism, which has been flowing into its territory from north Lebanon and Iraq.

  An apology, compensation, and explanation for the air raid on Syria that left eight Syrian civilians dead in October 2008.

  Help normalize relations between Syria and America on a people-to-people level, which have been strained since 2001 when Bush came to power. That would include giving visas to Syrians wanting to study or work in the United States.

  From Damascus and the region, Syria’s “triumphalism” must have seemed justified.7 The Assad regime had outlasted not only the Bush administration’s isolation and confrontation policy but also the administration itself. However, to accomplish this, the Assad regime had concocted an eclectic and potentially volatile mixture of policies. To fight the United States and its allies in Iraq, Damascus allowed al-Qaeda–affiliated foreign-fighter networks to cross its territory into Iraq, where they were responsible for some of the conflict’s
most spectacular attacks. This policy undermined the notion I and others had entertained following the September 11 attacks that a minority-led Alawite regime would never allow its territory to be used by Sunni extremists like al-Qaeda. That action plus the regime’s domestic outreach to Islam increased Assad’s domestic legitimacy at the expense of weakening the secular regime his father, Hafez, had built. He also continued the repressive aspects of his father’s rule by arresting regime opponents and perpetuating horrific human rights abuses. In Lebanon, Damascus had deepened its ties with Hezbollah to historic levels to contain the March 14 coalition, including frequent public meetings between President Assad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a man that Bashar’s father had always held at arm’s length. To cement this relationship, Assad brought his country into a closer orbit with Iran, forming the “resistance axis” of countries allied against US and Israeli interests in the region. Last but not least, Assad appeared to have started a nuclear program, either as a deterrent against Israel or as part of a second Iranian nuclear program or, perhaps, both.

  While the Assad regime might have survived the worst that the Bush administration would throw at it, the things the regime had to do to survive made reconciliation with the United States even more difficult, and the high-level engagement Damascus had hoped for didn’t materialize. An expectations gap rapidly grew between both countries.

  Less than a week after Moubayed’s article, the IAEA put Syria on the agenda of its November 19 board of governors’ meeting. Among the environmental samples taken during its June 2008 inspection of the Al Kibar site, the IAEA had found traces of uranium that were not part of Syria’s declared inventory of nuclear material. Damascus later blamed the presence of uranium on Israeli depleted-uranium munitions that might have been used to destroy the facility, but nuclear experts doubted that the kind of uranium found at the site—anthropogenic, or man-manipulated, uranium—was in any way similar to depleted uranium. In subsequent reports, the IAEA said that it found the same type of particles at Syria’s declared research reactor outside Damascus as well. While the Syrian regime stopped answering questions on Al Kibar in September 2008, it continued to allow inspectors access to Syria’s research reactor and provided two sets of explanations for the presence of the particles. The IAEA rejected both explanations, and in June 2011 the IAEA board announced publicly what was known privately: Syria appeared to have constructed a nuclear reactor. As of the time of writing, the investigation was still ongoing.8