I seem to have been incredibly busy since I left Damascus last Thursday evening. I’ve also been on an emotional roller-coaster, torn between the mounting excitement around Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow–Washington DC is abuzz with visitors, activities, parties, and high hopes– and my continuing deep sadness and concern over the horrors in Gaza.
Plus, there have been significant developments in the Gaza story, which I’ve tried to blog here.
But I just want to write something quick now, before the experience becomes too faded, about the amazing evening we spent in Damascus last Tuesday…
The small delegation of which I was part was invited to an event at the Zeitoun Church, near the Eastern Gate of the Old City of Damascus, in which a joint Christian-Muslim choir sang hymns sacred to their two religions and some patriotic songs, accompanied by traditional Arabic instruments and, at one point, by two “whirling dervishes.”
This was the Alfarah Chorale, organized by Father Elias Zahlawi. Also present was the (Sunni Muslim) Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmed Bader Hasoun, who told us a little about the meaning of some of the dervishes’ sacred gestures.
If I shut my eyes I can almost see the rhythm of the dervishes’ vastly swirling white skirts. I can see the great enthusiasm in the faces of the “Christian” portion of the chorale, which stood in three lines across the back of the stage in the same kind of quasi-ecclesiastical garb a choir in a US church might wear. I can see the broad smiles of the half dozen yellow-clad, hijab-wearing women in the “Muslim” portion of the chorale. I can hear the plaintive tones of the flute, the lute, and the zither. I can feel the insistence of the hand-drums; admire the deep tones of the Muslim men singers over on the left.
The music was tremendous! Extremely accomplished and moving. The choristers seemed to be singing in six or seven parts, and they all reveled in the sound they made together. Sometimes the Christians sang alone; sometimes the Muslims. But mainly they sang together, whether it was sacred songs or more secular patriotic ballads.
Both the Mufti and Father Zahlawi spoke about the great value of the coexistence among faiths and communities that Syria has hosted for many centuries now, and how this can be a model for other nations everywhere. They spoke about how they valued their memories of the Jewish community that used to enrich their lives in Syria– nearly all its members left for the west some years ago… And about how they would love to welcome its members back to Syria.
Mufti Hasoun smiled broadly as he gave a special shout-out to “Barack Hussein Obama” on the occasion of his imminent inauguration as president of the US, and expressed the hope that Washington’s ties with Syria could rapidly be improved.
But it’s the rich and soaring tones of the singers, the wide skirts of the sacred dancers, and the low voice of the hand-drums that stay with me now.
We have a ceasefire in Gaza, however fragile. And tomorrow we’ll have a new president here in the US. Many things that seemed hard to imagine last Tuesday now seem much more possible.
… Just 18 hours of George Bush’s presidency still to go…
Category: Syria
Going to Syria
This afternoon I’m leaving for Syria. I’m part of a delegation of (non-governmental) US citizens– most of whom are considerably closer to the “Establishment” here than I am– whose goal is to explore with Syrian counterparts and colleagues the possibilities for improving the US-Syrian relationship.
After eight years in which Dick Cheney and Elliott Abrams systematically blocked any attempt to do this, I hope the time is right for some real change.
It won’t be easy. The extremist pro-Israeli lobbying groups in this country still have considerable, continuing clout in Congress (as was demonstrated by this past week’s “Swift-boating” of any attempts at balanced congressional resolutions on Gaza, which was orchestrated completely by AIPAC.) Regarding Syria, back in 2003 the US congress passed into law the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSRA) which sought to place considerable additional sanctions and restrictions on Syria– additional to those that already stemmed from Syria’s longstanding identification by the State Department as a State Supporter of Terrorism.
The US has not had an ambassador in Syria since 2006. There are huge numbers of issues that need to be untangled…
I’m not sure our little group can untangle them all. But I hope we can do something to improve and expand bilateral ties at all levels.
Dick Cheney and the people whom he had carefully placed throughout the Bush administration argued that Syria is both a state supporter of terrorism and a highly dictatorial state… and because of that it should not be “rewarded” in any way by being engaged with in the conduct of normal diplomacy, or even treated as a normal member of the “family of nations”. Instead, it should be ostracized, excluded, and punished until such a time as either President Bashar al-Asad raised a white flag of complete surrender to US power, or he was overthrown.
Even when Israeli PM Olmert opened up his indirect final-peace negotiating channel with Asad through Turkey 18 months ago, Cheney and his supporters tried to dissuade him from doing that!
I find it highly ironic, regarding the whole “democratization” business the Bushites were– oh-so-briefly– enamored of in the Middle East, that actually the government of Syria reflects the will of the Syrian people in matters of national policy to a considerably greater degree than the governments of Egypt or Jordan, both of which are staunchly and generously supported by Washington. (Actually, that’s a big part of why their citizens don’t like those two governments. That, and the extremely repressive practices of their US-funded “security” services.)
