West’s relations with Syria starting to thaw

US Assistant Secretary of State for Migration Affairs Ellen Sauerbrey was in Damascus yesterday, discussing the situation of the million-plus Iraqi citizens who have found a temporary refuge there.
The Kuwaiti news agency reported that State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said that,

    Sauerbrey called on Syria to work with the Iraqi government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “to provide protection and assistance for refugees from Iraq that are in Syria.”

This hortatory tone sounds particularly inappropriate, given that Syria’s 20 million people and their government have given, on balance, a remarkably warm welcome to the displaced Iraqis who have fled there, while the USA, a very rich country with 15 times Syria’s population has admitted something like 450 Iraqi refugees over the whole of the past four years.
Also, it was the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that sparked the strife that has sent so many millions of Iraqis fleeing. And the US, as occupying power there, still bears the responsibility under international law to assure the protection of the safety of all Iraqis… which they have notably failed to do.
Sauerbrey’s visit is the highest profile visit by any Bush administration official to Syria since the US “recalled” its ambassador from Damascus in the aftermath of the killing of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri in Beirut in February 2005. There ensued two years of a strong attempt by the Bushites to encircle and isolate the Syrian regime, an attempt that was punctuated by periodic calls from powerful neocons for outright “regime change” in Damascus …
Now, finally, the admninistration has concluded that it needs to start engaging with Damascus, at least to some extent. (On Saturday, Syrian, Iranian, and US representatives all took part in the 12-party regional stabilization meeting held in Baghdad.)
When I interviewed Syrian FM Walid Mouallem in Damascus on February 28, he was modestly optimistic about the prospects of a thaw in US-Syrian relations. (See also the latter two portins of this interview, here and here.)
For his part, Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Shara has seemed a little more cautious than Mouallem. He told reporters in Cairo that

    “This is just a start. And we cannot predict how this start would end but we hope the end and the coming steps will be positive and constructive…
    “Warming relations need deep talks and a long time for mutual doubts to be removed. That is why we should not pin huge importance on what happened in Baghdad, but we must not ignore it either because it has brought the dialogue back.”

In another sign of the slow thaw in Syria’s relations with the west, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is expected in Damascus any moment now.
Meanwhile, Josh Landis is carrying on his blog the full text of an article that the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, recently penned.
Moustapha gives quite a lot of details about various overtures the Syrian government made to Washington, offering to provide security coordination regarding Iraq, but says at least two of these offers– made in March and September 2004– were brusquely rebuffed by the Bushites.
He concludes:

    Syria firmly believes that the only way to achieve progress in Iraq is through the political engagement of all parties, without exception or exclusion. This includes all Iraqi factions, regional neighbors of Iraq, and international players with interest in stabilizing the situation in Iraq. A strategy of consensus and dialogue is the only way forward. Syria can play a constructive role if such a path is adopted.

Let’s hope everyone else can also start to play a constructive role?

14 thoughts on “West’s relations with Syria starting to thaw”

  2. Excellent thought Helena. May the thaw really “heat” up.
    If you or other jwn readers have more articles and details on the Iraq refugees, in terms of composition and destination, please post here.
    The churlish US attitude towards Iraqi refugees in Syria reminds me how the US was loathe to admit that several million Afghan refugees fled to Iran – and stayed there for over a decade…. (with little help from the UNHCR) Same attitude happened again in 1991, with the Kurds who fled to Iran.
    To whit, the problem for the neocon ideology: why would anybody flee to “totalitarian” Syria or Iran…? (so you downplay it as much as possible…. besides, we have our Virgil Goode factor….)
    Anyway, while all these refugees deserve greater attention and support, I have a particular research interest in getting better stats on the Iraqi Christian refugees – and the community’s “status” still in Iraq. Over the past year, I have seen several alarming reports of a “mass” exodus of this community (esp. via Juan Cole’s site), but I’d like to see more specifics.
    Anybody seen anything in detail of late? Thanks in advance.

