Syria next on the mass destruction list

By ADRIAN HAMILTON

I have made it clear, and I repeat, that Syria is not next on the list," declared Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, in a tone that sounded anything but confident.

Nervousness was understandable, for Syria seems to be all too clearly in the Americans' sights.

One warning after another has been sounded against it for harbouring Iraqi leaders and developing weapons of mass destruction of its own.

It was only by the skin of its teeth and through Tony Blair's urgings that Syria escaped being included in President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech last year.

As the countdown to war with Iraq developed this year, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld started to openly bracket Syria as a potential enemy.

Told about by this by an aide fearful of a widening war, Mr Bush is said to have looked up from his papers and said simply, "Good."

This is not a view held in London, where the accession to power in Syria in 2000 of Bashar Assad, the British-educated son of the wily President Hafez al-Assad, gave rise to fond hopes of a London-Damascus axis to bring peaceful reform to the Middle East.

"But Assad and his wife have only recently had tea with the Queen," gasped a ruffled TV announcer when Washington's war of words began last week.

The US is probably not at this moment planning to direct its armies to wheel left from Baghdad and march on Damascus.

But the sense of threat and the menacing tone of the references to "regime change" are far too carefully orchestrated to be put down to pique at Syria's vociferous and unrelenting denunciation of the Iraq invasion or concerns about escaping Iraqi bigwigs.

This is certainly what the Syrians believe. From the beginning, they have seen the US goal as a redrawing of the Middle East map.

Israel's enemies - notably Iraq, Syria and Iran in that order - would be brought to heel or knocked off one by one, if not by military action then by the threat of it.

There is some justification for this fear, if not for the Zionist conspiracy theories in which Syria and much of the rest of the Middle East believe.

Regime change not only in Iraq but in neighbouring countries is a central plank of the security policy developed by Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, Vice-President Dick Cheney, security adviser Richard Perle and Richard Garner, America's proposed governor of Iraq, 10 years ago.

In this view, the root of terrorism and insecurity in the Middle East lies in the continuance of a series of undemocratic states, supported in the past by Washington, whose interests lie in diverting attention from their tyranny at home by stirring up trouble abroad and denying Israel's right to exist.

Confront these regimes and force change, and the Middle East will develop into a peaceful region of democratic states that will cast aside terrorism, recognise Israel and peacefully pursue a course of economic development at home and neighbourliness abroad, runs the theory.

Syria, in this view, is an archetypal baddy. It is a tyranny run by a one-party Baathist Government headed by a small clique of minority Alawites committed to suppressing political dissent and having a command economy inside its borders, and a confrontation with the US and Israel outside them.

Although it sided with the US in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, its threat to regional order has been immeasurably increased by its military presence in Lebanon and its support of Hizbollah there.

This is the view held by Mr Bush's inner circle - and it is a programme that has so far been followed to the letter in the war against Iraq.


It catches Damascus at a peculiarly vulnerable time.

Hafez al-Assad, the Arab world's most astute political operator, managed in 20 years to carve out for Syria an independent role by playing to Arab public opinion with anti-Israeli rhetoric in public and playing off his enemies and neighbours in private.

Bashar Assad is a different figure. Never brought up to rule - his elder brother, Basil, the chosen heir, died in a car accident in 1994 - he came to power in a country that had been prepared for peace and then stood down for continued confrontation.

Although he has managed to attract a constituency of young, more pro-Western reformers, he remains distrusted and still heavily circumscribed by the old guard of military and security chiefs.

They have allowed him internal economic liberalisation, but not a loosening of internal political controls or a radical departure in foreign politics.

Blair learned to his cost, in a peace-seeking mission a year ago, that however cordial your relations with Damascus, Bashar still has to play hardball on the issue of Israel.

After the election of hard-right Governments in Israel and the US, authorities in Damascus moved to tighten control of political dissent and, over the past two years, to re-establish relations with Saddam Hussein.

In doing so, it has undoubtedly added to America's deep distrust.

It is unlikely that Syria is giving aid and comfort to America's defeated enemy or developing chemical weapons on any scale.

Personal relations between the Baathists of the two regimes were always closer at the level of the armed forces than the politicians.

Syria's rapprochement with Iraq was largely to do with economics and the illicit trade in oil.

Leading Iraqi figures may have fled across the border, but if they have, it will be through paying bribes to a corrupt Syrian hierarchy rather than by receiving state-sanctioned asylum.

Equally, it is hard to see Syria as having weapons of mass destruction.

Unlike Iraq, it is extremely reluctant to enter military confrontation because of the poor state of its armed forces.



The dilemma over Syria is the same as in other parts of the Middle East in the post-September 11, 2001, world - to confront or engage.

Washington's neo-conservatives can point to the experience of Iraq and say that the people of Syria - and Lebanon for that matter - also want a change that can be brought about only from the outside.

The engagers, led by Britain but including most of Europe, can point to a Syrian society that is far more open to foreign contact and economic liberalism than Iraq ever was, and a country that has kept largely to its own outside of Lebanon, where internal divisions have sucked it in to keep the peace.

The Baathist regime may not be popular but it has largely kept the country out of trouble for the past 20 years and given the Arabs some pride in its refusal to compromise with Israel.

Without the Alawite regime, Syria's delicate balance of competing ethnic groups - Sunnis, Druzes, Kurds and Christians - could well descend to the chaos we saw in Lebanon and are seeing in Iraq.

Deal with Damascus and you can hope for change with some stability.

Pull it down and you may reap the whirlwind.

- INDEPENDENT

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