Hate overrides love in US-Syrian relationship

Daily Star [Beirut] ^ | 6/23/02

[Ranger]

The love-hate relationship between the United States and Syria has never seemed as complicated in contemporary memory as it is today. Recent weeks have seen the hate element increasing, thanks to the efforts of Washington’s pro-Israel lobby and the balances of power within the Bush administration itself, as well as domestic Syrian reasons.
Washington and Damascus have always managed to preserve relations between them, despite the fact that Syria has figured on the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism for almost 20 years. In fact, Syria is the only country mentioned in the list to maintain diplomatic relations with the United States.
And despite the fact that Syria was involved in a political, military, and economic alliance with the former Soviet Union, the late President Hafez Assad never cut off channels of communication with Washington.
After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war broke out, the late Syrian president agreed to enter into troop disengagement negotiations with Israel sponsored by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

A troop disengagement agreement was signed during former President Richard Nixon’s visit to Damascus in May 1974. In 1976, the Syrian Army went into war-torn Lebanon despite Soviet objections.
When the Eastern Bloc collapsed, the late Syrian president agreed ­ after talks with former President George Bush in Geneva ­ to participate in the US-led “international coalition” formed to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait in exchange for two things:
Firstly, he wanted the removal of General Michel Aoun, who had declared a so-called “war of national liberation” against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, a presence supported by the “legitimate” Lebanese authorities.
Second, he secured a promise from Bush to sponsor a peace agreement between Syria and Israel based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of swapping land for peace ­ a promise upheld at the 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference.

During all negotiations with Israel since 1991, Syria was always keen for the Americans to have a place at the negotiating table, hoping this would allow them to foster relations with Washington. Damascus also entered into talks with the Americans themselves with the view of erasing its name from the American list of terrorist nations. These talks were fruitless because the Americans insisted Syria make peace with Israel first.
Nevertheless, Syrian diplomacy succeeded in raising the level of dialogue between the two countries. The late Syrian leader met three times with former US President Bill Clinton, twice in 1994, and a final meeting in Geneva in 2000, in what was seen as a last ditch attempt to sign a peace agreement with Israel.
Dialogue between the two countries did not continue at the same level after George W. Bush became president, however. Upon coming to office, George W. Bush declared his intention to avoid the Middle Eastern quagmire altogether, despite the violence that was engulfing the occupied Palestinian lands. The Sept. 11 attacks strained relations between the two countries further because of Washington’s declaration of an open-ended “war on terror.”

Syrian officials tried to adapt to the political fallout of the attacks on New York and Washington. Senior Syrian leaders expressed their readiness to aid US law enforcement agencies. The Syrian government offered to share intelligence about militant Islamist groups ­ gained through its long struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood between 1976 and 1982 ­ with the Americans. Damascus hoped that its efforts would help the Americans distinguish between terrorism as exemplified by Al-Qaeda, and resistance to occupation as practiced by the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.
Despite the fact that these Syrian efforts fell on deaf ears in Washington, the Bush administration did not exert strong pressure on Syria in the first phase of the war on terror, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the Americans were keen to support President Bashar Assad’s reformist drive. They wanted to sustain the stability of Syria’s secular regime. The Americans were convinced that Syria had a pivotal role to play in Middle East peacemaking and any comprehensive peace agreement.

Washington also believed that Syria had it in its power to undermine any potential settlement between the Palestinians and Israel.
The Americans did not want to push Syria into strengthening its ties with Iran and Iraq. They were also keen to maintain bridges with Damascus in case they needed Syrian help in targeting Iraq.
For these reasons, the Bush administration did not pursue the issue of the Iraqi trans-Syrian oil pipeline, despite its knowledge that Iraqi oil was being pumped through Syria in contravention of UN sanctions.
In recent weeks, however, strains between Syria and the United States have been rising. Syrian (and Arab) failure to promote the Arab point of view in Washington was accompanied by a vociferous Israeli campaign against Syria and the relations it maintains with organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as Hizbullah. The Israeli point of view won the day, mainly thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s success in linking Palestinian resistance to international terrorism.

Syria has recently been accused of “supporting terrorism,” and “facilitating the shipment of arms to Hizbullah” in Lebanon. These accusations increased when Syria assumed the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council for the month of June. The purpose was to preoccupy Damascus with countering accusations of supporting terrorism, thus preventing it from raising issues of political substance.
To realize just how much the hate factor had overtaken the element of love in the love-hate relationship, one had only to see how the positive impressions (about Syrian readiness to cooperate with international efforts for peace) that Assistant Secretary of State William Burns carried back to Washington from his meeting with President Assad in Damascus, were quickly dispelled by the National Security Council and Pentagon hawks.
In his meeting with Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley to arrange for Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa’s visit to Washington, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem was asked repeatedly about increased Iranian support for Hizbullah.

Consequently, it seems that Secretary of State Colin Powell is the only senior American official willing to consider Syria’s point of view. But Powell has to contend with Israel’s many friends in the Bush administration, who want Syria lumped together with Iraq, Iran and South Korea in the “axis of evil,” and are working to undermine any positive achievement of Syrian diplomacy ­ thus stupidly driving Damascus down the militant road of cooperation and alliance with Tehran and Baghdad, and causing it to abandon the peace process.

Ibrahim Hamidi is a Damascus-based journalist specialized in Syrian current affairs. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star