Right now, getting a decent working relationship with Syria’s government and people is more important for the true interests of the US citizenry than ever before. Syria is a key actor in all the problem/crisis areas of the region. The relationships it has with all parties in Palestine and all parties in Iraq are a considerable resource for peacemakers.
Of course, in the negotiations for a speedy and robust ceasefire for Gaza, Syria is one of the key actors.
I probably shan’t be blogging here much for the next week. But who knows? Who knows what fascinating experiences I might have in Syria?
This guy’s been outside the US for too long!
I was reading a recent interview with Andrew Tabler, an American who’s spent the past 14 years in the Arab world, most prominently in Syria, and who’s about to take up a nicely funded fellowship at the AIPAC-founded ‘Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (HT: Josh Landis.)
There are a few interesting nuggets in the interview– though not as much useful information as you’ll find in Syria Today, the monthly magazine Tabler has edited for a few years now in Damascus, with much support from Syria’s “First Lady” (a quaint term that he himself actually uses), Mrs. Asma al-Asad.
So now Tabler is coming back to the US, where he says his goal is, “to try and make it so that whatever discussions come about are based on Syria as it is as well as what it could realistically be.” All well and good– though we could maybe explore a bit more what the meaning of “is” is?
But here’s the hilarious part of the interview:
- [Arabs] are a lot like Americans, especially from the countryside: very nice, personally very warm. On the surface, we’re very, very similar. But there are fundamental differences. The Arab world is badly ruled. Its rulers are not accountable to their people, and they often make very bad decisions…
Unlike Americans???
Here’s a guy who was not in the US during the lead-up to the Iraq war. Not in the country during Hurricane Katrina. Had still not– when he gave this interview– come to the US during the current– still accelerating– financial meltdown…
Welcome back to the United States, Andrew.
Iraq’s international ‘Contact group’ becoming stronger?
The Security Cooperation and Coordination Committee of Iraq’s neighboring countries held its third meeting in Damascus Sunday. This ‘Contact Group’ brings together representatives of the UN, the US, Iraq’s neighbors (including Iran), and other relevant international actors. It has been quietly working behind the scenes since April 2007 to help stabilize Iraq and expedite an orderly transition to the country’s full independence. The two earlier meetings of the SCCC were also held in Damascus, in April and August 2007.
Who, consuming only the western MSM, would have known about Sunday’s landmark meeting?
The MSM pumps out a constant flow of reporting– and commentary that’s often very belligerent– on the matters of political difference between Washington and Damascus. But it seems to ignore the areas in which the two countries cooperate, altogether. Why?
Yes, certainly, there are some substantial differences. There are the (very poorly substantiated) US allegations that Syria has been doing illegal things in the nuclear field, and the US allegations that Syria was not doing enough to prevent anti-US militants from crossing its border into Iraq. Syria also has its own considerable grievances against the US, but these don’t get nearly as much of an airing in the western MSM.
Then, as recently as October 26, the White House authorized a U.S. Special Forces in Iraq to undertake a heavily armed incursion into Syria that killed eight Syrian citizens, reportedly civilians.
But on November 23 there was Maura Connelly, the Deputy Chief of Mission and therefore (in the absence of an ambassador) the highest-ranking US diplomat in Syria, taking part in the SCCC gathering hosted by the Syrian government.
That’s great news.
Also attending were representatives of Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, Japan, the UN secretary-general, the four non-US Permanent Members of the UN , the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Arab League. Saudi Arabia had been invited but did not attend due to its continuing bilateral disagreements with Syria.
Reuters tells us (HT: Josh Landis) about one of the more dramatic things that happened in the meeting:
- The United States stood alone at a conference on Sunday in accusing host Syria of sheltering militants attacking Iraq, while other countries adopted a more conciliatory tone, delegates said.
No other state present at the conference on security for Iraq joined Washington in its open criticism, weeks after a U.S. raid on Syria that targeted suspected militants linked to al Qaeda, they told Reuters.
U.S. Charge d’Affaires Maura Connelly… told a closed session that Syria must stop allowing what she called terrorist networks using its territory as a base for attacks in Iraq.
Washington’s leading Western ally, Britain, has recently praised Syria for preventing foreign fighters from infiltrating into Iraq, and its foreign secretary, David Miliband, was in Damascus this week pursuing detente with Syria.
“The American diplomat’s speech was blunt and short. The United States was the only country at the conference to criticise Syria openly,” one of the delegates said.
The fact that Syria agreed to host the conference even after last month’s military attack by the US was significant. Reuters’ Khaled Oweis wrote that Syria “decided to go ahead [with the meeting] after the Iraqi government condemned the strike.”
The participation of both Iran and the US in this gathering was also very significant. (But that development, too, was completely ignored by the western MSM. See my points on the MSM and Syria, above…)
So was the fact that the US was able to win support for the belligerent attitude it has adopted toward Syria from not a single one of the other delegates— not even the Iraqi government that it itself helped set up back in 2005-06.
