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Syria, US - A familiar road to Damascus

By Sami Moubayed

Wednesday, 30 September 2009 15:18

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Meqdad on Tuesday met with Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant deputy secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, marking the first senior visit of a Syrian official to the United States since relations soured after the war in Iraq began in 2003.

This is "part of continuing dialogue that we've opened with the Syrian government", State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said of the meeting in Washington, adding that Miqdad and Lew had discussed issues of mutual interest to the US and Syria, without being more specific.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem landed in Paris for talks with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner. Last week, President Bashar al-Assad went to Saudi Arabia for talks with King Abdullah, while in early October the Saudi king will visit Damascus.

Articles in the Arab press stress that Syria and Saudi Arabia have overcome the "Lebanon complex" and will now focus on common denominators between Riyadh and Damascus, on the Palestinian track, and more importantly, in Iraq.

For weeks, several Kuwait, Israeli and Lebanese newspapers have been reporting that US engagement with Syria had hit a dead end, which now proves to be untrue.

United States officials have made six visits to Syria since January, two of them by US President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell - much to the displeasure of former officials in the George W Bush administration who pushed hard for confrontation with Syria.

Three hardliners have written articles since September 1, blasting Obama for his engagement with Syria: David Schenker, a former official in the Pentagon; John Hannah, a former advisor to ex-vice president Dick Cheney; and former National Security Council official Elliott Abrams.

Schenker wrote, "Regardless of whether the latest attacks [in Iraq on August 19] were perpetrated by al-Qaeda or Ba'athist insurgents, Damascus bears responsibility." Abrams wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Obama's "new policy" towards Syria was "failing", noting, "Bush's policy was far too soft”.

Engagement, however, for the sake of engagement will not yield results, and this is something the Syrians have repeatedly told their American guests since January. Neither the Syrians nor the Americans are doing this just for photo sessions, and soon both sides are going to be holding each other accountable for any lack of progress.

The Americans want Syria to make some gesture with regard to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza before peace talks are jumpstarted on the occupied Golan Heights. The Syrians say that relations with both groups cannot be pre-conditions for any peace talks with Israel.

They are still waiting for a new US ambassador to Damascus, a post that has been vacant since 2005. Although Obama has said he would send an ambassador, no names are yet on the table. Although certain sanctions on Syria have been lifted, and others have not been enforced, the Syria Accountability Act, passed during the Bush era, still stands.

The Syrians are waiting for Obama to put the words he delivered in Cairo last June into action, hoping that he can apply real pressure on Israel to ignite talks on the Golan, and cease its settlements in Palestinian territories.

They watched with great concern this summer as 56 US congressmen traveled to Israel to reassure Israeli settlers that the US remained firmly behind them. Eric Cantor headed the Republican delegation while Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, led the Democrats. Cantor was quoted as saying, "Focus is being placed on settlements and settlement growth, when the real threat is the existential threat that Israel faces from Iran."

These congressmen were sending Obama a strong message - don’t push too hard on Israel, otherwise he will face bipartisan pressure from a disgruntled congress.

What Syria wants from the US is what has been on the table since the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 - restoration of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967, to Syria.

They want Obama to give the Golan Heights high priority on his Middle East agenda and apply pressure on the hardline Benjamin Netanyahu government for this specific purpose. Ultimately, a new Madrid - another international conference this time chaired by Obama - would do wonders for the Middle East.

The Syrians are pushing for real peace in the region for national aims, not for the sake of mending fences with the US or to receive American financial assistance, as is the case with Egypt and Jordan and was with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Syria has said time and again that it would refuse financial aid from the US if peace deals were signed, because with money come strings. They point to Egypt during the Gaza crisis last December, saying that if it were not for US aid, the Egyptian government would have perhaps acted differently towards the Gaza-based Palestinians stranded on the Rafah Crossing. The only "carrot" that the Syrians seek, they say, is no more sanctions and no more pressure from the US.

Syria's economy is capable - with no American help - of surviving and flourishing. Recently, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said that foreign direct investment in Syria had reached US$2.1 billion in 2008 - a 70% increase from 2007. That was achieved amid of a "cold war" between Damascus and Washington. One can only wonder how much it would rise if relations normalized with the US, and the Golan Heights were restored to Syria.

If money is not the issue - and nor is Lebanon - than what is the drive that keeps the Syrians working, decade after decade, for the Golan? Ever since bilateral relations were resumed between Syria and the US, after the war of 1973, the Syrians have repeated the same line to presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Obama.

When meeting president Hafez al-Assad in the 1970s, Carter noted in his memoirs, "During subsequent trips to Syria, I spent hours debating with Assad and listening to his analysis of events in the Middle East. He seemed to speak like a modern Saladin - as though it was his obligation to rid the region of foreign presence while preserving Damascus as the focal point of modern Arab unity."

These traits have seemingly been passed down, from father to son. When veteran Syrian diplomat Mowaffak Allaf was asked to head the Syrian peace team in 1991, the latter asked the Syrian leader, "What is the minimum Syria will accept?" The president answered, "Every bit of Syrian soil from the Golan."

Much of that still stands today, 20 years down the road. Skeptics in Washington - like the former officials authoring the articles cited above - claim otherwise, arguing that Syria is more interested in a peace process to end the isolation that was imposed on it by the Bush White House, than a peace treaty.

Obama now has to choose - either give the Syrians the benefit of the doubt and speed up engagement over the Golan Heights, or pursue a path that has been tried - and failed - by Bush. By choosing to invite Miqdad to Washington, the US president appears to prefer the second option.

Global Arab Network

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine. This article appeared in Asia Times on September 30, 2009 entitled, "Damascus on a familiar road."