Strange summits by the sea
January 8, 2006
Saud Al Faisal, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, in Damascus with Farouk Sharaa, Foreign Minister of Syria.
You'll forgive me for breaking the vigil over Sharon's health status and for diverting from thinking about the frantic media's panicked questions - namely, what could possibly happen to the "peace process" after Saint Ariel's departure from politics. Oddly enough, Syrian politics keep catching my attention.
Am I the only one who found today's events very strange? I haven't yet heard any comments on the unannounced travels today. First the unexpected visit of Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal to Damascus; that in itself wasn't so strange, even if it was sudden, but what followed certainly was. It is certainly not usual diplomacy for a foreign minister to go to another country just to announce a sudden summit and to bring back the president of his host country to his own. Farouk Sharaa's fake smile was even more fake today, and there was a certain je ne sais quoi in the air, perhaps a sense of reality hitting him like a ton of bricks.
Why did Saud go all the way to Damascus just to announce the summit? (Notice how every little meeting is now a "summit.") Why didn't Bashar just go to Jeddah? Was Saudi Arabia putting him in a fait accompli situation because he had claimed he was too "busy" to go? Had he not answered the summons in a satisfactory way? In any case, he wasn't too busy to stop off in Sharm El Sheikh on his way back to meet Hosni Mubarak - unescorted this time.
I still think the Saudis are not keen on going all the way, if only because they are not quite convinced of the feasibility of a Khaddam & Co scenario (or of any other). I'm sure that could change when a workable alternative has been found, one which suits the interested powers of course, not necessarily the Syrian people. In the meantime, they seem to prefer the idea of a weakened Syrian regime - but one which starts to do as it is told, once and for all. It is only a matter of time, and we will see whether the very vague Saudi (and Egyptian, but they are less important now) wish that Lebanese and Syrian media should stop escalating matters will be carried out. More importantly, is Sharaa really going to be interviewed by the UN commission? I just don't see it happening with Assad and will be the first surprised if it happens. The time when this could have been presented as a courtesy call has come and gone; meeting the UN means Bashar has capitulated.
As for Khaddam, he seems to still have a lot of things up his sleeve. My initial feeling about his coup de force last week has been strengthened; this is a lot bigger than just Hariri, although it is of course Hariri's assassination that triggered the sequence of events (or, as I've repeatedly maintained, it is the extension of Lahoud's term and the complete mismanagement of foreign affairs that started it all). I don't see a coup d'état (nor do I hope for one, as it would change nothing), nor a popular uprising - in fact, even the opposition in Syria couldn't wait to distance itself from Khaddam, obviously. But I do feel that something has shaken the regime and weakened it considerably, for the first time. It remains to be seen what will be the coup de grace.
Without wasting time on it, I should mention that the usual non-Syrian "Syria experts" have continued to say the most ludicrous things over the past week. To respond to but one thing, Syrians will actually still be talking about Khaddam for years (they still talk about Ali Douba and Hikmat Chehabi, amongst others, for crying out loud!). This is a story that concerns everyone, and it is an unprecedented turn of affairs. True, there were defections in Syria's political past, but none after a ruthless regime had been in power for over 35 years. Not even after Rifaat Assad's exile did people dare to talk about cracks in the regime - perhaps because there weren't really any.
And to mention another thing, while we're at it, Khaddam certainly did not try to impose Baathists in the last major reshuffle, only to be surprised by Bashar's "liberals"; on the contrary, and I know this for a fact without being able to talk openly about the people involved, Khaddam thought his choice for Minister of Economy - an independent liberal who worked for years in the US and Europe - was a done deal. Jamal Khaddam called the man in question ten minutes before the new government was going to be announced, asked him where he was (he was driving home), and told him to turn on the radio to hear his name. Ten minutes later, the government was announced - and he wasn't in it.
That doesn't mean Khaddam was the democratizing force he claims he was. As long as it served his purpose, he was more than happy to participate in the crackdown on the Damascus Spring, and on any attempt to spread civil society's word. But where Khaddam differs from the rest of the thugs abusing the country is that he did understand the international scene better, and he did benefit Syria more during his time. Small consolation.
