In the Lion's Den Page 3

  When we arrived in Daniel’s office, we stood in front of a yellowed wall-size topographical map of “Greater Syria” that stood to the right of the door. It had been rescued from the US consulate building in Aleppo after a mob torched the building following the 1967 War, abruptly shutting down America’s oldest consulate in the Middle East. Pointing at Syria’s long eastern border with Iraq, Daniel explained that Djerejian’s talks with Assad bore fruit in the autumn of 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Syria sealed its border with Iraq and participated in the US-led alliance to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait the following January. While Daniel didn’t make the link, I remembered that, around the same time, Washington gave its tacit approval for Syrian troops to end Lebanon’s civil war, based on the Ta’if Accord. Washington had subsequently referred to Syrian troops in Lebanon not as an occupation, but as a “presence.”

  As Syrian troops took control of Lebanon and US forces withdrew from Kuwait, Washington called for Middle East peace talks to take place in Madrid, Spain. Getting Assad to attend the talks was not easy, however. Secretary of state James Baker traveled to Damascus sixteen times for talks with Assad, finally earning the president’s trust and approval. Direct negotiations between Syria and Israel under American auspices began in 1994 in Washington, DC.

  I knew this part of Daniel’s story pretty well, as my first job at the Middle East Times’s Cairo bureau focused on the peace process. The talks made substantial progress, most notably with agreements over security guarantees, water rights, and “normalization” of relations. The major area of division was over the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan. When Israel captured the plateau in June 1967, Syrian territory began at the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee. Extensive irrigation projects in Israel and surrounding countries had caused the lake’s water level to recede substantially, however. Israel offered to return the Golan up to the lake’s 1967 waterline, which was now several hundred meters east of the water’s edge. Syria demanded that the border be set at the current waterline. Reports circulated widely that Assad wanted to put his feet in the Sea of Galilee like he did when he was a boy.

  The talks ended without agreement after the assassination of the Labour Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995 and the coming to power of the Likud Party’s Benjamin Netanyahu the following year. After further years with little progress in talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Labour returned to power in May 1999, pledging progress on the peace process. Labour leader Ehud Barak sought progress on talks with Syria to offset limited gains in the negotiations with the Palestinians. Direct negotiations between Israel and Syria began in December 1999, leading to a summit in Geneva between Assad and president Bill Clinton in March 2000. In the end, Assad rejected Israel’s final offer: a full withdrawal apart from a one-hundred-meter strip of land along Galilee’s northeastern shore.

  While the negotiations were ongoing, the US embassy in Damascus officially returned to the “constructive engagement” policy of the 1970s. However, there were limits this time: a mere day before delegates convened in Madrid, the US State Department issued regulations banning “defence services” to Syria, effectively cutting off the possibility of any bilateral military cooperation.5 US law also continued to ban American economic assistance to and restrict trade with Syria due to its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Nevertheless, Syria remained the only country on the US terrorism list with which the United States maintained full diplomatic relations.6 Private-sector cooperation developed to unprecedented levels, as the embassy worked with Syria’s business community to arrange export licenses for American products. The Syrian government awarded a $430 million gas-development project to Conoco, an American energy company, to be carried out in conjunction with French energy giant Total.

  Relations were generally businesslike, but there were still flare-ups. Syrian youths stormed the US ambassador’s residence in December 1998 and ripped down the flag in response to the United States and United Kingdom’s bombing of Iraq that month in Operation Desert Fox—an attempt to cajole Iraq to comply with weapons inspectors. Washington virulently protested the Syrian incident and requested that the government sell it land to build a new, secure embassy in a suburb of Damascus.7

  When Assad died three months later, Washington adopted a “wait and see” approach with his son and successor, Bashar. For a while, the situation was uncertain. In October 2000, Syrian protestors tried to storm the US embassy after the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, controversially led a Likud Party delegation around the al-Aqsa Mosque, effectively bringing a decade of peacemaking to an end.

  It was then that diplomats in Damascus began to notice some changes. Syria’s oil exports increased dramatically, leading Washington and London to accuse Syria of violating UN sanctions on Iraq by accepting up to one hundred fifty thousand barrels per day of Iraqi crude through a derelict section of the Kirkuk-Banias oil pipeline (which was built in the 1940s to carry crude from Iraq to Syria’s Mediterranean coast) in return for exports of poor-quality Syrian products.8 The Syrians, for their part, attributed the increase to having converted its power stations from oil to natural gas, which was now more plentiful in Syria due to the government’s project with Conoco. In his first visit to Damascus in February 2001, US secretary of state Colin Powell had raised the pipeline issue with the Syrian leadership, but the oil and other goods kept flowing.

  As it was the end of the working day, Daniel and Mary Brett invited me for a drink at the Marine Bar, located across the street from the embassy. We each grabbed a draft beer from the smiling Syrian bartender and took a table in the bar’s paved garden. Syrian women, all wearing tight-fitting Western-style clothes like Leila, mixed freely with American diplomats and staff, playing pool and darts.

