As Syria continues to descend into deeper civil war, and a proxy war between Iran and various powers is clear, it’s worth remembering the reality of how the US and West viewed Assad until very recently. Thanks to Wikileaks cable, we can. A good piece by Elias Muhanna in Al Alkbar:
The… cache… of US government cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010 represents one of the most significant documentary sources on Syria’s recent diplomatic history. While the details of Asma al-Assad’s shopping habits and the saccharineemails… between… [email protected]… and his fawning coterie provide a tantalizing glance inside Syria’s secluded elite, the original corpus of leaked cables is a far more valuable goldmine of information on the country’s foreign policy objectives and its strategic orientation.
There are several thousand cables relating to Syria, almost all of which were composed during Bashar al-Assad’s presidency. A full survey of this material has yet to be concluded, but even a targeted reading of a few hundred cables points to a yawning chasm between the Assad regime’s public rhetoric about… mumanaa… (anti-imperial resistance) and its actual maneuverings. Today, as Assad continues to be championed by some on the Arab Left as a Gramscian paladin, gamely leading a war of position against hegemonic Empire and the global capitalistic elite, it is worth revisiting the WikiLeaks corpus to set the record straight.
Assad’s assurance to Murphy about Hezbollah’s pragmatism is a leitmotif that is repeated in several other cables. It is regularly accompanied by Syrian earnestness about resuming peace negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights. In 2002, Assad… told… Congressman David Price: “Off the record, I can say I want peace. But I can’t tell that to the media, because no one wants to hear it.” A couple years later, Assad took a further step by confiding to… Spanish… officials that he was willing to relinquish all water and navigation rights of Lake Tiberias, as long as Syria retained the symbolic significance of having recovered all of its territory.
By 2008, Assad had lost his squeamishness about publicly voicing a desire for peace, because his government was deep in negotiations with Israel. Lasting approximately eight months before they were interrupted by the Gaza War, Assad… admitted… to a US congressional delegation that “these talks had achieved more than several years of direct negotiations with Israel in the 1990s.” A flurry of cables speculated about the strategic re-orientation that a peace agreement might bring about. An advisor to Walid al-Muallim… suggested… that Assad was trying to a walk a tight-rope between Iran and Turkey, assessing the possibilities that Syria could slowly wean itself off Iran in exchange for stronger relations with the West and the Arab world. This, too, was the… Israeli hope… for the talks, and also that of high-ranking… “moderate”… elements within the Syrian regime itself.
From the perspective of Marxist admirers of Assad, however, such signals by the regime could only make sense as part of a canny strategy to disrupt Empire by distracting it with promises of docile behavior. In that event, Empire fell for it hard, as Assad was actively… courted… in European capitals in 2008, and by American congressional delegations in 2009, promising peace (plus… a room for Ehud Olmert… at the Damascus Four Seasons),… strong bilateral relations… with the US, and a… change in priorities… from national security to social and economic reform. This was all brilliant anti-imperialist maneuvering, one assumes, but it still made the… Iranians jumpy.
No less counter-hegemonic was Syria’s active involvement in intelligence sharing with Western powers, which continued even through the toughest days of its isolation. From a cable dated September 2005, welearn… that there existed a “long-standing liaison relationship between French and Syrian security services,” and that Assad’s brother-in-law and top security chief Asif Shawkat made a habit of visiting Paris no less than twice a year to compare notes with his opposite numbers. Another cable… suggests… that US-Syrian intelligence cooperation had previously run through Shawkat, whose value to the United States was… touted… by Walid al-Muallim.
In 2010, a… meeting… between Syrian General Intelligence Director Ali Mamlouk and US Coordinator for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin in February 2010 confirms that the Syrians were happy to resume intelligence cooperation provided they were given “a lead role” in the efforts (perhaps evincing a subtle desire to supplant the Jordanians as the go-to intelligence experts in the region). At this meeting, Vice Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad “spoke at length about his fondness” for Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman.
Syria’s involvement with the West extended beyond military and intelligence cooperation and began to include stronger economic ties, particularly after Barack Obama came into office. A major… petroleum deal… was signed with France in 2008, and Syria… fast-tracked… its efforts to sign an association agreement with the European Union in 2010. In 2009, President Assad… welcomed… a group of American hedge fund managers and private equity investors to Damascus as part of a bid to court more foreign investment in Syria (and to combat neoliberalism, presumably), and relations with… Turkey… and Qatar hit an all-time high.