Yes, the balance of power/influence between Washington and Baghdad regarding matters Iraqi has certainly shifted in Baghdad’s favor. All that’s left now is to work for the continuing retraction of US power from the region that is as orderly as possible. (Hence the great importance of this coordinating body, the SCCC.)
Oweis gave these additional details of what happened in the Damascus meeting:
- Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnous said Syria was a “victim of terrorism” and that it would not allow any attack on any individual living in its territory…
“Arnous chose not to respond directly to the U.S. charge, but emphasised that Iraq’s stability was in the interest of Syria,” another delegate said.
Delegates said representatives of China and Russia had condemned the United States for using Iraq as a “base for aggression”. A joint statement issued by Iraq and its neighbours after the meeting said they opposed any offensive action launched from Iraq against its neighbours or vice versa.
… I have stressed for many years now that any substantial drawdown of US troops from Iraq (and especially the complete withdrawal that I favor) requires the active involvement in helping to facilitate and coordinate that of all of Iraq’s neighbors, including those with which the US has bad relations, as well as of the UN. The SCCC seems to be providing exactly this kind of coordination.
It’s been 15 months since the last SCCC meeting. Let’s hope it is not nearly as long until the next one, and that the non-US members of this body work hard to give it more real clout and political weight once the UN’s ‘mandate’ to the US in Iraq expires on December 31.
The Syria raid and a whole White House gone rogue
As I argued here October 27, the raid that US Special Forces undertook against Syria Oct. 26 had indeed been authorized by the White House. In fact, by President Bush himself, if we are to believe this important report in the NYT today, which tells us that Syria is one of “15 to 20” countries covered by a classified order issued in spring of 2004 that allows the US military to hunt down for “kill or capture” accused Al-Qaeda operatives located in those countries.
That order does not cover Iran (where few Qaeda people would be hiding out, anyway, given the deep doctrinal differences between Qaeda and the Tehran regime.) But the authors of the NYT story, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, suggest strongly that US military raids into Iran are probably covered by a separate order.
They write:
- Even with the order, each specific mission requires high-level government approval. Targets in Somalia, for instance, need at least the approval of the defense secretary, the administration official said, while targets in a handful of countries, including Pakistan and Syria, require presidential approval.
That would doubtless be because of the intense diplomatic sensitivity of taking these hostile actions inside countries whose governments provide important services to the US. (Unlike Somalia, for example, which has far less diplomatic importance.)
Regatrding Syria, Schmitt and Mazzetti also write:
- The recent raid into Syria was not the first time that Special Operations forces had operated in that country, according to a senior military official and an outside adviser to the Pentagon.
Since the Iraq war began, the official and the outside adviser said, Special Operations forces have several times made cross-border raids aimed at militants and infrastructure aiding the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.
The raid in late October, however, was much more noticeable than the previous raids, military officials said, which helps explain why it drew a sharp protest from the Syrian government.
The 2004 executive order gave permission specifically to the US military to act within the “15 to 20” named countries under certain circumstances. The White House– with the connivance of top members of the US congress– has long allowed the CIA the right to carry out various kinds of illegal acts, including killing and abduction of suspects, in an even broader range of foreign countries.
For the US government to arrogate to itself the right to act in such an illegal and potentially extremely destabilizing way in other countries around the world underscores, yet again, how far our country has slipped from be an upholder of international law and what a rogue force it has become within the international system.
We should press President-elect Obama and the leaders of the incoming Congress to repeal all the “executive orders” that have allowed and encouraged such global malfeasance.
Iraqi, Iranian dimensions of the Sukkariyeh raid
Well, as was quite predictable Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has now trotted out new lines condemning Sunday’s raid in which US ground forces took off from (presumably) Iraqi territory on their heliborne extra-judicial execution mission in Sukkariyeh, in neighboring Syria.
The BBC tells us (link above) that after an Iraqi cabinet meeting today,
- government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh explicitly criticised the US over the reported helicopter strike.
“The Iraqi government rejects the US helicopter strike on Syrian territory, considering that Iraq’s constitution does not allow its land to be a base for launching attacks on neighbouring countries,” he said.
“We call upon American forces not to repeat such activities and Baghdad has launched an investigation into the strike.”
Yesterday, after Dabbagh was quoted as expressing some support for the extra-judicial execution raid, I noted that, “it is sometimes a little unclear who Dabbagh works for. In the past he has sometimes seemed to be a loyal mouth-piece for his Iraqi political bosses, and sometimes to be a bit of a cat’s-paw for the Americans.” Today, his Iraqi government masters have evidently jerked his chain.
Of more consequence than Dabbagh’s vacillations, however, is the fact that at that same cabinet meeting Iraq’s ministers were discussing the latest draft of the SOFA agreement sent along by the US: In the negotiation over this agreement the Iraqi side is still strongly insisting that any US forces on their territory should not be used to launch any operations against other countries that are not explicitly authorized by Baghdad.
