Syria - Tag Search

For basically as long as Lebanon has existed as a modern nation, foreign forces have found the country a useful proxy to assert their regional interests in the Middle East, so it's not exactly breaking from script for the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress to assert an extremely self-interested agenda during Prime Minister Saad Hariri's first visit to Washington since coming to power last summer. (Nor is it strange for America to be self-interested, but I digress.)

Hariri met with Obama on Monday; he spent Tuesday with Vice President Joe Biden and members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Looking at the reporting that has emerged in the past two days, those meetings have been dominated by topics of American concern: the alleged transfer of Scud missiles from Syria to Hizballah, the disarming of Hizballah, and Lebanon's role in the U.S.-led effort to sanction Iran. Shelved, for the most part: Discussion of America's mired attempt to kick-start Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Now that President Obama has nominated Robert Stephen Ford to be the next U.S. ambassador to Syria -- the first since relations deteriorated in 2005 -- all eyes turn toward the confirmation process.

Senators don't make a habit of turning ambassadorial nominations into blood baths, but there is bipartisan distrust of Syria, and one Democratic lawmaker has already signaled his disapproval of Ford' nomination.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post while on a trip to Israel, Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) called Ford's nomination a "mistake."

Not to alienate any of our readers in the Palmetto State, but is there something in the water in South Carolina that makes elected officials go nuts? First there was Gov. Sanford, now this: Representative Gresham Barrett (R) plans to reintroduce a piece of legislation he wrote seven years ago that would completely bar nationals from Yemen and the four official State Sponsors of Terrorism from coming to the United States except in special circumstances.

From Barrett's Web site:

While President Obama may have declared an end to the War on Terror, it is clear our enemies did not get the message. Twice in the past two months, radical Islamic terrorists have attacked our nation and the Administration has failed to adapt its national security and immigration policies to counter the renewed resolve of those who seek to harm our citizens.

Update (1/3/09 7:55 p.m.): The New York Times has rounded out the list of the 14 countries that have earned special scrutiny under the new travel rules that will be instituted at midnight tonight. All but two are in the Middle East, and all but one have a majority Muslim population.

Original post: The Obama administration is instituting new rules for the Transportation Security Administration that will require pat-downs and bag searches for every passenger flying into the United States from 14 "terrorism-prone" countries, Politico reports. The 14 countries of origin that have been singled out for extra scrutiny are: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria - the State Department's four "state sponsors of terrorism" - as well as Nigeria, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Algeria.

Just caught up with yesterday's post by Josh Rogin on Foreign Policy's Cable blog handicapping the United States' next ambassador to Syria.

Rogin says two men are topping the D.C. rumor mills: Jacob Walles, who left his position as consul general in Jerusalem in September for a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Nabil Khury, a "veteran Foreign Service officer of Lebanese descent."

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says neither Walles nor Khury are the "actual pick," according to his sources. He also says Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States, is on the outs with Damascus and will be sent home once Obama appoints his counterpart.

Not a huge surprise here, but figured we needed to note it: All but six of Lebanon's 128 elected lawmakers voted today to approve Prime Minister Saad Hariri's 30-member cabinet, which includes two representatives from Hizballah.

The vote means that Lebanon's government has given de facto approval to Hizballah keeping its weapons, but nobody really expected otherwise. And it's a wise move: Hizballah seems to be headed down a political track now, and trying to take away their weapons could provoke them. The benefits outweigh the negatives.

Al-Jazeera notes that the approval sets the stage for a Hariri visit to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hariri has proved himself politically adroit in 2009, but I imagine that's gonna be an awkward handshake: "Hello. My name is Saad Hariri. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Tony Badran, a research fellow at the conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who blogs about the Levant at Across the Bay, tried the other day to summarize the state of play regarding Syria's thawing relationship with the West and Bashar al-Assad's involvement in the ubiquitous "peace process," which Gregg has viewed, perhaps rightly, with some cynicism.

Badran's conclusion: the "Syrian track" is a relic of "the delusional 1990s," and Syria will not relinquish influential allies such as Iran and Hizballah in exchange for peace with Israel.

Bashar Al-Assad's fiefdom has been in the media spotlight lately, with stories about Syria's lurch into the modern age appearing in National Geographic, Fox News and now Conde Nast's Traveler.

Some of the coverage has been positive, some negative, but Syrian press handlers seem to be operating under the premise that any news is good news - according to Fox News' report, Damascus invited a wide swath of Middle Eastern journalists on the recent junket that led to Fox's story.

Nevertheless, the critical coverage in Don Belt's National Geographic article is now the subject of some pushback by Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha (h/t Syria Comment). Moustapha penned a lengthy letter to Belt, Belt's editor in chief and the magazine's executive vice president warning that National Geographic's relationship with Syria has been "permanently damaged."

In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk's epic tome about the formation and disintegration of Lebanon, Fisk recalls reading a faded 1950s newspaper story in which a European visitor writes of being wowed by the typical allures of the "Switzerland of the Middle East," while he glosses over a deadly anti-government protest - the beginning of Lebanon's first civil war - as the birth pangs of a young democracy.

National Geographic writer Don Belt, who has penned a knowing portrait of Syria for the magazine's November issue, seems determined to avoid missing such a historical boat. His wide-ranging story about the precariously perched Bashar al-Assad regime has impressed even Syria News Wire - never happy with carpetbagging foreign correspondents - which has called it "the best article on Syria in a decade."

In today's edition, we move past definitions and start getting into the good stuff - figuring out exactly how screwed the Arab world really is. First up in the cavalcade of depressing facts: Chapter Two of the Arab Human Development Report, which focuses on environmental threats to human security in the region.

