Time for A ‘Sanity Check’ On Syrian Intentions: Assad’s Continuing Malevolence Should Be Warning To Israel, US

(Washington, D.C.): With the resumption of open hostilities between Arab terrorist organizations operating from Syrian-controlled Lebanon and Israeli security forces, Secretary of State Warren Christopher is obsessed with "preserving" what passes for the Middle East "peace process." In recent days, he has urged "restraint" on the parties, in effect equating Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah and Palestinian forces with the incessant attacks launched by the latter against Israeli population centers and other sites.⁽¹⁾

Secretary Christopher’s "even-handed" condemnation of the Israeli use of defensive force and the wanton violence that provoked it as "counterproductive to the peace process," however, is symptomatic of a far larger failure: Neither Mr. Christopher nor the President he serves appear to appreciate that Syrian behavior — and that of its allies and proxies in Lebanon — is preventing the negotiating process from becoming a real peace process.

‘Jaw, Jaw, Jaw’ Does Not Prevent ‘War, War, War’

In fact, the Clinton Administration in general — and Warren Christopher in particular — seem determined to confuse the process of negotiation with negotiating in good faith.⁽²⁾

The truth of the matter is that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein and now Slobodan Milosevic have all "negotiated peace." The result of such negotiations, however, have consistently borne little resemblance to genuine peace.

Even before Washington started urging Israel to exercise restraint in the face of aggression from Syria’s proxies in Lebanon, it was propounding a no-less-dubious policy prescription: With the collapse of its superpower sponsor — the Soviet Union — Hafez Assad’s Syria was asserted to be a nation with nowhere else to go but to rapprochement with the United States.

According to this reasoning, such a realignment will translate into a greater readiness in Damascus to come to terms with the Israelis. At the very least, the Administration wants Israel to show an increased willingness to compromise with Syria — specifically, with respect to territorial accommodations on the Golan Heights.

It Ain’t Necessarily So

There are, however, worrisome indications that this analytical model is every bit as flawed as Warren Christopher’s moral equivalence between aggressors and victims. To be sure, Syria is in need of hard currency, investment and especially U.S. assistance with respect to developing its deep oil reserves, primarily for export. Still, there is little evidence that Assad’s weakness has translated into exploited U.S. leverage.

To the contrary, the exploitation seems to have been largely on the other side:

• Syria parlayed a purported "concession" — i.e., its willingness to line up with the allied coalition against its worst enemy, Iraq — into a multi-billion dollar transfusion from Saudi Arabia. Such funds were, in turn, largely expended on vast new offensive arms purchases. These included advanced fighter aircraft, tanks, artillery, ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

 

• There has also been no appreciable diminution in Syria’s participation in the illegal drug trade. This involves producing, refining and distributing cocaine and heroin both in Syria proper and in Syrian-controlled Lebanon. A recent U.S. government estimate calculated that some forty percent of the heroin to be found today on U.S. streets emanates from these sources. The value of such substances to cash-strapped Syria is in the billions of dollars.

 

• Western oil companies are now facilitating Syrian efforts to tap its considerable petroleum holdings, creating yet another source of hard currency for Assad’s regime. Syria sold $1.7 billion worth of oil in 1992 and is expecting to earn $2.0 billion or more from oil sales in 1993.

 

• Syria’s post-Gulf War rehabilitation in Western eyes has also enabled it to resume borrowing from international financial institutions. To date, it has run up millions of dollars worth of new debts to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

In short, Assad has taken a number of steps — some with official U.S. support, some that merely benefit from American passivity — to diversify his revenue streams and offset substantially the loss of Moscow’s subsidies. While the Syrian despot may find it expedient to promote the notion that he is anxious to improve relations with the United States, it would be unwise in the extreme to assume that a lasting basis of bankable strategic dependence has been created.

