'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Syria, Annapolis, and after

The winter weather is cold, bright, and beautiful here in Damascus.  On Thursday night there was a huge public firework display, launched from most of the length of the restaurant-studded road that runs along near the top of the massive mountain that shlters Damascus from the northwest, Jebel Kassioun.  The fireworks were celebrating the beginning of the year during which Damascus has been designated-- by the Arab League-- to be the "Arab Cultural Capital".

The diplomatic arena that the government here is trying to navigate is decidedly less sparkling. Back in late November President Bashar al-Asad made a last-minute decision that Syria (though not he personally) would participate in the Israeli-Arab "summit" meeting that President Bush convened in Annapolis.  That was not an easy decision, coming after many years of active US hostility to Syria and seven years of intentional US stonewalling on Syria's repeated requests for the resumption of Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations.  Indeed, on several occasions over recent years, when high-level figures in the Israeli government started discussing the possibility of resuming the negotiations on this track, those exploratory feelers were nipped smartly in the bud by the Bush administration-- particularly by Bush's NSC person running Middle East affairs, the notorious Elliott Abrams, and by people in VP Dick Cheney's office.

Syria's decision to go to Annapolis was also a tough one because it was strongly opposed by the Iranians, who have been key allies of Syria ever since the 1978 Islamic Revolution in Iran. And it was politically quite controversial at home in Syria, too, given the depth of anti-American feeling here.

But Asad made the decision to take part, in line with his (and before him, his father's) longheld diplomatic position of strong commitment to seeking a negotiated settlement to the 60-year state of war with Israel, including crucially Israel's complete withdrawal from the portions of sovereign Syria that it has occupied since 1967.


In the 1990s, Syria was a full participant in the Arab-Israeli peace conference that was convened by the US (and the Soviet Union-- remember them?) in Madrid, in late 1991.  And over the years that followed, as negotiations continued on the Israeli-Palestinian track and the Israeli-Jordanian track, so too they also continued on the Israel-Syria track, where by March of 1996 the two countries had come close to reaching a final peace agreement. 

At that point, though, Israeli PM Shimon Peres abruptly withdrew his team from the negotiations. Netanyahu, who succeeded Peres in mid-1996 and remained in office till 1999, kept the Syrian negotiating track nearly completely dead, with the continuing tacit support of the Clinton administration.  Negotiations were resumed briefly in 1999, after the arrival of Ehud Barak as Israel's new PM.  But Barak was disastrously hamfisted in his conduct of both domestic and foreign policy.  Regarding Syria, he tried to pull off a bit of last-minute sleight of hand by tempting Asad Senior to go to a summit with Clinton in Geneva, spring 2000, who then revealed only at the last minute that-- ha,ha!-- the Israelis were not, after all, prepared to withdraw from the whole of the occupied Golan, as had been promised within the context of a full-spectrum final peace package since 1994.

Asad Senior died shortly thereafter, and was replaced by his son, the present president.  Barak did not last much longer in power after the Geneva debacle, either, since the ineptness of his domestic policymaking led to the shredding of his governing coalition in almost record time even for Israel's notoriously fractious political system.  He was replaced by Sharon, and then came Olmert. (Barak is now back, as Olmert's notably hawkish Defense Minister. Peres is Israel's President, a largely symbolic post.)  It has been under Olmert, primarily, that ministers at various times have suggested re-opening the Syrian track.  But Elliott Abrams has quashed any such move.  He has reportedly argued that since everyone understands that since any final peace agreement with Syria will necessarily involve the return of the occupied Golan to Syria, then "Golan should not be returned to the Asad regime, which will see this as a huge benefit, but only to a fully democratic Syria."

International law of course says nothing about the internal governance mechanisms of participants in international diplomacy, seeing that as a matter of sovereignty for the countries themselves to determine. Parties to negotiations can voluntarily make undertakings in this realm, if they choose, which is what happened with the Helsinki Agreement of 1974. But to imagine that the character of a regime should be a precondition to any negotiations is ludicrous.  That would paralyze the whole venture of diplomacy,  including the ability to conclude such important agreements as the arms control agreements between the US and the Soviets during the Cold War, the agreement between Britain and China over the peaceful transfer of Hong Kong, etc, etc.

And since when did Elliott Abrams-- of all people!-- care about international law or the integrity or success of freely negotiated international agreements, anyway?

... So there we were, at the point when the present Pres. Asad made the  very sensible decision to have Syria participate  in last November's Arab-Israeli "peace" conference in Annapolis.  Syria's delegate there was Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad.

At Madrid, Syria had been represented by the then Foreign Minister, Farouk Sharaa.  Was the decision to send only Mikdad this time a bit of a signal that Syria was not quite as deeply committed this time around?  I don't know.

But what does seem clearer is that the dominant forces in the Bush administration did not really want Syria to be there at all.

The Syrians had agreed to go to Annapolis after being assured by the Saudis, Egyptians, and others that the Golan issue would be fully on the agenda.  It was not.  Instead, they were "allowed" by their hosts to raise it at a sort of "open mic" session held after the main session at which the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were fully discussed.

Unlike in Madrid, there was no attempt by the US hosts to prepare either the terms of Syria's participation at the conference, or any follow-up diplomacy.  Instead, all that US officials said at the time-- I think this was Condi-- was some thing like "We won't prevent the Syrians from raising any issue they want during the conference.  We won't be turning the microphones off."  To me, that seemed like an offhand or even downright disrespectful response to the Syrians' request that the Golan issue be fully on the agenda.

Nevertheless, the Syrians did go, and by some accounts they were pleased by some of the small diplomatic grace-notes they encountered while there.  For a couple of weeks afterwards, Syria's government seemed to some observers to be cautiously warming up to US representatives in the region, and in the same period Gen. David Petraeus and others made some cautiously appreciative comments about the contribution Syria was making to trying to stabilize the situation in Iraq.

But then something happened, and it interesting to speculate what this might be...  One possibility could, paradoxically enough, have been the December 3 publication by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConell of the very notable recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that stated ":with high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in fall 2003.

The publication of the NIE almost completely wiped away the ability of the Bush administration to launch a military strike against Iran on the pretext that this was necessary to abort an Iranian nuclear program.

For several months prior to December 3-- and also, though in a slightly different way, since then-- the Bushites had been assiduously preparing the diplomatic ground for an attack on Iran... Including by trying to build up an anti-Iranian "coalition" among the Sunni-dominated Arab countries.  At the time of the preparations for Annapolis, many US commentators argued it would be good to include Syria in the conference there, because this would peel Syria away from its longstanding alliance with Iran.  (Or "flip" Syria, as the rather childish saying in Washington went.)

But if suddenly there wasn't any realistic prospect of launching an attack on Iran, then why-- acording to the "flip Syria" thinking-- should Washington bother to make nice to Syria any more?

My view is that this could certainly have been part of the  reason for the re-emergence of some fairly hard-line rhetoric against Syria in the utterances of leading administration members including, as I recall, the President himself.

Another reason, not mutually exclusive from the first, may have been that, while Elliott Abrams and his allies maintained or stepped up their harsh opposition to any rapprochement with Asad's Syria after Annapolis, Condi seemingly did not want to challenge them on that.  She seems to have some degree of commitment to making (her unrealistic version of) the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations move forward.  But honestly I have seen not a single sign of any real interest from her or the President in making progress on the Syrian-Israeli track.  Including, in the design of the agenda at Annapolis...  And so, the Abrams steamroller just rolled right forward there..

(Well, there's a lot more to write from  Syria, but this is all I have time for now... More later... )