“Where do we go from here?” The question is making the rounds in the mushrooming political salons of Damascus, the Syrian capital. Many Syrians have the sentiment that they are heading for uncharted waters with a divided crew and a Hamlet-like captain.
“The certainties that kept Syria stable, not to say frozen in time, have all gone,” says a senior Syrian economist in Damascus. “And there is no indication that any new certainties are taking shape.”
For almost a quarter of a century Syria’s foreign policy has been based on some certainties.
The first was that the United States, persuaded into believing that there could be no peace in the Middle East without Syria, would continue not only to tolerate the Baathist regime but to prop it up against its opponents. That certainty was shaped over the years as Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria for three decades, became the only Arab leader to enjoy tête-à-tête meetings with all US presidents from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton.
The second was that the Islamic Republic in Tehran would cherish Syria as a valuable ally not only in Lebanon but in the region as a whole. In 1980 the Islamic Republic started by writing off a $190 million loan that the Shah had given to President Assad in 1976. That was followed by cash gifts worth over $2.2 billion and cut-price oil supplies that has translated into $1.5 billion worth of aid over the past 25 years. The Islamic Republic has also supplied unknown quantities of weapons to the Baathist regime while creating and then arming the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah as a means of easing Israeli military pressure on Syria.
All these certainties, however, have now disappeared, leaving Syria under President Bashar, Hafez Assad’s son, afloat in a sea of doubts.
The American certainty evaporated when President George W. Bush realized the folly of policies pursued by his predecessors and understood a simple fact: A regime like that of the Syrian Baathists can never be the true friend of a Western democracy.
The strongest signal that Washington was changing its policy came in the year 2001 when Bush refused to continue the three-decade old tradition of tête-à-tête between US president and Syrian rulers.
This was followed by Bush’s designation of Syria as a sponsor of international terrorism, and his championing of the cause of ending the Syrian military presence in Lebanon. Last year the Bush administration also lifted a 30-year old ban on contacts with the Syrian opposition, and began a diplomatic campaign that led to Resolution 1559 of the United Nations Security Council demanding Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarming of the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s former prime minister was assassinated in a bomb attack in Beirut last February. Although the investigations started by the Lebanese government and the United Nations remain to be concluded, many have pointed the finger of blame toward Damascus.
It is hard to believe that Syria which had over 50,000 soldiers and intelligence operatives in Lebanon while also controlling the Lebanese military and intelligence services should have no idea of who killed Hariri.
The departure of Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, a long advocate of close ties with Saudi Arabia, together with virtually his entire faction from the Syrian leadership last June, is another sign of dramatic changes in Damascus.
By last month, Syria was left only with its Iranian “certainty”.
But that, too, seems to be fading.
Iran’s President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has refused to hold substantive talks with Bashar during a rushed visit to Tehran. Ahamdinejad believes that Syria has lost much of its value as a glacis for Iran. Contrary to most fashionable analyses, there are no signs that Ahamdinejad wishes to pick up a quarrel with the United States. On the contrary, he is more likely to opt for a policy of patience combined with small but steady advances for Iranian influence throughout the region.
In such a scenario, close ties with Syria, gripped as it is with domestic economic and political problems of its own, could become a handicap for Iran.
With Syria out of Lebanon, Iran itself could become the major foreign influence in the country. Shiites, accounting for 40 percent of the population, represent the largest community in Lebanon and provide the Islamic Republic with the strongest domestic base any foreign power could have in that country.
During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), Syria played an important role in favor of Iran by dividing the Arab ranks and supplying sensitive information to Tehran. But the demise of Saddam Hussein means that Iran no longer needs Syria to counterbalance Iraq within Arab regional politics. Once the US is out of Iraq, Iran could easily emerge as the main foreign influence in that newly liberated country.
Ahamdinejad believes that only two powers can shape the future of the Middle East: Iran and the United States. On that basis he may be prepared to offer tactical concessions to Washington in exchange for strategic gains for the Islamic Republic. One such concession would be to look the other way as Syria becomes a target of regime change. After all the two regime changes that the US has already engineered in the region, in Afghanistan and Iraq, have removed two of Iran’s bitterest enemies from the scene. Change in Syria could help Iran get rid of a cumbersome ally that has always insisted on having its own say in both Lebanon and Iraq.
In the meantime tension is building up in Syria, with protest marches in several cities, including Damascus itself, and increasing talks of a major split in the ruling party.
Syria, once a bride that everyone courted despite her obvious blemishes, has been transformed into a widow that everyone shuns. It is unlikely that the question “where do we go from here”, debated in the political salons of Damascus, would find a clear answer anytime soon.
