DAMASCUS: After months of campaigning against a US strike on Iraq, Syria appears to have decided war is inevitable and is looking to cut its losses when Washington’s plan for “regime change” plays out on its borders.
Damascus has backed off its stance that an attack on Iraq would in effect target all Arab countries and now urges the US-Iraq standoff be resolved under UN Security Council resolutions, including those demanding Baghdad dispose of weapons of mass destruction.
The shift, diplomats and analysts say, shows Syria is bracing for the day after the demise of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whose ouster Damascus fears could unleash regional turmoil and perhaps be a prelude to a similar move in Syria.
“They have resigned themselves to it and are thinking of their post-Saddam worries,” said one Western diplomat.
He cited the prospect of a US puppet as Saddam’s successor and the rise of an Iraqi Kurdish state that stirred separatism as two of Syria’s chief nightmares.
“This starts with having a pro-Western state on the border, includes the fear that they’re next, and goes on to the breakup of Iraq and the emergence of a Kurdistan and what that means for the northeast of their country,” the diplomat said.
Syria shares some of those anxieties with Iraq’s other neighbours. Turkey is also loath to see autonomy in Kurdish-held northern Iraq spur the ambitions of Kurds within its borders, and Iran is wary of a US-installed government to its west to match Afghanistan’s in the east.
But Syria is alone in facing sustained US diplomatic pressure over support for Lebanon’s Hezbollah and radical Palestinian groups, which Washington demands Damascus renounce as a contribution to the US war on “terrorism” sparked by last year’s suicide attacks on US cities.
NEW SYRIAN APPROACH: Those groups loom large in the Syria Accountability Act, legislation before Congress proposing to punish Syria for backing Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. Washington believes Hezbollah was behind the 1983 bombing of the US Marines barracks in Beirut that killed 241 people.
The Bush administration has voiced opposition to the legislation, which some Syrian commentators have cited in arguing that Damascus has been able to trade accession to an Iraq strike for less US pressure on “terrorism”.
“These developments coincided with a new Syrian approach toward Baghdad,” wrote Ibrahim Hamidi, a journalist whose editorials often reflect the thinking of the Syrian government, in a commentary in Lebanon’s English-language Daily Star.
“While Damascus was not expected to retract its public opposition to external attempts at regime change, the Syrians nevertheless stressed that Baghdad must implement UN Security Council resolutions,” Hamidi said.
This line of argument holds that an invitation in mid-September to Syria and Lebanon to join talks with the US-led “Quartet” of would-be Middle East peacemakers is further proof Syria is being rewarded by Washington over Iraq.
Others say the diplomatic about-face has more to do with Damascus realizing it has few options but to salvage what it can.
NO DEAL: “There’s no deal,” one Western diplomat said. “It has taken a while to digest the fact that the US president is perfectly prepared to go forward with or without resolutions...We’re seeing an attempt to restore a degree of pragmatism.”
In doing so, diplomats argue, Syria is looking to ease the shock of a military campaign against its most important trading partner, after the rehabilitation of ties severed after Damascus backed the coalition that drove Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.
Britain alleges those ties also extend to an illicit trade below market prices in Iraqi crude oil that violates the UN oil-for-food programme governing Iraqi exports, and which industry sources believe allows Syria to meet domestic petroleum needs while exporting its own oil at prevailing prices.
Syria says it is merely testing the pipeline in question, and that all oil dealings comply with the sanctions regime, which will govern the use of a new pipeline it plans to build.
Whatever amount of oil Syria is receiving from Iraq now, a US military campaign in Iraq threatens to cut that flow as well as Syrian exports of manufactured goods to Iraq, one of the few foreign customers Syria has.
That alone may be reason enough to start preparing for a war Syria does not want, but cannot prevent, diplomats argue.
“They are considering the fact that there is a possibility of working to see that their own economic interests are considered,” explains one diplomat. “They can make up their own positive incentives.”—Reuters