First, a brief reminder about the 2009 AHDR: It's all about "human security." We covered the definition of that term in Part One. By approaching the Arab world from the point of view of human security - the problems confronting everyday citizens, rather than the state as a whole - the authors hope to address the roots of a wealth of problems in today's globalized world. Now, let's get started.

A friend of the Majlis brought to my attention yesterday a great story from the Media Line (prepare for this headline): "Syria's Blogosphere Explodes with Competing Campaigns For and Against Masturbation."

According to Media Line writer Benjamin Joffe-Walt, a "lonely" 23-year-old Syrian blogger and marketing student named Fadl Otmaz Sibai set off the online debate with a Sept. 3 post calling upon his fellow Muslims to stop their "secret habit."

It is with a heavy heart that we pass on the news that Elias Muhanna, otherwise known as the writer of Qifa Nabki, is packing up and leaving Beirut, destined for the cloisters of Harvard University. He has a PhD in Near Eastern Studies to attend to, after all.

As a (temporary) goodbye, Muhanna leaves us with a few links and instructs his readers to "send me an email when Lebanon has a government." I'll miss that Qifa Nabki snark.

But seriously - what's the deal with the Lebanese cabinet?

Update appended at the bottom.

Saturday finds the young guns of Foreign Policy Watch duking it out with Syria Today founder Andrew Tabler, who published an article on the Web site of Foreign Policy (the magazine) on Friday blaming Syria for holding up positive developments in negotiations with the United States.

It has been 80 days since the Lebanese elections, for those of you keeping score at home, and there's still no government. But Saad Hariri says he's getting closer -- that's one of the developments in an omnibus political story in the Daily Star this morning.

A few items of note. First, Hariri insists that Hizballah will be a part of the final Lebanese government.

"Hizbullah will be part of the government since the country's interests necessitate the party's participation," Hariri said during an iftar at his residence in Qoreitem.

This will surely prompt the usual caterwauling from Jerusalem about how Hizballah shouldn't be part of the government. But -- whatever you think of Hizballah -- the group won a sizable number of seats in the June election, and Hariri's government won't work unless it includes Hizballah in some kind of a national-unity scheme.

Saudi Arabia has arrested 44 suspected Al-Qaeda members in Riyadh and surrounding provinces. A spokesman for the interior ministry, Mansur al-Turki, described the men as recruiters.

"These people, I would describe them like a base, they actually work in the area, recruiting young people, giving young people the ideology of al Qa'eda, and financing terrorism in the kingdom."

Police say they found two arms caches: One in Riyadh, with 70 machine guns and 280 detonators; and another north of the capital that contained 96 detonators.

Hizballah might seem happy about Saad Hariri's new government; apparently Druze leader Walid Jumblatt is not.

Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Head MP Walid Jumblatt reconsidered Sunday his alliance with the March 14 Forces, saying "it was driven by necessity and must end."

... at the opening of the PSP general assembly at the Beaurivage Hotel in Beirut, Jumblatt stressed on the need to reconsider forming a new alliance "free of bias."

Jumblatt says the issue is the winning March 14 coalition's "sectarian" style of campaigning; the coalition had a decidedly anti-Syrian, anti-Iranian bent. He obviously wants to polish his image in the Arab world, and with Syria undergoing something of a rehabilitation of late, Jumblatt is distancing himself from Saad Hariri's anti-Syrian Future Movement.

The National's Mitchell Prothero has more detail on the man he calls one of Lebanon's "most ideologically flexible political leaders."

I'm getting a little bored of stories about Israeli/Syrian diplomacy. The narrative is always the same: A top Western diplomat meets with Syrian officials, who say they're willing to negotiate a peace deal in exchange for the Golan Heights. Then, a few days later, our intrepid Western diplomat meets with Israeli officials, who say they're also willing to talk, as long as they don't have to talk about the Golan. Pause for one week; repeat.

I've said it before but, hey, I'll say it again: The Golan is the only issue that matters here. If Israel is not willing to talk about returning it -- something it is required to do under international law, by the way -- then all of this "shuttle diplomacy" is totally meaningless.

Following up on Evan's post from last night, it seems the speculation was right: George Mitchell is also headed to Damascus on his Middle East trip.

The International Atomic Energy Agency found processed uranium at a second location in Syria, according to Ha'aretz:

Inspectors who found uranium particles at the remote desert site a year ago also found similar traces at a small research reactor in the capital Damascus which the IAEA knew about and checks once a year, a IAEA report said. These traces were different from Syria's declared nuclear material inventory. The IAEA said in February that inspectors had found enough traces of uranium in soil samples taken from the bombed site a year ago to constitute a significant find.

Syria has refused to discuss the origin of the particles with the IAEA, according to the article. This will obviously deepen the suspicion that Syria was working with the North Koreans to build a nuclear reactor.

The "remote desert site," by the way, is the facility at Deir Az-Zur that Israel bombed in 2007.

Foreign Policy's Laura Rozen is reporting that George Mitchell might be headed to Damascus:

Another official said he was "95% sure," but that nothing was finalized. What would be the purpose of the trip? Broadly, "the president is committed to comprehensive peace," the official explained. "Syria is one of the parties. It therefore makes sense for Mitchell to start engaging them on comprehensive peace."

There have been some encouraging signs recently on U.S.-Syria relations. The U.S. is sending a military delegation to Damascus in a few weeks. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apparently had a productive phone call last weekend with Walid al-Moualem, Syria's foreign minister.