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Syria's season of clout
The nation is using its position of power in the Middle East to wrest gains
- By Ayman Abdel Nour, Contributor
- Published: 16:30 October 9, 2009
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- The Al Hamra market in downtown Damascus, Syria. The country is in a position to play a vital role in how the Middle East’s relations, internal and external, shape up
- Image Credit: EPA
In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Syria has found an array of powerful actors on its borders. The American forces in Iraq are on one side, while the European Union projects its influence through Cyprus and, by extension, Turkey. Israel and Lebanon are there, too. Syria finds itself in a position of unprecedented significance.
A number of potent geopolitical actors are pursuing a broad set of foreign policy goals in and around Syria. While the United States seeks to protect its troops in Iraq and encourage the country’s political transformation, the European Union would like to control illegal immigration and clamp down on Al Qaida and extremist smuggling activities. Against this backdrop, Israel aims to neutralise Hamas, weaken Hezbollah and strike Iran before it develops a nuclear bomb, while Lebanon has moved to assert its independence to end Syrian meddling once and for all.
The success of these objectives depends in all cases on a high level of strategic dialogue and cooperation with neighbouring governments. Damascus, therefore, occupies a unique strategic position in that it is able to grant or deny support to each of these actors. Syria should at least refrain from playing a negative role by allowing non-state actors, such as Hezbollah, to stir up mischief across its borders. By cultivating its advantages, Syria can methodically pressure much more powerful international actors and exploit opportunities to achieve its own objectives.
The Syrian regime has 39 years of experience in geopolitical jockeying and has developed a host of mechanisms to defend itself against potential pitfalls.
One defence mechanism is the policy of holding resource reserves. By holding excess wheat and oil, Syria creates a buffer against the volatility of regional and global markets or external challenges. Wheat stores are so massive the nation’s populace could survive on them for two years. The regime’s fiscal policy follows the same principles of protection and isolation. By holding $15 billion in foreign reserves, the Syrian regime can resist inflationary pressure against the Syrian pound. Syria’s government also maintains direct control over the banking system. The government owns most Syrian banks and 80 per cent of private banks are partially owned by a single regime functionary, who also serves on the boards of the banks.
In terms of the domestic populace, too, the regime is well buffered. Although the media are privately owned, their owners are a small group of regime loyalists who discretely pursue government interests. Five million people — one quarter of the population — who live below the poverty line and could destabilise the regime if they took to the streets, are fed and thereby pacified by a social network that relies on remittances from the 18 million Syrians living abroad.
In addition to these socio-economic measures, the regime has insulated itself from domestic security threats through a vast patronage network that upholds the security structure.
Systemic protection against overthrow gives the Syrian regime a level of security and flexibility to effectively exploit the regional advantages it has at its disposal. Moreover, officials calling for the restoration of the Golan Heights to Syria are careful never to fix their commitments to a timeline. The spectre of raising false expectations, which could lead to domestic unrest, keeps the regime from binding its legitimacy to concrete conditions and deadlines.
Despite avoiding deadlines, the regime takes the restitution of the Golan Heights seriously and considers it a national duty of the highest priority. Syria’s former government lost this land in 1967 when the founder of the present regime, Hafez Assad, was defence minister.
The recovery of this territory could turn Assad’s son, the present president, into a national hero and ensure his regime’s legitimacy for years to come. Assad’s strategy circumvents Syria’s military inferiority vis-à-vis Israel, by asserting constant political pressure on Israel and the international community.
Ultimately, this pressure may force Israel to tire of the ongoing political struggle and withdraw from the occupied lands, which is what happened in southern Lebanon.
The Syrian regime carefully works to maintain all facets of the “resistance” against Israel. Slogans are papered on the walls of government buildings and symbols dot the landscape of Syrian towns and cities that aim to mobilise Syrians.
Focus on Israel’s misdeeds serves to divert people’s attention from the regime’s poor economic performance, rampant unemployment, wide gaps in income distribution and endemic corruption.
Opposition on the rise
In recent years, deep frustration among the wider Arab public has pushed the Syrian regime to promote resistance slogans further. Abused at the hands of their own regimes, Arabs throughout the region have raised a platform for political opposition, which has been largely monopolised by Islamist movements.