  3. Under international law the occupied power should be responsible for the security and other issues , what we seeing in Iraq its a deliberate deteriorating security and negligence of all the public services by occupying forces, the reality here neither Helena nor escott taking the real cause of this Man Mad Human Disaster done on lies and regrettably all international community stand with deafness and blindness what’s going on in Iraq from day when the invasion happen, yes there are some voices opposing that invasion but they faded as looks there are hidden deals controlled by “Either with US or Against US”.
    escort what you talking is fragmenting the problem by taking minorities suffering but on the ground (I hope every one talking in this post include Helena take a visit to Iraq see by your own eyes what happening their) of the Iraqi have suffered from this war four years now whomever who is responsible about the killing torturing, burning hoses raping women, cowboy exactions style, throwing dead bodies into rubbish , all sorts of ugly gang style killing are imported to Iraq with the last four years.
    So when we talking about Iraq refuges lets talk Iraqi please don’t go down to fragments of Iraq society and don’t forgot why these refugees left the country from start it is very important to be discussed with the cause of it.
    After 1991 ware followed by 13 years of inhuman sanctions made 5millions Iraqi leaving Iraq simply because the civilized world have choose to impose that sections on humans have no control whatsoever of a single stupid man as same as what we see in Iran.
    BTW, UN gave Iraq ONE Billion for food to live on 25Millions Iraqis to live like a poor streets boys this is what we were under 13 years, I know you will tell me that the regime used that for his benefit but again who gave that regime this opportunity? Why not reviewed and changed during that 13yeras?
    Simple answer to you inshort what designed for Iraq is to “Kill’m all” and let loots this “Massive Goodness From This Land”
    US envoy in Damascus on a visit to discuses Iraqi refuges problem! Oh yah so human this US administration kill them inside and go back to help them what a pathetic and nave behaviours from a bunch of liars

  5. One of the lots of Goodness

    In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve.

    It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.

    Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressive in shepherding the oil law toward passage. It is one of the president’s benchmarks for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al- Maliki, a fact that Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, General William Casey, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and other administration officials are publicly emphasizing with increasing urgency.

    http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/13/opinion/edjuhasz.php

  9. On the March 19th anniversary of the war and invasion of Iraq, there will be one hour of silent vigil in my home town. It seems we have no more words to stop this evil occupation, so we will stand in silence and remember and honor the innocent victims of this war – as our country goes into the fifth year of brutal occupation.
    It is expected there will be hundreds there – in a county of 170,000. On March 24, we will hold a PEACE RALLY and we expect over a thousand for that event. This is in Asheville NC, and the web page is http://www.wncPeaceCoalition.org

  10. his message is about Human beings, Democracy, UNHCR, Refugees, The Iraqis, Islam, Kurds, Human rights, Respect, Money, Donations, Angelina Jolie, Pavarotti, Giorgio Armani, Donors, Peace, History, Campaigns and about you if you care about these words.
    Hi there,
    I am SAM, an Iraqi refugee living in Lebanon at the moment; I have spent the last 10 years of my life as a refugee registered with the UNHCR in Beirut . The last 4 years, I have spent as an activist for peace and human rights (especially refugees and asylum seekers) on the Internet; I’m also books author and ebooks publisher. I have launched many campaigns to improve our situation as refugees in Lebanon and hopefully bring more understanding to our problems worldwide. I helped make many changes and improvements at the UNHCR office in Beirut ; I used the Internet as the field for my activities (you can read more about that in my free ebook ‘MY CAMPAIGNS’). All my ebooks are free and could be download from my sites.
    This is my newest campaign, it’s about the illegal and humiliating actions of the UNHCR, who using photos of refugees as banners and human-buttons to collect money. This is an abuse of the dignity and humanity of the refugees and must stop immediately and a clear public apology present by The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. My friends, I am talking about the pictures you can see here:
    http://g.1asphost. com/lebanon1/ human-buttons. htm
    Where you can read the rest of this message as web page.
    Also you can read my new campaign ‘Urgent, we need smile’ here:
    http://un01. freewaywebhost. com/smile. html
    For more info about UNHCR and life of refugees you can read my free ebooks. I invite you as fellow humans and members of the world community to support my campaign by reading my article on my site and see the human-buttons. The campaign is to support and improve the UNHCR http://www.unhcr. org especially after the last scandals in the UN and UNHCR, just for example:
    The refugees allege that UNHCR staff is selling most of the food items they are supposed to be supplied.
    “They aren’t supplying sufficient food to us because they sell most of the food items,” they allege: http://allafrica. com/stories/ 200503140214. html
    Here is another example: Burmese Refugees Withdraw Protest Against UNHCR http://www.mizzima. com/archives/ news-in-2005/ news-in-april/ 12-April05- 22.htm
    “We make demonstration and fast because the UNHCR office in Cairo did nothing for our problem…” http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/africa/ 4440730.stm
    Together we will build better world.
    You could reach me fast via this form: http://unwes. batcave.net/ email_me. htm
    and if you like to know more about me, you can google for my name ‘osam altaee’.
    Thanks
    THE TRUTH WARRIOR
    http://unhcrlebanon .batcave. net

  11. Nir Rosen: There is no best-case scenario for Iraq. It’s complete anarchy now. No family is untouched by kidnappings, murders, ethnic cleansing — everybody lives in a constant state of terror…. That’s not only the government’s fault, that’s our fault: We deliberately created a weak government so that we would have final authority over everything in Iraq.

  14. Update on Harhttp://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=80534iri Tribunal/Brammertz Briefing

Comments are closed.