The BBC report of the cabinet meeting said,
- Iraq’s cabinet authorised PM Nouri al-Maliki to put forward proposed changes to a security pact with the US.
A government spokesman said the suggested amendments, agreed at a cabinet meeting, addressed both the wording and the content of the Status of Forces Agreement.
… The US and Iraqi governments had previously said the pact, which would authorise the presence of US troops in Iraq until 2011, was final and could not be amended – only accepted or rejected by the Iraqi parliament.
Actually, I’m not sure the Iraqi government had previously said that. And evidently, if they– or perhaps the ever-dodgy Dabbagh claiming to speak in their name– did so, then now they have changed their mind.
Take that, Washington.
Also of note: Syria is no longer the international pariah it was earlier on this decade. Foreign Minister Walid Moallem has been in London, which wouldn’t have happened earlier on in the decade. Also, Syria has international allies who are weightier and more inclined to protect its interests than they were back then. (Russia is just one of these.)
Meanwhile, the Sukkariyeh raid has also attracted some notice in Iran, where some analysts have wondered whether the new US doctrine of “alleged hot pursuit” from inside Iraq could be applied across their border with Iraq, as easily as across Syria’s. Asia Times’s Kaveh Afrasiabi, writing from Tehran today, quotes an unnamed “political scientist” there as saying,
- “The chances are that the US incursion into Syria is a dress rehearsal for action against Iran and the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards [Corps], just as they often portray Israel’s aerial attack on Syrian territory last year as a prelude for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” … [He/she added] that since the US had already branded Iran’s Guards as terrorists, it had the necessary rationale to do so.
Afrasiabi also writes,
- In light of the incursion on Sunday by US forces inside Syrian territory, ostensibly to pursue al-Qaeda terrorists, there is suddenly concern on the part of many analysts in Tehran that the security agreement between Baghdad and Washington is not simply an internal matter for Iraqis to decide, but rather a regional issue that calls for direct input by Iraq’s neighbors.
I would say, strictly speaking, that there must have always been a degree of such concern; but maybe the recent raid increased it. Anyway, the Sukkariyeh raid is clearly very relevant to those clauses of the draft Iraqi-US SOFA that deal with who exercises effective authority over the use of any US troops that remain in Iraq: Washington or Baghdad?
Afrasiabi’s piece is interesting and apparently well reported.
He writes:
- “Iraq’s neighbors have been asked by the international community to participate in Iraq’s reconstruction and therefore by definition they should also be involved in security matters as well,” another analyst at a Tehran think-tank told the author.
This is not altogether an unreasonable request. Iran and the US have participated in three rounds of dialogue on Iraq’s security, and that, according to Tehran analysts, is as good a reminder as any that Washington’s decision to ignore Iran’s viewpoints on the security agreement is a bad error.
Simultaneously, there is a feeling that not all is lost and that the architects of this agreement have indeed taken into consideration some of Iran’s vocal objections, such as the initial agreement’s provisions for extraterritoriality whereby US personnel in Iraq would be immune from the Iraqi laws. That aspect has been modified, and the agreement also sets a time table for the withdrawal of US forces by no later than December 31, 2011, again something favored by Iran.
The bottom line I take from that is that there is a politically significant trend in Iran that is not wholly opposed to some US troops remaining in Iraq for a while longer— at least, so long as the actual mission and use of those troops is subject to some pretty severe constraints.
Iranian contentment with the continued deployment of some (or perhaps even a substantial number) of US troops inside Iraq– provided they are not a precursor force for a US attack on Iran– makes some strategic sense. All the US forces deployed throughout Iraq, at the end of very long and vulnerable international supply lines, act as, in effect, Iran’s first line of deterrence against any serious attack on its territory by either the US or Israel. They are sitting ducks for Iranian counter-attacks that, in the event of a US or US-enabled attack on Iran would be quite justified under international law.
Syria raid, additional notes
I see that Pat Lang is speculating that the raid might have been some kind of rogue operation on the part of the US Special Forces Command.
I certainly respect the Colonel’s lengthy experience on such matters, but I still find it hard to believe that that even the Special Ops boys would be foolhardy enough to go into a whole new, very sensitive national jurisdiction (country) without getting political clearance at the very highest level… and also without coordinating closely with, and getting the permission of, the commanders operating in that very same locality, in this case the commanders in Western Iraq and in Iraq, nationwide. The all-Iraq commander is now the bellicose Gen. Ray Odierno.
Lang writes of the Special Ops Forces that they,
- are exclusively focused on hunting down terrorist people and support group[s] world-wide. Rumsfeld made them largely independent of the regular military chain of command. They amount to a global SWAT team. They develop their own targeting intelligence and make their own plans. The amount of control that the local US joint commander has over them is not very clear. They are not noted for a great deal of insight into geopolitical niceties.