Hamas and Hezbollah, in particular, have enjoyed broader support in recent years due to their perceived success in confronting Israel and in presenting an alternative model to the status quo. Syria has also capitalised on this trend by hosting a series of conferences dedicated to resistance movements. Conferences are held to support the resistance, Islamic parties, and national parties. Other events focus on anti-normalisation, anti-Zionism, boycotts and other tools of the resistance. In response to these overtures, Islamist and resistance movements around the region have lent their support to Damascus and mobilised against the so-called Axis of Moderation (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc). Deep partnerships have been developed between groups such as the Egyptian and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood groups and the Syrian regime. To curry favour with Damascus, these groups even lobbied the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood to drop its public opposition to the Assad regime.
Anti-Israeli-resistance networks underpin the Syrian regime’s power structure. Because regime survival is so clearly nurtured and tied to this platform, it cannot afford to assume a retaliatory stance or make any meaningful concessions vis-à-vis Israel and the Golan Heights. A compromise could disintegrate these well-established Islamic networks, corrode Syria’s regional posture and make the government vulnerable to internal attacks. Insistence upon a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, coupled with full sovereignty over land and water, will likely remain Syrian policy, independent of Israeli behaviour.
Stoking regional fires
Iraq: The Syrian regime’s focus extends beyond Israel. Damascus is stoking tension throughout the region. By helping keep the Americans busy in Iraq, Syria hoped to sink America’s prestige and sap its willpower through a low-intensity conflict. A bloody American occupation in Iraq, the Syrian leadership believed, could help ensure that the United States lost its appetite for military confrontation, keeping Damascus safe from US military expansion. To accomplish this, Syria offered direct, or at least tacit, support to terrorist groups crossing the Syrian border into Iraq.
In addition, Damascus helped members of the Iraqi Baath Party regroup and establish a new leadership. It also backed Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr and the Sunni Council of Scholars. In other words, Damascus has offered its support to various factions — instability by whatever means is in the regime’s interest.
Palestine: Damascus openly harboured the Hamas movement, allowing the group to maintain its headquarters in the Syrian capital. Also, Syria actively trained Hamas members in the use of special equipment, technology, strategy and tactics to confront Israeli forces. Damascus also used its special relationship with the Qatari TV channel Al Jazeera to advance Hamas’s public relations strategy in the region.
Lebanon: To maintain leverage in Lebanon, Syria cultivated its alliance with Hezbollah, offering support internally for the group’s political platform, and externally, to advance its fight against Israel.
The series of fronts opened by Damascus permit the Syrian regime to position itself as the central address for US mediation efforts. In certain instances, such as with Iraq, Syria pushed for direct negotiations by signalling that it had the capacity to reduce sectarian tensions and terrorism. In other instances, such as with Israel, Syria indirectly projected its ability to reign in Hezbollah and Hamas, to force them to scale back their goals, and to prevent them from behaving as spoilers in Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.
Joined by loose knots
Syria presented itself as a partner in intelligence-sharing to European countries, especially France and Great Britain, by revealing limited information on strategic links with terrorist groups, some of which operated on European soil. Over decades, the Syrian regime came to understand the significance of a powerful regional ally such as Iran. Syria’s ever-deepening relationship with Iran has provided Syria succour when external pressure increased. However, the Syrian regime understands the risk of tying its fate too closely to a single strategic ally.
Despite the explicit benefits of partnering with a rising regional player such as Iran, the Syrian regime is wary of the domestic consequences of getting too close to Iran. Syrians, especially those in the business sector, have reacted negatively to the increased Iranian presence and to rumours beginning to spread of Shiite proselytising, of the proliferation of Shiite schools and mosques, and of Shiite infiltration into the Syrian government via quotas in parliament and in the security apparatus. Iranian investments in the country introduced friction with the local Sunni populace, as Shiite agents and employees entered Syria en masse. More recent rapprochement with Turkey, a familiar Sunni power, helped diminish Syrian discomfort with the Shiites, as Turkey presented a valuable counterweight to the Shiite infiltration.
Many factors have recently emerged to alter Syria’s course. Plans had been based on the assumption that Syria could resist pressure to accelerate peace talks with Israel. Damascus is now rethinking this idea.
The rapid increase of religious extremism has spawned a swift expansion of terrorist groups across the region that seek to instigate hostilities on a number of fronts. The Syrian regime, now chastened by the rise of these uncontrollable movements, can feel the tide turning against it. As the regime is composed of a minority, the government fears that these forces may spin out of control. If peace with Israel cannot be reached in the next few years, Damascus believes that it will not be achieved any time in the foreseeable future. The success of a treaty could mitigate the risks posed by the rise of extremism and emerging domestic threats to the regime.
