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<p class=MsoNormal><st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on"><b><font
size=4 color="#cc0000" face=Verdana><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:
Verdana;color:#CC0000;font-weight:bold'>Syria</span></font></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b><font
size=4 color="#cc0000" face=Verdana><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-family:
Verdana;color:#CC0000;font-weight:bold'>: Partner or Spoiler? <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>Does the regime of
Bashar al-Assad hold the key to <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>'s
problems in the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place>? Some in <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State> like to think
so, but they are probably wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:120%'><font size=1 color=black
face=Verdana><span style='font-size:7.5pt;line-height:120%;font-family:Verdana;
color:black;letter-spacing:.55pt'>By Christopher Dickey<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=1 color="#cc0000" face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:8.5pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#CC0000;font-weight:bold'>Newsweek
International<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>Dec. 25, 2006 - Jan. 1, 2007 issue -
Holed up in the grand Serail, the center of government in the heart of <st1:City
w:st="on">Beirut</st1:City>, five surviving members of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
cabinet have been living in fear. Just last year they were leaders of a mass
movement that forced Syrian troops out of the country and seemed to open the
way for a thriving democracy. But those memories now seem as old and fragile as
shards of Phoenician glass. One by one, brutally and spectacularly, <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region>'s high-profile opponents in <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region> have
been eliminated. The most recent: Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, the son of
a former president, gunned down in November. Since then, no minister has been
sure if, or when, he'll be next. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>As its enemies cower, the Syrian
regime crows—even as it denies responsibility for the murders. "Our
relations with <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>
will be stronger than when we had our Army in that country," Syrian Vice
President Farouk al-Sharaa boasted in the Arab press earlier this month. "<st1:country-region
w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region> is on a roll," concedes Jonathan
Paris, a fellow at <st1:State w:st="on">Washington</st1:State>'s Hudson Institute
and a frequent critic of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Damascus</st1:place></st1:City>.
"As in the '90s, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is seen as the indispensable player." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>President George W. Bush, let it be
said, is not convinced. Put aside for a moment the poor Lebanese. The Syrians
themselves "deserve a government whose legitimacy is grounded in the
consent of the people, not brute force," a White House statement declared
last week. Bush called for a regime in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Damascus</st1:place></st1:City>
"that fights corruption, respects the rule of law, guarantees the rights
of all Syrians and works toward achieving peace in the region." The
coterie around Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wouldn't qualify on a single
count. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>But the Iraq Study Group's
recommendations for new strategic approaches to the Middle East put dialogue
with <st1:City w:st="on">Damascus</st1:City> near the top of the list, and a
parade of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
senators, including Democrat John Kerry and Republican Arlen Specter, already
is on the way to Assad's palace for grips and grins. Such is the growing
international consternation about the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>
debacle's impact that any force for regional stability, even a regime run like
Al Capone's <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>,
is likely to be asked for help. <st1:country-region w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region>,
it is believed, could help calm <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>
by closing its borders to insurgents who frequently come and go with impunity.
If <st1:country-region w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:country-region> is not to descend
into civil war, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
cooperation is critical. Ditto for the occupied territories. There's even hope
that <st1:City w:st="on">Damascus</st1:City> can be seduced away from <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region>, countering its hegemonic ambitions in the
greater <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place>. "<st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region> is a key
partner," says Syrian political scientist Marwan Kabalan, "in all
these regional issues." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>In fact, "key spoiler" would
be a more accurate phrase. Palestinian terrorism, Hizbullah's guerrilla
warfare, the Sunni insurgency in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>—the Assad regime can't
fully control any of those threats, but it can make all of them worse. <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s foreign
policy is essentially a protection racket. To prevent harm, you pay it off. In
a none-too-veiled threat, an editorial in the government-controlled daily Al
Baath warned last week that if the Bush administration fails to engage <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>, "it
will continue to wallow and sink in the quagmire and the situation in the
region and the world will continue to be subjected to upheavals and
instability." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>The price of protection can be money,
dialogue and, especially, respect—which lends the dictatorship
legitimacy. Lebanese opponents of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region> fear their freedom could be
part of the bargain, too. And the Israelis see the Iraq Study Group ready to
put the future of the <st1:place w:st="on">Golan Heights</st1:place> on the
table. If a dialogue with <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State>
finally does begin, the wheeling and dealing could be as unpredictable as it is
complex. But can it work? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>The Iraq Study Group hinges its
recommendation on one key judgment: "No country in the region will benefit
in the long term from a chaotic <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region>."