A Member in Good Standing of the ‘Radical Entente’

A development half-a-world away recently underscored this point. On 23 May, a secret arms cache in Managua, Nicaragua blew up, providing irrefutable evidence of the emergence of what the Center for Security Policy has dubbed "the Radical Entente." Found in the cache were documents, financial records, diplomatic papers and weaponry that served to illuminate the dimensions of a loose consortium between terrorist organizations and their state sponsors among the world’s pariah nations and communist parties, such as the Sandinistas.⁽³⁾

Syria plays an important role in the Radical Entente insofar as it allows terrorist groups to have their headquarters in Damascus or otherwise to use Syrian territory or Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to train cadre, launch attacks and receive arms. Assad shares with others in this informal alliance an abiding antipathy toward the West and its institutions and a common need to find alternative means of financing anti-Western operations in the absence of the sponsorship previously provided by the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. The Syrians, like the Sandinistas, have found that there is money to be made — as well as strategic advantage to be secured — in aiding and abetting terrorist actions including: kidnappings of wealthy businessmen and their families; extortionary protection rackets; the covert supply of armaments; and supplying fabricated diplomatic documents and other cover.

Back in Business with the PKK

Notably, Syria has apparently concluded that it stands to benefit — financially or otherwise — from providing renewed support to the Kurdish Workers Party (known as the PKK), a Marxist terrorist group at war with Turkey. Less than four months after Damascus promised the Turks that it would act to prevent PKK operations against Turkey from Syrian soil, this group is once again brazenly training and mounting attacks from bases in Syria.

Indeed, on 8 June, the PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan brazenly held a press conference in Barr Ilyas, Lebanon at which he announced an "all-out war against Turkey." This episode confirmed the freedom of movement enjoyed by the PKK in Syria-controlled territory and lent credence to reports that Palestine Liberation Organization and other camps in Lebanon are being made available to PKK operatives.

Assad’s renewed cooperation with the PKK is yet another important indicator of his willingness to take actions at the expense of a close American ally and irrespective of any possible risk to Syria’s relations with the United States. As such, it should serve as signal lesson to both the U.S. and its other key ally in the region — Israel.

The Bottom Line

Syria continues to engage in activities inimical to U.S. and Western interests. While Assad clearly finds it expedient and profitable to profess an interest in improved relations with Washington, his conduct both within and outside of the "peace process" has yet to translate into evidence of an abiding commitment to peace.

The Center believes that — if Hafez Assad’s behavior is genuinely ameliorated when he is broke and relatively weak militarily — it is incumbent on U.S. policy-makers to resist the temptation to continue to try to alleviate his economic difficulties and to enable a reconstitution of Syria’s offensive might through arms build-ups and Israeli territorial concessions on the Golan Heights.

At the very least, the explicit price of extending the American hand of friendship to Damascus must be predicated upon a wholesale change in Syrian policy including, but not limited to: an end to Assad’s support for international terrorism at home and abroad; a cessation of drug-trafficking from Syrian and Syrian-controlled territory; a suspension of the accretion of advanced offensive military capabilities; and an unconditional — and actualized — commitment to effect a complete and lasting peace with Israel.

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1. The extent of Syria’s presence in and control over the areas attacked by Israel is evidenced by the fact that two of the casualties were Syrian occupation troops. In this regard, see also "In Lebanon, Syria Gets Away With Murder," an op.ed. in today’s Wall Street Journal by Steven Emerson.

2. In a thoughtful article entitled "Lament of a Clinton Supporter" in the current edition of Commentary, a member of the Center for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors, Joshua Muravchik, recounts and reacts to a passage from a monograph published by Warren Christopher’s law firm — Diplomacy: The Neglected Imperative:

"…Christopher declared: ‘I believe we should grasp, as a central lesson of the [Iranian hostage] crisis, the wisdom in seeking negotiated settlements to international disputes.’ Insofar as it was not just vacuous, this sentiment revealed the same spirit that Scoop Jackson had characterized as appeasement. Why label Iran’s unprovoked attack on American civilians as a ‘dispute’ to be ‘negotiated,’ rather than a crime to be punished, an aggression to be repulsed, or an injury to be avenged?"

 

3. For additional insights into the significance of the Managua explosion, see "Sandinista Hidden Hand Revealed" by Vince Cannistraro, a distinguished member of the Center’s Board of Advisors, in the 21 July 1993 edition of the Washington Times.