  As the beer flowed, I began to ask more and increasingly direct questions. How could OBG produce an objective report on Syria? I explained how hard it had been to carry out research in Egypt—a US ally and a country relatively open to the world. And who would be a good local partner?

  Daniel and Mary Brett just looked at each other and laughed. “I don’t know,” Daniel said. “Go and see the Syrian-European Business Center [SEBC]. While we don’t help them, we quietly support their goal to help Syria’s private sector. They also seem to be the only international project really doing anything.”

  I called the SEBC the following morning to set up an appointment. After a few minutes on hold, I was patched directly through to the project’s director, Alf Monaghan. I briefly introduced myself and explained why I was calling.

  “Come on over,” he said. “I have nothing on my plate this afternoon.”

  When I showed up around 2 PM, the SEBC receptionist greeted me with a smile and asked me to take a seat. Unlike the décor of the US embassy, the SEBC’s waiting room was all about the future. Full-sized posters advertising books on such things as starting a business and quality-control measures dotted the room’s stuccoed walls. Business books and literature filled a corner cabinet behind the front door. In the right-hand corner was the center’s logo, complete with European Union (EU) and Syrian flags side by side in seeming harmony.

  Five minutes later, the reception area came alive as the building’s staff, leather briefcases in hand, headed home for the day. Male staff sported dark, well-fitted suits; bright, wide cravats; and meticulously polished shoes. The women wore skirts, white blouses, and high heels. All spoke Arabic with a Levantine accent, which was far different from the Egyptian I had learned in Cairo. Their physical features looked hardly Arab at all, however. Most, if not all, had pearly white skin, mousy or blond hair, and piercing blue or dark-green eyes. I guessed that they were Alawites or other minorities.

  Alf greeted me with a warm handshake in the lobby ten minutes later and escorted me up to his office. The top of his desk contained a penholder, nameplate, and a simple notebook. As I took a seat, I noticed the walls were covered with posters similar to the ones in the reception.

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bsp; With his dark-blue silk suit and black lace-up shoes, Alf seemed the quintessential well-paid European bureaucrat. After only a few minutes into the conversation, however, I realized he took his job very seriously. He had spent a lot of time trying to come to grips with Syria’s festering economic problems and the critical decisions now facing the regime. Alf explained that the regime’s battle with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s had had a deep impact on the country’s demographics and economy. In the three decades following independence in 1946, the Syrian government encouraged couples to have large families, based on the idea that Syria had the resources to provide for a much larger population. By 1975, population growth rates reached 5 percent—one of the highest in the world at that time. The regime’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982 was so fearsome that many Syrians were forced to stay at home, causing a decade-long increase in birthrates. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Syria was among the top twenty fastest-growing populations in the world.

  After the regime crushed the Brotherhood insurrection, Assad fell ill from exhaustion and was hospitalized. It was then that his brother, Rifaat, commander of the “special companies” brigades that had ruthlessly battled the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama, attempted to stage a coup d’état. Eventually Rifaat lost and was forced into exile, but it was costly; around the same time, nearly all of Syria’s foreign currency reserves disappeared from the Central Bank, plunging the country into a crisis.9

  As the smoke cleared and the regime consolidated its hold on power, the regime realized the scale of the population “time bomb” and quickly introduced measures to bring fertility rates down. To get more hard currency back into the country, Syria instituted a draconian foreign-exchange policy and banned nearly all imports, including even tissues and toilet paper. The regime also concentrated on boosting oil production, the revenues of which directly filled the state’s coffers. It invited energy giants Shell and Total to develop Syria’s light-oil production along the Euphrates River. By 1996, oil production topped six hundred thousand barrels per day, providing the state with more than enough money to fund the budget and accumulate billions of dollars in hard currency revenues. The state felt so confident of its economic position that between 1997 and 2000, parliament did not even bother to pass a state budget. As President Assad fell ill, however, and key decisions were deferred, the Syrian economy contracted 7 percent by 2000.

  There were other problems as well. Syrian oil production declined as the country’s oil fields slowly ran dry. Assad had also realized that the state’s tired socialist public sector would be unable to create enough jobs for the waves of Syrian youngsters that were soon to enter the job market. So, in 1996, Damascus called on the European Union’s help to “rehabilitate” Syria’s ancient trading and capitalist systems. Brussels, trying to engage Syria to help support the peace process, was only too happy to help. The SEBC was born.

  I explained to Alf all about OBG and presented him with some of our publications on Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt. After flipping through each one, Alf confirmed that this was just what Syria needed: a quality publication on the country that dealt more with the economy than the country’s difficult political issues. When I proposed a partnership with SEBC, similar to our work with chambers of commerce and business associations in other countries, he immediately agreed that it was a great idea.

  To my surprise, however, Alf said the decision to set up a partnership was not his. It was up to Rola Bayda—one of several administrators. Alf set up a meeting and escorted me to Rola’s office.

