Was it really Pelosi in Damascus?
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - "Our meeting with the president [Bashar al-Assad] enabled us to communicate a message from Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert that Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. These were the words of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, during her groundbreaking two-day visit to Damascus.

Strange, but if Olmert wanted to send a message to the Syrians, why would he choose Pelosi as the messenger, given the variety of other choices he has at the Bush White House and the US



Department of State? Isn't Olmert a strong ally of President George W Bush? And isn't Bush very much opposed to Pelosi's visit to Syria?

That's what the US media have been saying this week. Don't Bush and Olmert disagree with Pelosi on most of her views with regard to Syria, Iraq and Palestine? Pelosi, after all, wants to engage the Syrians. Bush and Olmert do not. Pelosi wants the US Army out of Iraq. The two men do not. There are two possible answers to this question.

One would be that Olmert decided to break with the Bush administration after the Democratic election victory last year and rely on the president's opponents in Congress for his Middle East diplomacy. That certainly is unlikely. Or maybe Pelosi was actually in Damascus at the request of Bush himself.

All the talk about Bush being opposed to her visit, therefore, would be no more than media jargon, intended for local consumption in the United States. This would mean that Pelosi was in Damascus because Bush wanted her to be in Damascus. Opposing the visit would save him a lot of face, given all his rising rhetoric in recent years on Syria.

Indeed, Bush has raised the anti-Syrian tone to such an extent that it has became too difficult for him to retreat without embarrassing himself. Bush realized he was wrong - the Syrians were right - and he needed a back channel to Damascus to help bring about stability to Lebanon and Palestine - and, more important, Iraq.

True, Pelosi was carrying a message from the Israelis, but the real substance of her visit was a message from Washington, DC. The real message was: we need the Syrians.

Regardless of who were the architects of Pelosi's visit, what mattered to the Syrians was that she was in Damascus. Whether she came with a peace offer from Israel or a truce from Washington, they welcomed her as a guest of honor, with red carpets in the Syrian capital.

She commented, "We were very pleased with the reassurances we received from the president [Assad] that he was ready to resume the peace process. He was ready to engage in negotiations [for] peace with Israel."

Another question arises from Israel's peace offer: given the collective Arab endorsement of the Saudi plan at the latest Arab summit in Riyadh (supported by Syria), which calls for peace between Israel and 22 Arab states, why did Olmert convey this message only to Damascus? Hadn't Bush said in December 2004 that Syria is a "very weak country" that "just has to wait" until all other pending issues are solved in the Middle East before restarting its talks with Israel?

And is Olmert in a position to talk peace, after his blundering failure in the war in Lebanon last year where none of his declared objectives were met? The two Israeli soldiers taken by Hezbollah are still in Lebanon, after all, and Hezbollah is still armed and strong. Can a man who lost a war have enough credibility to talk peace? One needs to have won a war to talk peace. That was the case with former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, who had enough legitimacy to talk peace with the Palestinians because of his war history. It was also the case with former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. Not Olmert. Certainly not after the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Pelosi added that her meeting with the Syrian president was "very productive" and added, "We called to the attention of the president our concern about fighters crossing the Iraq-Syria border to the determent of the Iraqi people and our soldiers."

But something is wrong here. Hadn't Colonel William Crowe, the US officer who controls the Iraqi side of its border with Syria, spoken of the number of fighters coming in from Syria in January, saying, "There is no large influx of foreign fighters that come across the border"?

The final questions arise from Pelosi's trip to Beirut, before going to Syria. Speaking with authority, she told the Lebanese that the US "will not bargain over Lebanon" and that her visit to Syria "ought not to be considered as meaning a change in US policy concerning Lebanon". If Pelosi was not representing the White House, how could she then give remarks on official US policy in the Middle East?

Didn't the Bush administration say that she did not represent the official government in her Middle East tour? Or was she mandated to speak officially on Lebanon, and unofficially on Syria? She then said from Beirut, after meeting with parliamentary majority leader Saad al-Hariri, "The road to solving Lebanon's problems passes through Damascus." She added that her visit did not fall within the framework of "illusions" but "great hope".

Amusingly, Lebanon's anti-Syrian Future TV said that Pelosi's trip was intended to scold the Syrians and send them strong-worded messages from Washington. She didn't seem to be scolding the Syrians - at least not on television - and was very pleased with her visit to the Old City, where she visited the Omayyad Mosque, and described Damascus as "wonderful".

