In the Lion's Den Read online

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Tabler, Andrew.

  In the lion’s den : an eyewitness account of Washington’s battle with Syria / Andrew Tabler. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-56976-843-3 (pbk.)

  1. United States—Foreign relations—Syria. 2. Syria—Foreign relations—United States. 3. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946- 4. Assad, Bashar, 1965- 5. Tabler, Andrew. I. Title.

  E183.8.S95T33 2011

  327.7305691—dc23

  2011024015

  Cover and interior design: Jonathan Hahn

  Cover photo: Phil Smith

  Map design: Chris Erichsen

  Copyright © 2011 by Andrew Tabler

  All rights reserved

  First edition

  Published by Lawrence Hill Books

  An imprint of Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN 978-1-56976-843-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

  For my parents, Clarence and Lucille; my brother, Bill; and my grandmother Helen, whose unconditional love made my long journeys possible.

  You have retired to your island, with, as you think, all the data about us and our lives. No doubt you are bringing us to judgment on paper in the manner of writers. I wish I could see the result. It must fall far short of truth: I mean such truths as I could tell you about us all—even perhaps about yourself.

  —Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Introduction

  PART I

  1 The Arab World’s Twilight Zone

  2 The Great Unraveling

  3 Paradise Lost

  PART II

  4 Pressure Yields Results

  5 The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend

  6 No Voice Louder than the Cry of Battle

  7 Playing with Fire in Eastern Syria

  8 Weathering the Storm

  Epilogue: The Expectations Gap and the Advent of the Arab Spring

  Notes

  Index

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would not have been able to tell this story without the help of friends and institutions that encouraged me to write about my experiences in Syria and Lebanon. A good portion of this book was essentially written while I was a fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA). My fellowship, which began only days before the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated, allowed me to travel and write for over two years as I “followed my nose”—in the ICWA tradition—around Syria and Lebanon. Special thanks go to Joseph Battat, a former ICWA fellow in China who noticed me while on a mission for the World Bank in Syria and encouraged me to apply to the institute. ICWA executive director Steven Butler, as well as his predecessor, Peter Martin, helped me learn to put myself back into my writing after years of writing and editing dry news. Completing that process was Victoria Rowan, the New York–based writing coach and editor. Through my work with Victoria, I learned a lot about storytelling and how to manage myself through the writing process. I also learned how dilemmas not only define characters but American and Syrian presidents as well.

  I could not have endured my sojourn in Syria and Lebanon without the friendship of Michael Karam and Nicholas Blanford, two outstanding Beirut-based writers whose kindness helped me deal with the stress of living in Syria. During our weekly gatherings in Beirut, Mike and Nick, together with friends Norbert Schiller, Anissa Rifai, and Mona Alama, helped me put my experiences in perspective. As did Lee Smith, a good friend and great writer who then called Beirut home. Last but not least, I would like to thank Andrew Lee Butters, my flatmate in Beirut, who helped keep me mentally and physically fit, and Katherine Zoepf, my flatmate in Damascus, who treated me with good food and even better stories.

  A number of Syrians made a lasting impact on my stay in Damascus. Special thanks go out to Kinda Kanbar, businessman Abdul Ghani Attar, Abdul Kader Husrieh of Ernst & Young Syria, Ibrahim Hamidi of Al Hayat newspaper, and Ayman Abdel Nour of all4Syria, as well as to Francesca De Chatel, a wonderful writer and editor who ultimately succeeded me as editor in chief of Syria Today. Because of the Syrian regime’s current crackdown, I would like to collectively thank all those at Syria Today for all you taught me and allowed me to teach you. I would also like to recognize the diplomats of the US embassy in Damascus who spent considerable time helping me understand Syria and US-Syria policy, including Daniel Rubinstein, Mary Brett Rogers-Springs, Chris Stevens, Steven O’Dowd, Brian O’Rourke, Todd Holmstrom, Andrew Abell, Maria Olson, Katherine Van De Vate, Pamela Mills, and Tim and Tracy Pounds.

  After I left Syria, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy provided me with a platform in Washington to write about the country. Special thanks go to Robert Satloff, Patrick Clawson, David Makovsky, David Schenker, Simon Henderson, Matt Levitt, Dina Guirguis, Michael Jacobson, Michael Singh, Mike Eisenstadt, Steve Borko, and Larisa Baste, whose input on my work has helped me expand from journalism into policy research. Thanks also go to Kathy Gockel and the Stanley Foundation, who first helped get my ideas into Washington policy circles, and Foreign Policy’s David Kenner.

  My biggest appreciation goes to those who took the time to read and comment on the book’s draft. They include Andrew Abell, Syria desk officer, US Department of State; Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States and former representative in peace talks with Syria; and Levant experts Amr al-Azm, Jon Alterman, Nicholas Blanford, Steven Heydemann, and David Schenker. I would also like to thank my friends in government who have shared their thoughts with me about the Levant, including the State Department’s Ruth Citrin and Matt Irwin and the National Security Council’s director for Lebanon and Syria, Hagar Hajjar. Thanks also go to Susan Betz and Kelly Wilson of Lawrence Hill Books, who edited the manuscript, and Mary Kravenas and Meaghan Miller, who aided me in the book’s promotion. Last but not least, I thank my fantastic research assistant, Andrew Engel, and my intern, Maya Gebeily. Together their comments and hard work made this a much better book.

