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| Volume X, Fall 2003, Number 3 |
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| EXCERPT: Syria at the Crossroads |
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| Claude Salhani |
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Mr. Salhani is foreign editor and political analyst with United Press International in Washington, DC.
The "pacification of Syria" repre-
sents an important stepping stone
towards the final destination
charted in President Bush's Middle East Roadmap. While, in essence, the much-talked-about plan is aimed at solving the longstanding Palestinian-Israeli dispute, it would be difficult to separate the rest of the region from the overall blueprint needed to bring about lasting stability to the Levant. "Syria, Lebanon and Palestine are interwoven," Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, told me in Beirut last spring, only a few days after American tanks rolled into Baghdad, toppling Saddam's statues and forever changing the landscape of the Middle East. "You cannot solve the problems of one without the other," added the militant Shia cleric, speaking in his Beirut stronghold.
Indeed, the politics of the region are such that it would prove highly ineffective to try to pave a road to peace that passes through Jerusalem and Ramallah or Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh without having it go via Damascus and Beirut as well. For the peace to hold, it is imperative to incorporate all the pieces of the complicated Mideast mosaic simultaneously. Otherwise, it is likely to crumble.
Immediately following Saddam Hussein's fall from power, it appeared for a brief while as though the United States was likely to keep its tanks rolling from Baghdad to Damascus. To maintain the momentum of their victory in Iraq, and with their eyes firmly set on the Roadmap, some in the Bush administration believed no time should be wasted in bringing Syria into the fray. Understandably, as Washington rattled its sabers, the mood in Damascus (and Beirut) was one of great apprehension. Many in the leadership, from President Bashar al-Asad downwards, repeatedly asked the question, "Are we next?" And for a few tense days in mid-April, it felt as though Damascus was clearly the next target. President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and even the usually more dovish Secretary of State Colin Powell kept throwing accusations at Syria that sounded frighteningly similar to those initially hurled at Saddam in the buildup to the Iraq war.
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