– General Odierno, the man who replaced Petraeus in Iraq, is not famous for nuanced reactions to frustrating situations.
So his argument is that the American kill team was either acting independent of the Iraq command, or doing so with Odierno’s support. For my part I still don’t see them transgressing the Syrian border in this extremely blatant (and lethal) way without getting clearance from the very highest levels in Washington: the President himself.
After all the public (and doubtless also private) discussion over whether and how to mount similar kinds of operations inside Pakistan– where the presumed targets of such raids include Osama Bin Laden and his highest lieutenants, i.e. targets of the very highest ‘value’ to the US— no-one in the military, not even Ray Odierno or the commanders of the Special Ops Command, can be foolish enough to think that such an operation can or should ever be mounted without getting the highest imaginable clearance from Washington.
(After reading 2/3 of Gellman’s book on Cheney, I would say it would be Cheney calling the shots in this matter, and then delivering the ‘presidential’ decision, pre-made, to GWB on a plate.)
As it happens, the NYT reported today that,
- The White House has backed away from using American commandos for further ground raids into Pakistan after furious complaints from its government, relying instead on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency against militants in the Pakistani mountains.
In this AP report today, Pauline Jelinek made clear that back in July it was “President Bush” (read, President Cheney-Bush) who back in July made the decision allowing ground raids into Pakistan. The US Special Ops Command then launched only one documented ground raid there pursuant to that decision. That was on Sept 3. Pakistan’s newly elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, a strong US ally, immediately became apoplectic, and sent his national security adviser to Washington to protest in the strongest possible terms…
So my surmise is still certainly, as I noted earlier, that it must have taken a “presidential” decision in Washington to permit yesterday’s ground attack against Syria to take place.
—
And a note about the Government of Iraq’s role in the affair. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh has been quoted by Reuters as saying,
- the attack was launched against “terrorist groups operating from Syria against Iraq,” including one which had killed 13 police recruits in an Iraqi border village.
“Iraq had asked Syria to hand over this group, which uses Syria as a base for its terrorist activities,” Dabbagh said.
This Reuters report (datelined from Damascus, but also using reporting from Baghdad and other capitals) notes that Dabbagh “did not say who had carried out the raid inside Syria.” He also did not say who had authorized the carrying out of the raid.
Did his bosses in the Iraqi political leadership get to sign off on it before it was executed?
I highly doubt that.
Actually, it is sometimes a little unclear who Dabbagh works for. In the past he has sometimes seemed to be a loyal mouth-piece for his Iraqi political bosses, and sometimes to be a bit of a cat’s-paw for the Americans.
If the Americans did conduct this raid without the clear, antecedent permission of the Iraqi government, then this is precisely the kind of rogue US military operation, using Iraqi territory to attack other countries, that the Iraqi government has been seeking to prohibit under the terms of the still-unsigned SOFA.
McClatchy Baghdad’s correspondent Sahar writes:
- Unilateral job? Joint American – Iraqi job? Does it really matter?
Is Iraq going to become a launching pad for blatant American aggressions upon targets in neighbouring countries?
The Status of Forces Agreement is still in a no-man’s-land; doesn’t the U.S. want the Iraqi people to support it?
If they do, they’re certainly not going about it the right way.
—-
As regular readers here are probably aware, all the highest-level officials in the present Iraqi government– but not, perhaps, spokesman al-Dabbagh– have warm relations with Syria. (And also, by the way, with Iran.)
That same Reuters report linked to above tells us that,
- Syrian Interior Minister Bassam Abdel Majeed said last week that his country “refuses to be a launching pad for threats against Iraq.”
And Josh Landis this morning gave some recent assessments from Centcom commander Gen. Petraeus about the general (though not total) effectiveness of the measures Syria has been taking along the country’s long border with Iraq.
The Reuters report says this about Syria’s early diplomatic responses to yesterday’s attack:
- [Syrian ambassador in London Sami al-]Khiyami said Syrian authorities were still awaiting word on the raid from the United States before deciding how to respond and whether to complain to the U.N. Security Council.
… Syria’s foreign ministry summoned the U.S. charge d’affaires in Damascus on Sunday to protest. Syria has also urged the Iraqi government to carry out an immediate inquiry into the attack.
Russia condemned the assault. “It is obvious that such unilateral military actions have a sharply negative effect on the situation in the region, and widen the seat of dangerous armed tension,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Arab League also denounced the raid and called for an investigation.
So Syria’s diplomatic response is churning into action. It is doubtless slowed to a great extent by the extremely stingy amount of investment the government has put into the basic infrastructure of diplomacy (phones, computers, broad cadre of diplomats all around the world, etc) for the last half century. But it is happening.
As I noted earlier, the Asads are cautious and patient in their response to international crises.
But that’s no guarantee at all that Cheney-Bush won’t continue to try to provoke them.
Calling Bob Gates! Bob, you definitely need to put a straitjacket on that dangerous man, Dick Cheney.
