Stalking
Syria
By Christopher
Kremmer
Sydney
Morning Herald
12 Obtober, 2003
More
terrifying than the bombs dropped near Damascus last week was the message
they carried for the regime of the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad:
game over.
The Israeli warplanes
that demolished a base once used to train Palestinian militants didn't
just catch Syria's air defences napping; they exposed the vulnerability
of yet another Arab leader, just months after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Putting in the boot
only four days after the attack, the US House of Representatives international
relations committee voted 33-2 to ban the export of "dual-use"
technologies to Syria. The regime stands accused of supporting terrorism
and acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
If, as expected,
the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act passes the full
house next week, George Bush will be empowered to ban American investments
in Syria and freeze Syrian assets in the US.
"Ariel Sharon
closely synchronised his strike on Syria with political developments
in the US," says Joe Cirincione, an analyst with the Washington-based
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Before the strike,
the Administration was resisting sanctions. After it, they dropped their
opposition."
Suddenly, one of
the Middle East's most durable regimes looks impotent.
"Syria will
answer this attack through diplomatic means in the UN," says Turki
Sakr, a former Syrian ambassador to Tehran, admitting in the next breath
that "we know the US will block any Security Council resolution
condemning the attack".
With the diplomatic
route offering no hope, Assad faces an invidious dilemma: either he
meekly accepts Israel's slap in the face, or retaliates directly or
through proxies in Syrian-occupied Lebanon, risking further humiliation.
Syria's ageing,
Soviet-supplied weapons are no match for Israel's high-tech military.
Its mature chemical weapons arsenal pales in comparison with Israel's
estimated stockpile of at least 100 nuclear weapons. Both deny possessing
weapons of mass destruction.
Unfair as it all
may seem, the Syrian leader, who inherited the job upon the death of
his crafty father, Hafez al-Assad, may have only himself to blame.
"Two years
after taking office, Bashar has not filled the void his father left,"
wrote one of Israel's leading experts on Syria, Eyal Zisser, earlier
this year. "Should Syria be faced with a domestic or foreign crisis
- such as an escalation of conflict with Israel - Bashar's leadership
could be in danger."
In his 30 years
in power, Hafez al-Assad developed a reputation for picking winners.
In 1991, he sided with the US against Iraq in the first Gulf War. Although
Syria had been listed by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism since
1979 - and still is - his astute call increased Syria's influence in
Washington and the region.
This year, Assad
jnr backed Saddam. It made him popular on the Arab streets, but ever
since the Iraqi regime fell Syria has looked like the prime candidate
to replace it in Bush's "axis of evil".
The ill-starred
Assad - his birthday falls on September 11 - now faces his most severe
test.
Although Syria's
ruling Baath Party fears the rise of Islamic extremists at home, it
uses such groups to give it leverage over neighbouring Lebanon and veto
power over any peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel.
Damascus provides
political, financial and military backing to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and
Islamic Jihad and Hamas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza -
the groups that have always opposed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's
attempts to negotiate peace. They believe in armed struggle to destroy
Israel.
Since the second
intifada erupted in September 2000, more than 800 Israelis have died
in terrorist violence, with more than three times as many Palestinians
killed in Israeli reprisals.
Damascus believes
the uprising will eventually force Israel to negotiate peace on its
enemies' terms. Instead, Israeli frustration boiled over last weekend
after a suicide attack that killed 19 civilians in Haifa. Within hours,
its warplanes bombarded Syria.
"Israel struck
because Sharon has a big problem in Palestine. He wants to export this
problem to Syria, to Lebanon, to Iran," says Sakr, who now lives
in Damascus and writes for the influential newspaper Teshreen.
The strike on the
Ain Saheb camp, about 20 kilometres north-west of Damascus, while largely
symbolic, was the closest such attack to the Syrian capital in 30 years.
Although Israel claims it has no desire for escalation, it has widened
the conflict, and invited Syria to share the pain.
Standing on the
sidelines, applauding, is Bush.
"Without American
support, or at least the expectation of such support, this attack would
not have taken place," said Zisser, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv
University.
While it co-operated
with Washington in the hunt for al-Qaeda after September 11, Syria refuses
to view Palestinian extremists in the same light. A who's who of Middle
Eastern militants resides in Damascus. As an American official recently
put it, any taxi driver knows their addresses.