Moreover, the Obama presidency presents a unique window of opportunity for Syria. As this administration may offer Syria the best deal it could hope for, Damascus has incentive to strike while the iron is hot.
Events in Iran are also forcing a rethink. The recent election revealed a major rift in Iranian society that threatens the Syrian-Iranian alliance. The prospects of a titanic shift in internal Iranian politics have grown with the post-election demonstrations and Iranian society clearly wants a real reformer in office.
The crisis in Iran impacts a vital Syrian partnership, detracting from its regional standing and trimming its negotiating leverage over a range of regional issues. This new situation gives the Syrian regime extra incentive to push forward negotiations for the restoration of the Golan Heights, before Syria’s regional posture erodes. The Syrian president’s public relations campaign, which was organised by a British PR company and stars first lady Asma Al Assad, pays testament to the Syrian policy shift. Scores of interviews have appeared on international television and broadcast media to improve the regime’s image abroad and to signal Syria’s desire for peace while isolating the Israelis, who they maintain, are obstructing the peace process.
Most Syrian officials have declared negotiations with the Netanyahu government to be useless. They have decided to reject informal diplomacy, and are instead preparing to cooperate with the US and France through confidence-building measures, including the following:
Prior to US Ambassador George Mitchell’s visit to Damascus on July 25, Syria asked Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr to use his influence to help alleviate the tension between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. Syria also cooperated with the US military delegation with regard to the security situation in Iraq.
Syria extended a public invitation to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at a time when Fatah tensions with Hamas ran at an all-time high. Abbas conferred with him to help broker an end to the intra-Palestinian dispute and move towards the establishment of a national unity government.
With regard to Hamas, Syria appealed to the group’s leadership to drop its feud with Fatah and move towards national unity, to cooperate with France and Qatar, and to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. Most recently, they pressured Hamas to facilitate the Fatah conference.
In Lebanon, Syria made an unprecedented gesture to the West by sending a Syrian ambassador to the newly established embassy before the June meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama in Normandy.
Additionally, Syria pressured Hezbollah against intervening in the Gaza showdown between Israel and Hamas in January this year.
The next phase of this rapprochement between Syria and the US will commence after more confidence-building measures are established and after the US sends an ambassador to Damascus to begin high-level meetings and restart regular diplomatic contacts.
In cooperation with France, Turkey, and the US, Syria would like to prepare the groundwork for talks with Israel, without the preconditions that had blocked previous rounds of negotiations.
These actions can build pressure on the Netanyahu government, which continues to reject peace. Syria hopes to push the Israelis to include former foreign minister Tzipi Livni and her opposition party, Kadima, to strengthen Syria’s hand in future negotiations.
Peace between Israel and Syria has been partially accomplished. Many of the items to be concluded in a final treaty have already been discussed in previous official or unofficial negotiations. Furthermore, the Israeli-Syrian track presents a set of issues that are politically and technically more manageable than the Israeli-Palestinian track. If Syria’s rights are recognised, it would grant political victories to both Obama and Netanyahu.
The restoration of the Golan Heights to Syria would be a great boon to the Syrian regime, as its citizens would forget the corruption and human rights violations that were justified by years of emergency law. However, many serious economic challenges have emerged, including unemployment, poverty, and drought. Damascus requires an open line with Turkey and Iran to survive. Better ties with the US, France, Germany, and Saudi Arabia could also help bolster Syria’s ailing economy and open it up to the world.
The Syrian government faces a dilemma: improving Western relations would help the regime but too much US involvement could be dangerous. Therefore, Syria may try to build ties with the US but would avoid allowing that relationship to progress too far. Instead, the regime may seek to reserve a privileged relationship with France, especially in security issues, and possibly with Germany’s Social Democrats should Franco-Syrian ties fray.
Ultimately, Syria might seek international assurances for the regime’s longevity, the abolishment of all sanctions, wide ranging economic and technical support, and the abandonment of support for any Syrian opposition movements, in exchange for Syria’s dropping the role of spoiler in the region. Unless the regional balance of power changes, however, Damascus will not risk abandoning its relationship with Tehran. The maximum it may be prepared to do is forbid Hamas and Hezbollah from using Syrian land in any operation against countries with which Syria has a peace agreement.
(Ayman Abdel Nour is a political analyst, writer and the editor of www.all4Syria.info)
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