Attack on Syria: White House misjudgments
Without a doubt, last night’s attack by heliborne US forces against a farm compound inside Syria must have been authorized by the President or Vice-President himself. Josh Landis has provided more than enough evidence to prove that.
So the question is Why? That is, why undertake this very evidently provocative act that constitutes, actually, an act of war against Syria instead of continuing the longstanding and generally very productive policy of working quietly with Syria to stanch the flow of anti-US militants into Iraq?
Was this intended to be– or to provoke– the last-minute, electorally related “October surprise” that many Obama supporters have been warning against? … That is, a “nice” (from the point of view of Cheney and McCain) little national-security crisis designed to change the subject in the US and get people lining up behind McCain instead of Obama?
I had thought, and wrote earlier, that it was already too late for such an October surprise to be successful. We are now just eight days from the election. Perhaps we are still at the outer edge of when– in the estimation of the McCheneys of this world– such a crisis might be “politically advantageous.”
If so, their judgment is deeply flawed on two counts.
- 1. First, and most important, a raid of this dimension– a handful of helicopters, going against one farm compound, and killing a reported eight people, all described as civilians and described as including four children– is not on its own going to provide or provoke the kind of security crisis that would make waves inside the US. For that to happen, the raid would have had to provoke a strong Syrian response.
But the Syrians have not responded, and are not about to respond, in any way that is violent or otherwise escalates tensions.
I’ve been studying the behavior of this Baathist regime in Syria closely for 34 years now. They have steely nerves. They are just about impossible to “provoke,” at any point that they judge a harsh response is not in their interest. They are quite ready to absorb material and human losses without making any kind of harsh response, and even to suffer repeated episodes of political humiliation from among their highly nationalistic political base, as they do so.
They are not about to over-react.
This stymies any McCheneyist plan for an October surprise.
2. But the idea of initiating some kind of security-related “October surprise” also, imho, represents a serious misread of US public opinion. A clear majority of US opinion is now clearly very angry over many aspects of the Bush-Cheney years, with the financial/economic crisis now top of the list of their (our) concerns. The US electorate might have been distractable with foreign military adventures for much of the past eight years. (I’m reading Bart Gellman’s masterly study of the Cheney vice-presidency. He sketches out what could be a convincing case that just about all of Cheney’s actions– in the realm of foreign affairs as well as economic affairs– have been directed centrally at increasing the powers of the presidency. Disturbing to think that at one level Cheney was simply “using” the whole of the GWOT and the foreign military projects just for that… )
But I think the scales have now fallen from the eyes of enough of the US electorate, regarding the lying and very damaging manipulations that have marked the Bush-Cheney years, that no additional military/security escalation anywhere could swing opinion back behind McCain.
So once again, in these two respects, the folks in the White House have seriously misjudged the world that exists outside their bubble. This is certainly the case if their intention was that yesterday’s raid would lead to a Syrian over-reaction that would then provide the excuse for further US escalations.
The Syrian government is deliberately responding only through strong diplomatic protests.
The American provokers may, of course, have a slightly longer-term project in mind– perhaps one in which a whole series of US raids into Syria, which are not “answered” by a response from the Syrian government that is “strong” enough to satisfy the country’s hardliners, could lead to rising anti-government unrest inside Syria?
And then– ?
But the Asad government has many additional things it can do, at the purely diplomatic level, to respond to even a lengthy campaign of provocation of this nature. Personally, I’m surprised they haven’t yet registered a strong protest with the Security Council. But that is always an option. And once the topic of this raid– or any follow-ons– gets taken up by the Security Council, Syria has a much stronger base of political support there than it did back in the 1990s or the late 1980s.
Also, if yesterday’s raid is indeed followed by a number of similar raids and the Syrians start seriously downgrading the cooperation they’ve been giving the US forces in Iraq until now, then the US military and Secdef Bob Gates will certainly start acting to rein in the Cheneyites.
But we also have a time of dangerous political uncertainty inside Israel these days. Maybe Olmert and Linvi would like to “wag the dog” with regard to Syria, even if they don’t want to attack Iran?
Nothing can be ruled out in the three months of uncertainty and political transition that lie ahead– within both Israel and the US. The outlook might be particularly risky if Obama wins the election and Cheney decides he wants to pursue a Samson-like option in some portion of the Middle East.
But as for this escalation– or indeed, any other– “saving” next week’s election for McCheney? No, for that I think it is already ways too late.
France brokering Lebanon-Syria embassy deal
This is win-win-win all the way. The Lebanese people win by getting their national independence finally recognized by their Syrian neighbor. Syria wins by escaping both from the burden of its long-claimed “responsibilities” in Lebanon and from the useless and anomalous burden of that relic of its recidivist claim over Lebanon. Former colonial power France wins by being given the laurels for bringing off this deal.
Oh, and Bashar al-Asad wins again, of course, by further breaking out of his international isolation.