Yet as Jonathan Paris points out, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region> thrives on the level of
unrest that exists right now. "If you were Bashar, the one thing you would
be afraid of is regional stability," says Paris, "because then
Syria's 19 million people would ask why they are ruled by this clique of 15 or
so who run the country like it is their own bank." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>Meanwhile, Assad's supposed
tools—the Sunni radicals of Hamas and the Shiite revolutionaries of
Hizbullah—have links to Islamist groups that might someday threaten the
Assad regime directly. (It's still a capital crime to be a member of the Muslim
Brotherhood, which nearly overthrew the Syrian regime in the early 1980s. Yet
Hamas is nothing more or less than the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.)
Despite an alliance with the mullahs in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iran</st1:country-region>
that goes back more than a quarter century, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region>'s
secular regime and Assad's minority Alawite sect, seen as heretical by many
Islamic fundamentalists, simply do not have the same interests as <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Tehran</st1:place></st1:City>'s. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>In <st1:country-region w:st="on">Iraq</st1:country-region>,
for instance, <st1:City w:st="on">Damascus</st1:City> is linked mainly to
ex-Baathist and Sunni tribal leaders, while <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s strength is among the Shiite
religious parties fighting the Sunnis in an increasingly vicious civil war.
"<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>
has two different options," says Syrian author and political analyst Sami Moubayed.
"Either they deal with <st1:country-region w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region>,
while excluding <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
or vice versa. Dealing with both is impossible and dealing with neither is also
impossible." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>In fact, the hope of some analysts in
Washington and Tel Aviv is that <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Syria</st1:place></st1:country-region>
eventually can be pressured and persuaded to play a less disruptive role. An
analogy might be <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Libya</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
which renounced terror, gave up weapons programs and made its peace with the
West in 2003. But the years of boycotts and international isolation that
finally forced Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi to come around were imposed only
after criminal investigations nailed members of the Libyan regime for blowing
up an airliner over <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Lockerbie</st1:City>,
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Scotland</st1:country-region></st1:place>. Then
the workings of a special tribunal were key to convicting at least one of
culprits and forced the Kaddafi government to assume some of the
responsibility. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>The only hope of marshaling the same
kind of pressure on <st1:country-region w:st="on">Syria</st1:country-region> is
to nail the Assad regime in a United Nations-backed tribunal investigating the
Valentine's Day massacre of ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri and bystanders in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Beirut</st1:place></st1:City> last year, and the
other high-profile killings since. That's what the five Lebanese ministers in
the Grand Serail are holding out for. And that is precisely why they've been
put under siege by Hizbullah and other Syrian allies trying to destroy
altogether the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. "Political
assassination is very, very common in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Lebanon</st1:place></st1:country-region>," says Ahmad Fatfat,
one of the ministers in the Serail. "We need the tribunal to stop this. If
we cannot succeed in this project, it is impossible to preserve our
democracy." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>Indeed, if they cannot succeed, it may
be impossible to preserve the shreds of the Bush administration's policies in
the <st1:place w:st="on">Middle East</st1:place>. But the Assad regime, so good
at spoiling, so good at surviving, is likely to go on.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black;font-style:italic'>©
2006 Newsweek, Inc.<o:p></o:p></span></font></i></p>
<p class=textbodyblack><font size=1 color=black face=Verdana><span
style='font-size:9.0pt;line-height:150%'>URL: <a
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240757/site/newsweek">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240757/site/newsweek</a></span></font><font
size=2 color=black face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height:150%;
font-family:Arial;color:windowtext'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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