They include Hamas
leaders Imad Khalil Al-Alami, Khaled Mashal and Mousa Abu Marzook, variously
accused by the US of supervising assassinations and bombings in Israel
and the occupied territories. A map released this week by the Israelis
pinpoints the homes of Ramadan Shallah, leader of the Islamic Jihad
group that claimed responsibility for last weekend's Haifa bombing,
and Ahmed Jibril, a former captain in the Syrian army who founded the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. The camp
bombed by Israel was established by his group in the 1970s.
Syria justifies
the presence of known terrorists in its midst by calling them refugees,
or freedom fighters, and says they confine their activities to disseminating
information about the Palestinian cause.
However, Israel
and the US have long believed that the Syria-based Palestinian leaders
direct and fund most of the violence in Israel and the occupied territories.
Hauls of Katyusha rockets, anti-tank grenades, and Strella anti-aircraft
missiles have been traced back to Syria. Some of the weapons are allegedly
funnelled through Syria from Iran.
While extremist
groups are alleged to maintain a number of training facilities in Syria
itself, their most important bases are located in the Bekaa Valley,
in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon. Only groups that follow Syria's
line towards Israel receive its backing.
In June last year,
Bush demanded Syria close terrorist camps, expel terrorist organisations
and stop the flow of money, equipment and recruits to terrorist groups
seeking the destruction of Israel.
After the Iraq war
this year, Syria agreed to close the offices of several militant groups,
but it has continued to resist US pressure to expel Palestinian leaders.
When the US Secretary
of State, Colin Powell, visited Damascus in May, Assad joked about Washington's
claims that Syria was allowing Islamic militants to cross the border
to fight US forces in Iraq.
"Now, you control
the border, so try not to allow anybody in," Assad told Powell.
The joke didn't
get much of a laugh. Travelling journalists noted the steely mood of
Powell's party.
"We're not
bringing any carrots," one State Department official explained.
Like the invasion
of Iraq, the strike on Syria bears the fingerprints of hawks in the
Bush camp. In 1996 Washington defence guru Richard Perle co-authored
a report to the Israeli Government advising that it abandon talks with
the Palestinians and concentrate instead on regime change in neighbouring
Arab nations.
"Israel can
shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing and even rolling
back Syria," the report said, as well as advocating the overthrow
of Iraq's Saddam.
Now, Syria finds
neighbouring Iraq under American occupation, and the governments of
neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and Israel all willing to do Washington's
bidding.
On the day American
troops entered Baghdad in April this year, a former US ambassador to
Israel, Martin Indyk, declared: "We dominate the Middle East ...
regimes that sponsor terror and seek weapons of mass destruction, the
regimes of Syria and Iran, those regimes will now be very much on the
defensive."
After overthrowing
Saddam, US troops shut down a pipeline that had transported up to 200,000
barrels of Iraqi oil a day to Syria.
The loss of the
lucrative sanctions-busting trade with its neighbour has placed a severe
burden on Syria's stagnant economy, plagued by 20 per cent unemployment
(the unofficial estimate is much higher), falling oil production and
the dead hand of centralised control by the Baath Party.
The rise to power
of Hassad, who studied ophthalmology in London and likes the music of
Phil Collins, raised expectations that generational change could help
Syria escape its outdated philosophy of "Arab national socialism".
However, early efforts
to liberalise the economy and introduce a measure of democracy soon
evaporated as Hassad's initiatives failed and he fell back on his father's
advisers.
Critics say he's
lost control of Hezbollah in Lebanon, offended other Arab leaders, and
now confronts a crisis with Israel he is ill-equipped to manage.
Experts are divided
over the likely outcome of this new phase of the Middle East conflict.
The Carnegie Endowment's
Cirincione lists the possible downsides: ever deepening bitterness towards
the West among Muslims worldwide; a destabilised Syria becoming vulnerable
to ethnic and religious divisions; and a signal to Iran that going nuclear
may be the only way for it to avoid becoming the next victim of an American-Israeli
crusade
Then there's the
possibility - a small, but nevertheless real chance - of another war.
"If Israel
continues to strike, particularly in central Damascus, Syria may have
no option but to retalitate," says Professor Moshe Maoz, of Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. "If there is escalation there may be no
end to it."