On ‘flipping’ Syria, prospects for peace
Much of the American MSM commentary on the news about the Syrian-Israeli proximity talks in Turkey has focused on the long-mentioned hope of the west (whatever that is) being able to “flip” Syria away from its 30-year alliance with Iran and its support for Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Palestine’s Hamas.
The way many US commentators use this term you’d think that Syria, population 19.3 million, is a tiny place, so weak that it could simply be treated like a fried egg or your breakfast pancakes. In this case, just slide underneath Syria enough vague promises about the return of long-occupied land and enough western aid dollars and– bingo!– you can politically ‘flip’ this little pancake over by a full 180 degrees.
Demeaning and silly as an analogy? You bet.
Maybe too many Americans think Syria is just like it was back in 1949, when CIA agents hurried into the country with bundles full of cash, which they used to bankroll the coup effort mounted by Hosni Zaim. (Or just like Iran, when the CIA mounted the coup against Mossadegh a few years later… Or like Iraq, when they supported the coup that brought the Baath Party to power in 1963… )
You just find a way to shovel money into the country and overnight it gets ‘flipped’? I don’t think so. And in case no-one noticed, none of the above efforts at “flipping” countries worked out well in the end…
Today’s Syria is nothing like the fragile post-independence entity it was back in 1949. Today’s Syria has a functioning state that has educated and brought into the modern era (with roads, electricity, irrigation, courthouses, schools, etc) a national population that largely supports the policies of its government. That’s the case whether ‘westerners’ like that fact, or not.
We should recognize, too, that the catastrophic failure of the US project to “remake” neighboring Iraq, and the widespread misery that has ensued there, have left Syrians– like probably the vast majority of the other peoples of the Middle East– with a huge skepticism that “the American path” can bring them any lasting benefit at all. As Syrians daily encounter the tragic stories and dispirited faces of the million or so refugees from the US-invented “new Iraq” who huddle in their midst, the fact that this US government is so opposed to the Asad regime probably makes Syrians more inclined to support the regime, rather than less so.
The Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed told us in this fascinating commentary yesterday that,
- The indirect talks between Syria and Israel, via Turkey, are not new. Nor are they a prelude to any peace treaty—so long as George W. Bush is in the White House. They have managed to lift spirits, however, coming hours after warring Lebanese factions announced that they had reached an agreement in Doha on May 22, 2008.
There was optimism in the air in Damascus.
No more talk of summer war in the Middle East, which has haunted Syrian lives since 2006.
No more dangers of another sectarian outburst—at least for now—in neighboring Lebanon. The Syrians were pleased that Beirut—the traditional haven for all Syrians—was now back to normal and they could go there again, for education, medication, shopping, pleasure, and to see family and friends.
Peace [with Israel] would mean many things, as far as the Syrians are concerned. No more emergency laws that have been in-place since 1963. Nor more forced conscription into the Syrian Army for a draft that lasts up to 24-months. No more limited investment in Syria, and thus, much more job opportunities…
He warned, however, that any optimism about a speedy conclusion of the final-status peace agreement with Israel would be unrealistic. Comparing the present situation with the situation in Egypt just before Sadat’s launching of the big initiative that resulted in a final-status peace between Egypt and Israel, Moubayed noted that “Olmert is not Begin and George W. Bush is not Carter.” (And as one of his commenters added there, Bashar al-Asad is not Sadat, either.)
I think Moubayed’s lack of optimism is realistic and justified. Prime case in point: the embattled Ehud Olmert has nothing like the domestic-political power needed to bring Israel’s public along with him into finalization of this peace process that PM Yitzhak Rabin had when he was engaged in very serious negotiations with President Hafez al-Asad in 1994-95. And even Rabin had a very hard time of it back then, as we know.
The outstanding territorial issue between Israel and Syria is the ending of the military occupation of Syria’s Golan that Israel has maintained since June 1967. We can recall that in the period before Sadat’s ground-breaking visit to Jerusalem in 1977, many Israelis were “very attached” to the vast, Israeli-occupied reaches of occupied Egyptian Sinai. Many Israelis had developed a romantic-style attachment to those broad expanses of desert, to the fabulous skin-diving along Sinai’s Red Sea coast, to the hippy lifestyles they had developed in resorts throughout the peninsula.
Oh, and there were even a few thousand Israeli settlers who had been easily lured into the attractive deal of heavily subsidized housing in the new coastal settlement of Yamit.
In the peace with Egypt, the whole structure of Israeli control over Sinai was dismantled. The IDF had to pull completely out. Egyptian police restored Cairo’s control over the peninsula’s civilian affairs, though the all or nearly all of the peninsula was demilitarized and placed under the monitoring of a US-led monitoring force.