  INTRODUCTION

  I only planned to work in Damascus for a few months and engage an Arab country I didn’t know. Instead, I stayed seven years and got an unexpected front-row seat to a fight.

  This book is a firsthand account of the confrontation between the administration of US president George W. Bush and the regime of Syrian president Bashar al Assad. The Bush administration called its Syria policy “isolation,” while the Assad regime portrayed it as an American plot to overthrow Syria’s leadership and remake the Middle East in America’s image.

  No attempt will be made in this book to argue either way, as details of decision makers’ plans and intentions have yet to emerge. (Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair writes in his book, A Journey: My Political Life, that Bush and former vice president Dick Cheney had machinations to remake the Middle East, using “hard power” to take down the regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. While certain members of the Bush administration may have advocated using military force against Syria, I have been unable to find any formal US government plans to bring down the Assad regime.) Nevertheless, much of this story is part of the United States’ invasion and occupation of Iraq—America’s largest-ever military adventure in the Middle East.

  I saw the conflict between Washington and Damascus—which I generally refer to as a “cold war”—from an unusual and privileged vantage point. I lived and worked in Damascus between 2001 and 2008, served as a media adviser for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) under the pa
tronage of President Assad’s wife, Asma, and had the honor to cofound Syria’s first—and still best—English-language magazine, Syria Today. By virtue of my work, I had a rare journalist multiple-entry visa that allowed me to travel back and forth to Lebanon—often on a weekly basis—to cover the dramatic events leading up to and following the February 2005 murder of the late Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri by car bomb in Beirut. I was able to travel freely in and out of Syria and speak my mind without the threat of being banned from the country—at least until the very end of my stay.

  This book is also a personal account of an American’s engagement with the regime of the “Lion of Damascus”—“Assad” being Arabic for “lion.” While I wouldn’t compare my experience to that of the Bible’s Daniel, my sojourn in Syria was a series of crises and dilemmas that sculpted my view of engagement and confrontation with what are commonly referred to in America as “rogue regimes.” My personal and professional experiences in Syria were so intertwined I didn’t know how else to write a book that wasn’t a hybrid of memoir and foreign policy analysis. Following my departure from Syria in the autumn of 2008, the regime began its harshest crackdown on dissidents and journalists during Bashar al Assad’s reign. With an eye toward protecting my friends and associates in Syria, in this book I have changed nearly all their names and some details of their identities.

  I went to Syria in 2001 with an open mind about a country and a regime that the United States and the West had struggled to change the behavior of for decades. (This long process even gave birth to “Syriana”—the term for the idea that a big power can remake nation-states in its own image. The term was made internationally famous when it was adopted as the title for the 2005 box-office thriller of the same name.) The regime’s long alliance with the Soviet Union; its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and other groups on the US list of terrorist organizations; its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); and its horrible human rights record had led some US administrations and their allies over the years to attempt to change the Assad regime’s behavior via confrontation or sanctions. Other administrations had attempted to engage Syria diplomatically, most notably centered on Arab-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli peace talks, based on the idea that America could gain more with rewards than punishments. Neither approach solved the problems. Underlying each policy was the idea that the Assad regime only cared about politics. As Damascus’s oil revenues declined and Assad opened his country to the outside world, I watched firsthand as economics became a bigger and bigger part of the Assad regime’s calculations for survival.

  Multilateral pressure shepherded by the Bush administration brought about some of the greatest changes in Syrian policies in decades. Damascus withdrew its troops from Lebanon, implemented long-delayed economic reforms, and eased—at least for a time—restrictions on the Syrian opposition. A major impetus for these changes is the fact that Syria, like all globalizing rogue regimes, increasingly needs the international community more than the international community needs Syria.

  Other changes in Syrian policy were not to Washington’s liking, however. Damascus deepened its alliance with Iran, turned a blind eye to jihadi fighters entering Iraq, and stepped up a nuclear program now under investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While Washington and its allies’ responses to the latter two policies ultimately curbed their impact, the Bush administration proved far less skillful in countering Assad’s moves in Syria and Lebanon—historically a key battleground between Iran and the United States.

  Engaging regimes like Assad’s might seem an easy solution to America’s problems in the Middle East, including dealing with Iran’s nuclear program or fostering Arab-Israeli peace. But engaging the Assad regime is historically far harder done than said. It’s not just that Syrian and US policies are now more opposed to each other than ever. Based on my experiences in Syria, the prospects of America’s underwriting a Syrian-Israeli peace treaty are not promising unless Damascus acts decisively to support human rights, institute rule of law, and curb corruption in the country. This is particularly the case following the outbreak of protests throughout Syria in March 2011. Meanwhile, Washington policy makers and analysts are also finding difficulty moving beyond the unsuccessful but still deeply entrenched “peace process or pressure” arguments of the last four decades. Until the US government learns to “think like a lion” and develops a dilemmas-driven policy that (a) promotes human rights, (b) effectively addresses Syria’s increasingly problematic policies, and (c) maximizes economic as well as political leverage in conjunction with allies—all while keeping the door open someday for a Syria-Israel peace agreement—Assad is unlikely to change his detrimental policies anytime soon.