  Rola shook my hand, smiled, and asked me to sit down. Like the SEBC staff I had seen earlier, Rola had ivory skin, brown hair, and light eyes, which, while initially kind, also appeared cold and calculating. I briefly introduced OBG and showed her some of our other reports on authoritarian countries in the Arab world. I explained that we normally partner with organizations like SEBC and that the center had come highly recommended. After flipping through our report on Egypt, Rola closed the cover and stared intently at me for what seemed like an eternity.

  “Great,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “When do we start?”

  Two months later I was back in Cairo, finishing up a long day of organizing and writing at OBG’s offices at the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (AmCham). Getting stuff done at AmCham, which was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was a hell of a lot easier than it was in Syria. The Internet was fast, nearly everyone seemed to have a cell phone, and take-out food deliveries arrived in less than thirty minutes. Maybe I was being too hard on old Egypt, I thought as I walked home.

  My cell phone rang when I reached the front of my apartment building in Agouza. “Where are you?” my mother said as quickly as I picked up. “CNN is reporting two planes have hit the World Trade Center in New York.”

  Two planes didn’t sound like an accident. I had canceled my satellite TV connection when I started working in Syria to save a few dollars, so I jumped in a cab and headed back to AmCham. Along the way I dialed as many American friends in Cairo as I could. The fact that no one answered unnerved me.

  I immediately headed to the executive director’s office—the only one I knew who had a television. As I entered the room, I saw half a dozen senior AmCham staff gathered around a blaring television, which was showing footage of a jet ploughing into the World Trade Center’s south tower. My heart seemed to move into my throat as I panicked. I immediately dialed everyone I knew in New York, but all the lines were busy. As I put the phone down, I noticed I was the only one in the room saying anything. Some paced back and forth, while others just stared at the screen in disbelief. But the same thing was on all our minds: nothing would ever be the same again.

  I loved Egypt and had made many great Egyptian friends. Nevertheless, there were issues coursing through Egypt and the Arab world that were not only anti-American but against Western civilization as a whole. When I left AmCham a few hours later, everything seemed normal. Shopkeepers and passers-by gathered around radios and TVs, listening to news coverage of the attacks. I headed over to the home of an Egyptian-American friend who subscribed to CNN.

  On TV, pundits were already speculating about who was responsible for the attacks. At first it seemed related to the Arab-Israeli struggle. An anonymous source had tipped off an Abu Dhabi newspaper that the attacks were carried out by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine—a leftist offshoot of the PLO. But a stark condemnation of the attacks by the organization’s leader, Nayef Hawatmeh, quickly refuted the claim. The longer the night wore on, though, the more fingers pointed toward Osama bin Laden, the son of a Saudi construction magnate and leader of the Sunni radical militant group al-Qaeda. Instead of liberating Palestine, bin Laden set his sights on “liberating” the Arabian Peninsula from American forces.

  As we listened, an American journalist friend sitting beside me leaned over and whispered into my ear that our host’s Egyptian family didn’t really have a problem with the attacks. “They said this is what we get for so blindly supporting Israel,” he said. A few minutes later, another American friend arrived, saying a taxi driver had told him that the attacks were “payback” for America’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The news ticker at the bottom of the TV screen stated that Palestinians were celebrating in their camps in Gaza and Lebanon, even going so far as to pass out congratulatory sweets.

  This reaction didn’t surprise me. Palestinians had suffered extensively from what was then fifty years of Arab-Israeli conflict; many lived in squalid conditions. But Egyptians? In the two decades following president Anwar el-Sadat’s signature of the Camp David Accords, Egypt had received upwards of $2.2 billion per year from the American taxpayers. Hundreds of American businesses invested in Egypt as well, and American advisers played a key role in helping the government reform its bloated public sector. Now not only did I feel sorry that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, but I felt exploited as well.

  Needing a good stiff
drink and some secular solace among Westerners, I visited an upmarket bar-restaurant in Zamalek, normally an island of Western tranquility. Halfway through a whiskey, I saw two Egyptian girls in Westernized dress jump up and start dancing and singing. As the patrons also sang along, I finally realized that they were singing about how “Sylvester Stallone couldn’t save the World Trade Center.” I couldn’t tell for sure, but the girls looked like they could have been students at the American University in Cairo. Angry, I paid the bill and went home.

  The next morning at the office, I sat staring blankly at my laptop screen, my eyes tired from sifting through stories of who might be responsible for the attacks. Speculation had evolved into outright ccusations that the attacks were the handiwork of Osama bin Laden, whose organization had ties to similar organizations in Egypt and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Throughout the day, I received phone call after phone call from American friends in the region asking if my friends and family were OK.

  I hadn’t slept well the previous night, so I headed home early to take a nap. As I stepped into the elevator, I realized that not a single Egyptian member of staff at AmCham had expressed any sorrow about the attacks. The only person who asked me if my family was safe was the building’s security guard, whom I spoke with each day on the way into the office.