The settlement at Yamit was demolished, by the Israelis themselves. (It was the earliest example of Ariel Sharon undertaking a highly over-dramatized “demolition” of an Israeli settlement– that had anyway been illegal, all along… a model that he followed once again in Gaza, 25 years later.) The hippy-style resorts were turned over to Egyptian owners; Israeli tourists continued to be able to roam around Sinai, but they now did so under Egyptian sovereignty. Israel also got considerable economic benefits from Egypt as part of the Sinai handback.
Guess what. When the Syrians were negotiating a final-status peace with first Rabin and then Peres in the period 1994-96, they were looking at something exactly like that same model: a complete Israeli withdrawal back to the lines of June 4, 1967, in return for an internationally monitored demilitarization arrangement for Golan plus considerable economic benefits for Israel. If you read the large quote on p.136 of my book The Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-96 and Beyond you can see how far the chief Syrian negotiator at that time, the present Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem, felt the talks had progressed… before they were broken off by the Israeli side in March 1996.
Now it is true that in any peace agreement, each party will also generally include some serious promises about not itself undertaking or giving material support to others who undertake, acts of violent subversion against the other. In the Jordanian-Israeli relationship, Israel’s blatant violation of that clause, in 1997, when PM Netanyahu sent Mossad agents to assassinate a political figure who was in Jordan with the express permission of King Hussein, brought about a near-crisis in Israel’s relations with Jordan. (The figure in question was Hamas head Khaled Meshaal, who had promised Hussein that he would not take any actions to undermine his rule in Jordan.)
Note that Israel did not demand in its peace negotiations with Jordan, and did not get, any promise that Jordan would not even host Meshaal and his colleagues as civilian residents. Meshaal was anyway a citizen of Jordan, so it would have been hard to get that.
Similarly, Egypt, which has a much longer-standing peace agreement with Israel than Jordan, maintains relations with Hamas. (And of course, Egypt’s good offices as mediator have been very valuable to Olmert’s government as it has attempted to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas in recent months.)
So it is by no means engraved in stone that, even if Israel and Syria do succeed in concluding a peace agreement, Mr. Meshaal and his friends and colleagues from both Hamas and Hizbullah would find Syria to be completely hostile territory.
Many of the governments with which Israel maintains good relations– including, of course, Turkey– also maintain good relations with Iran and with Hamas. It is not necessarily the case that a peace agreement with Syria would require Syria to break such relations completely.
Of course, the prospect of revived peace talks between Syria and Israel has probably caused some concern to both Hamas and Iran (though maybe not as much as the Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat has breathlessly reported.) In Damascus, the government daily Tishrin has sought to reassure its allies by saying that “Damascus rejects all preconditions concerning its relations with other countries and peoples.. Damascus will make no compromise on these relations.”
No doubt the leaders in Syria, Iran, Hamas, and Hizbullah are all also looking quite closely at the prospects that the present peace process may actually arrive in the foreseeable future in a completed peace agreement. The prospects of that happening do not look good. The Syrian government, backed up overwhelmingly by its own citizenry, has always rejected any peace agreement that would involve making any territorial concessions to Israel at all. The popular version of that is that there is no way any Syrian ruler will settle for even one inch less than what Sadat won for Egypt in 1978-79…. And for now, attitudes in Israel toward any prospect of returning all or even most of Golan to its rightful Syrian owners seem even more opposed even than they were in the 1994-96 period.
Haaretz’s Lili Galili reported yesterday that,
- About two-thirds of Israelis object to withdrawing from the Golan Heights even for peace with Syria – more than those who object to dividing Jerusalem for ending the conflict with the Arab world, a recent survey finds.
In addition, Olmert’s own motivations for suddenly engaging in this portion of diplomacy– and therefore, also both his desire and ability to pursue it to successful completion– are certainly open to question. The NYT’s Ethan Bronner was certainly not the only one to observe that,
- It did not go unnoticed, for example, that at the precise hour on Wednesday evening that the police released damning new details of the investigation against him (prosecutors say envelopes of cash were passed to him for personal use), Mr. Olmert made a speech in Tel Aviv that started with his hopes for the Syria talks, thereby upstaging the police on the evening news.
The newspapers were filled with derisive commentary on Thursday about a prime minister who hopes to trade away the strategic Golan Heights to a sworn enemy when he is facing an inquiry into his integrity and trustworthiness.
“The Golan in exchange for an envelope full of dollars won’t be well received,” fumed Sever Plocker, a widely read columnist for Yediot Aharonot. “It is doomed to fail: Any agreement that Olmert might present to the public will appear to be stained from the outset.”
So, the news about “the Turkish track” that was revealed this week may have been basically good news (because it was about the possibility of serious peacemaking on this important front) as well as politically intriguing news– because it was done largely or wholly behind the back of the Americans. But it may not, in itself, lead directly to any sustained and successful completion of a peace agreement.
That step will probably require both a much more serious leadership in Israel and either a more seriously engaged leadership in the United States or further considerable changes in the balance of power in the Middle East. All of these changes may well occur in the months ahead, so the story is by no means finished yet.