  In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria is organized into two parts. In part 1, I use my personal story in Syria to talk about the country itself, its relations with the United States and the West, and its economic and social problems. I take a step back in part 2 and tell the story of the confrontation between the United States and Syria as it appeared from my desk at Syria Today. In this section, I describe in detail Assad’s defiant response to the allegations of his regime’s involvement in Hariri’s murder; his outreach to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and Sunni Muslims and their institutions in Syria; and his crackdown on the country’s domestic opposition. I also describe the Assad regime’s skillful political use of sectarian chaos in US-occupied Iraq, the civilian deaths of the 2006 Lebanon War, and the mysterious February 2008 assassination in Damascus of Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh—perhaps the world’s most-wanted terrorist prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

  In the epilogue, I enter into the Washington policy debate over Syria. I describe the “expectations gap” between the kind of engagement Syria sought and ultimately received from the United States following the passing of the presidential baton from Bush to Obama, the advent of the Arab Spring, and the approach that I believe would be most effective in the future.

  PART I

  1

  THE ARAB WORLD’S TWILIGHT ZONE

  I had no idea where to start. That morning in July 2001, Oxford Business Group (OBG), at that time a publishing company start-up, had sent me from my base in Cairo to Damascus to carry out “the most comprehensive study of Syria ever compiled.” Getting projects of that magnitude off the ground in an Arab country was always hard, but after eight years of study and journalism in the Middle East, I understood this better than most. Many Arab countries had local independent English-language publications of reasonable quality that were softly critical of the state and society. So it was normally just a matter of taking the editor out to lunch or buying a few drinks and asking for a few names of people with whom to speak. The ball would then soon start rolling, and six to eight months later, we would somehow manage to publish our report.

  This wasn’t going to work in Syria, however. The state’s virtual monopoly on media ownership, as well as its tight control of access by foreign journalists, meant that no such publication existed. A colleague from OBG gave me the number of Leila Hourani—a young Syrian woman with whom he had once worked, and who, he said, knew her way around. I had given her a call that morning, and, to my surprise, she agreed to meet me for lunch at Gemini, an upmarket restaurant in Damascus’s Abou Roumaneh district.

  Leila turned the head of every man as she entered the restaurant’s front door. Her doll-like face, curly brown hair in the bouffant style, form-fitting clothes, and five-inch heels made it easy to understand why many Arabs regarded Syrian women as the region’s most beautiful. What I learned that lazy afternoon in Damascus, however, was that Leila’s best quality was her candor, a rare attribute to be found under a dictatorship where most people are afraid to speak their mind.

  Leila got right down to business and gave me a summary of the biggest unfolding story of the year: President Bashar al-Assad’s promise to reform Syria. The thirty-four-year-old ophthalmologist had taken the re
igns of control in Syria exactly one year ago that day upon the death of his father, the infamous “iron man” dictator Hafez al-Assad. In his inauguration speech—delivered only days after the Syrian parliament had had to change the constitution to lower the minimum age for a Syrian head of state from forty to thirty-four years to allow Bashar to assume his post—the young Assad urged Syrians to “accept the opinion of the other.” Like many Syrians during what became known as the “Damascus Spring,” Leila was excited with the idea of change and loved her new president. Nevertheless, every time she mentioned his last name, Leila lowered her voice and looked over her shoulder.

  Bashar’s coming to power was a story that I had followed from afar. After Assad’s acceptance speech, scores of “discussion groups” formed throughout the country to address a whole host of Syria’s political and social problems. At first, the state tolerated the forums—after all, many forum organizers believed that they were carrying out the discussions in Bashar’s name. But as the discussions got increasingly critical of the regime, it struck back. A group of officials who had been close to Bashar’s father—known as the “old guard” and led by vice president Abdel Halim Khaddam—were said to have advised the president to close the groups. Forum participants who were critical of regime corruption were imprisoned. While some discussion groups continued to function, Leila said that most, if not all, Syrians had no idea what was going on.

  As we finished our appetizers, Leila turned the subject of the conversation to her family. By her style of dress, I thought Leila was Christian, as followers in the Arab world were not subject to Islam’s conservative dress codes. In fact, Leila was Sunni—the daughter of Hassan Hourani, an agricultural engineer from the Houran region, which is south of Damascus. After joining the Baath Party in the late 1950s, Hassan was sent on a United Nations (UN) scholarship to France to study desertification—the loss of arable land to the desert, which was damaging Syria’s agricultural production. After returning to the Houran in the mid-1960s, Hassan married Samia, an English teacher from a nearby village. The couple moved to Damascus in 1970, where Leila was born six years later.