Author:
Source: Syria Today
Date: 2009-April
US officials have racked up an impressive amount of frequent flyer points dropping in on Damascus of late. Since moving into the White House in late January, US President Barack Obama has given the green light to a high-profile engagement of Syria. Damascus is now hailed as a ‘key’ to solving the Middle East’s problems, former adversaries talk of ‘common ground’ without blushing, and opinion writers the world over wax lyrical about a change in the region’s tectonic plates.
Most seasoned Syria observers, however, remain highly cautious. Despite the apparent volte-face in US policy towards Damascus, they question what has fundamentally changed in the country’s long, complicated relationship with America.
“The Obama administration is not planning any revolutionary change in US policy toward the Middle East,” Joshua Landis, co-director of the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Middle East Studies, said. “Rather, it appears to have set its sights on preserving the status quo and seeking to attenuate radicalisation through engagement and the proffering of small carrots, such as repaired diplomatic relations with Syria and the incremental lifting of sanctions.”
Senator Benjamin Cardin kicked off a string of recent US visits to Syria when he touched down in Damascus on January 18. He was followed by Congressman Adam Smith on January 31, who was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence the day after returning to the America.
US Senator and former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry spent four hours with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on February 21, becoming the most senior US official to visit the country since Nancy Pelosi went shopping for pearls in Souq Hamidiyeh in 2007. On February 26, Syrian Ambassador to Washington Imad Moustapha met with Jeffrey Feltman, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs at the State Department. A few days later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shook hands with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mu’allem at a fundraising summit for Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh.
The most high-level meeting came when Feltman, accompanied by the National Security Council’s Middle East and North Africa director Daniel Shapiro, met with Mu’allem in Damascus on March 7. Feltman said the meeting was “constructive”. He said Syria and America shared “common ground” and went to great lengths to stress he had not come to Damascus with a list of demands, but rather to open the channels of communication and learn Syria’s views.
His soothing tones have been echoed by Syrian officials.
“There are no problems with the American people and we aim to have good ties with the United States which has an important role to play in finding solutions to the Middle East’s crises,” Suleiman Haddad, chairman of the Foreign and Arab Affairs Committee in the Syrian parliament, said. “We are looking for fair American sponsorship of the peace process with Israel to achieve stability and security in the region.”
Back to the future
All of which is a far cry from the policies of former US President George W. Bush, who shunned Damascus and tried to isolate Syria internationally. His administration publicly talked of regime change – dubbing Syria “low hanging fruit” – and designated the country as an adjunct to the infamous ‘axis of evil’.
Washington’s tone towards Damascus is audibly different. But Syrian analysts, both inside and outside the country, play down the likelihood of any major breakthroughs in the points of difference dividing Damascus and Washington.
Rime Allaf, an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, said the choice of President Obama’s last two envoys indicates “he is more willing to play by George W. Bush’s rules than to turn over a new page”.
Feltman, the US ambassador to Lebanon at the time of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, took a confrontational line against Damascus in that role and made no effort to hide his enthusiastic support for the pro-American March 14 group. Shapiro was instrumental in drafting the Syrian Accountability Act (SAA), the most comprehensive of any US sanctions effort against Syria.
“Had President Obama wanted constructive dialogue, he could have chosen people with less baggage,” Allaf said. “In the long term, I am sure the differences can be resolved, but the new administration has been more words than action so far. It’s necessary for both sides to concentrate on diplomatic communication, rather than on measures which merely affect normal people and have no bearing on the political decisions of either country.”
Old problems remain
While Obama’s presidency has generated much hope of a breakthrough in the Arab-Israeli conflict, his list of complaints against Damascus mirrors that of his predecessor. Central among these is ending support for groups including Hezbollah and Hamas, organisations the US considers terrorists but which Syria holds to be legitimate national resistance movements. Accusations over the Iraqi border remain. Moving Syria away from Iran is also enthusiastically announced as a key foreign policy objective.
Nor has Obama’s diplomatic thaw produced any tangible results. Claims by Syrian sources that sanctions had been eased in early February after the US Department of Commerce approved a licence to sell Boeing 747 parts to Syria are in fact unfounded, as components that will maintain aviation safety are legally exempt from the SAA. This transaction can certainly be seen as a US gesture towards Syria, as can the Treasury Department’s decision to facilitate the transfer of SYP 23.5m (USD 500,000) to the Damascus-based children’s cancer charity BASMA. But Damascus still does not have a US ambassador and Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell has failed to call in on Syria despite touring the region extensively. At the same time, Syria has announced it will not end its support of Hezbollah and Hamas, or have its relationship with Iran dictated to it by a third party.
“There are some files between the two sides that will not be easily solved, areas in which neither side wants to surrender its position,” Hamidi Abdullah, a Syrian political analyst based in Damascus, said. “America’s position regarding the national resistance of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories will not change. America has been supportive of Israel since its creation and that is not going to change.”
The upcoming Lebanese elections also present a potential new point of confrontation between Damascus and Washington. How America would react to a Hezbollah win remains unclear. A dispute over the post-election continuation of the Doha Agreement also looms.
The March 14 coalition has said that the deal, which gives the opposition a cabinet veto, will expire with the elections. March 8 opposition groups say the deal is a national unity framework which will continue after the elections whatever the result.
“It seems probable that the US is predicating the return of a US ambassador to Damascus on a favourable outcome to the June 7 elections in Lebanon,” Landis said. “Washington wants to see the establishment of a new March 14 led government in Lebanon.”
Lack of sincerity
Above and beyond this, there are serious doubts in Damascus about the sincerity of America’s commitment to addressing Syrian concerns in the region. Marwan Kabalan, a Syrian political scientist who teaches media and international relations at Damascus University, said US attention on Syria is a means to an end; Obama’s real concern is Iran, rather than a better relationship with Syria in itself, or a settlement of the Arab-Israel dispute.
“The Americans have never been serious about peace,” Kabalan said. “They were always satisfied with conflict management. They have never wanted to think of it in terms of conflict resolution.”
Kabalan said US interests in the modern Middle East have moved away from the Levant and now are centred in the Gulf.
“The Arab-Israeli conflict has been going on for the past 60 years and it can go on for another 60 years,” he said. “US interests are no longer in this area of the Middle East, they have moved to the Gulf, to a nuclear Iran, to oil, Iraq and Pakistan.”
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