The Americans have been searching for ways to re-engage the Syrians in recent weeks. Pelosi in Damascus, showering the Syrians with praise - and confidence - was an excellent way to do that. The Americans realized, as was stated in the Iraq Study



Group Report, that Iraq cannot be stabilized without the Syrians and the Iranians.

Talking to both Syria and Iran would simply be too difficult for Washington. Yet continuing to isolate - and ignore - both countries would also be impossible. The United States has a choice: it's either Syria or Iran. It chose Syria. That country, after all, can be talked to. Its leaders have never been anti-American (not in the Iranian sense of the word) and tension did not arise until the US invaded Iraq in 2003.

Syria has no ambitions in Iraq, unlike the Iranians, and has much to gain from combating Islamic fundamentalism and refusing the partitioning of Iraq. For a while it was feared that there was only very little the Syrians could offer in Iraq, given that they do not control the insurgency and are only influential within parts of the Iraqi Sunni community. The other part is controlled by Saudi Arabia, and as long as the Syrians and Saudis were arguing over Lebanon, the Iraqi Sunni street would remain divided.

And if it did, the Syrians would fail in Iraq. That is no longer a problem, given the rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia at the latest Arab summit. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia re-established his warm relations with Damascus, partly because he realizes that the Syrians are pivotal for stability in the region, but mainly to try to bring Syria out of the Iranian fold and back into the Arab one.

However, by no means does the world want to end the Syrian-Iranian alliance. On the contrary, it wants to invest in it to moderate Iranian behavior. For a while the US was puzzled on what to do with the Tehran-Damascus alliance. "Do we break it, or do we use and make the best out of it?" That has been settled.

Coinciding with Pelosi's visit to Damascus was the groundbreaking news from Tehran declaring that the 15 British sailors and marines taken hostage by Iran on March 23 were being set free. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad called it a "gift" to Great Britain.

Shortly before Ahmadinejad's announcement, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualim had announced that his country was mediating with the Iranians to set the British sailors free. In a press conference before Pelosi's departure, Moualim said British Prime Minister Tony Blair's special envoy, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, had contacted Assad for that purpose. Earlier, Moualim told the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba that Syria was using "calm diplomacy" to solve the British-Iranian crisis.

This is testimony to what the Syrians can actually do to influence Iran. They can be problem-solvers, rather than problem-creators. This message has now been heard loud and clear in Washington.

Last summer, voices were heard in the United States calling on Syria to use its influence to do the same with Hezbollah. It was believed that the only party able to moderate Hezbollah in Lebanon was Syria, either directly, through its excellent relations with its secretary general Hasan Nasrallah, or indirectly, through Iran.

At the time, former US secretary of state Warren Christopher wrote an article in the Washington Post recalling how during his term in office he had called on the Syrians twice, once in June 1993 when Israel launched attacks into Lebanon in what was called "Operation Accountability" and again in April 1996 during the "Grapes of Wrath". Both times he had sought the assistance of Syria's late president Hafez al-Assad to calm the situation. Christopher wrote: "We never knew exactly what the Syrians did, but clearly Hezbollah responded to their direction." And now, the Syrians have also done "something" with Tehran in regard to the crisis over the sailors.

All US attempts at engaging the Syrians, despite the cosmetic meeting in Baghdad on March 10, have to date not been serious. Nor was the visit of Ellen Sauerbrey, the US assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, to Damascus last month.

That has changed. The Americans are very clear in what they want from Syria. Last October, Sheinwald visited Syria after visiting Washington and made his claims to the Syrians. Prime on the list, which was understood to be on the US agenda as well, was the issue of Iraq. Syria has shown a lot of cooperation in this issue.

Among other things, it had lengthy discussions with Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Boulani about the Syrian-Iraqi border, welcomed Sunni leader Harith al-Dari to Damascus to talk about the insurgency, and received US-backed President Jalal Talabani in Syria as well. This in addition to opening an embassy in Baghdad and thereby giving a lot of Arab credibility to the administration of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

More is to come, the Syrians promise. They are now waiting to see what the Americans will give back in return. The results might be seen when Pelosi returns to Washington.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.