Razan Ghazzawi arrested in Syria

Prominent blogger Razan Ghazzawi is the latest victim of an increasingly desperate Syrian regime, arrested on her way to a media conference in Jordan on Sunday. The US-born human rights activist was arrested at the border while on her way to attend a workshop for advocates of press freedoms in the Arab world. Ghazzawi was arrested by police and immigration officials at the border while on her way to Amman to attend the conference as a media representative. While the Assad administration have said nothing, a local committee of activists confirmed the arrest yesterday.

The Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) said Ghazzawi worked for them as a media officer and was attending the workshop on their behalf. SCM said they condemned her arrest and the restrictions on civil society and freedom of expression in Syria. “SCM demands authorities stop abuse of systematic practice against bloggers, journalists, and Syrians citizens,” they said. “SCM demands to release the blogger Razan Ghazzawi immediately and unconditionally and to release all detainees in Syria and stresses on the need for Syrian authorities to respect their international commitments that have committed themselves to it through the ratification of the conventions and treaties international.” SCM said they held Syrian authorities responsible for any physical or psychological harm caused to her.

Ghazzawi has been a high profile documenter of violations and arrests in Syria since the start of the uprising in March. Bravely she was one of the few in Syria to blog under her real name. Her most recent post on 1 December announced another Syrian blogger and activist Hussein Ghrer had been freed after 37 days in Adra prison. “Hussein is going to be home tonight, where he will be holding his wife tight, and never let go of his two precious sons again,” Ghazzawi wrote. “It’s all going to be alright, and it will all be over very soon.” But now the nightmare has begun for Ghazzawi herself.

The arrest has sparked wide protests online. A Twitter campaign #freerazan has gone viral in the last 24 hours while own twitter feed @redrazan is being managed by friends. A Facebook page has also been set up since the arrest. A Moroccan blogging friend Hisham Almiraat said Razan was an indefatigable campaigner for human rights and freedom of expression in her country. “She has been advocating for the rights of political prisoners and minorities in Syria and has always fought for the rights of the Palestinians,” Almiraat said. “Razan is the most driven, thoughtful and freedom loving person I have ever met.”

A message on Ghazzawi’s blog shows what she told friends before she set off for Jordan. If anything happens to me, she said, “know that the regime does not fear those imprisoned but those who do not forget them”. This message suggests she knew she was taking a risk by travelling to the conference. The blog MidEast Youth is making much of her US citizenship in its calls for her freedom. While Ghazzawi admits she born in the US she never lived there. Her family lived for 10 years in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and are now back in Damascus. She graduated with a degree in English literature from Damascus University and did a further five years of study in Lebanon before returning home.

The administration she berated shows no sign of bending to intense international pressure either to release her or end atrocities against protesters. Instead the regime held bellicose war manoeuvres over the weekend. State-run television said the exercise was meant to test "the capabilities and the readiness of missile systems to respond to any possible aggression." The drill showed Syrian missiles and troops "ready to defend the nation and deter anyone who dares to endanger its security". Assad and his regime intend to tough this out with the support of Russia and China and won’t mind the collateral damage to the likes of Ghazzawi in the process.

The fall of Muammar Gaddafi

“While it is democratically not permissible for an individual to own any information or publishing medium, all individuals have a natural right to self-expression by any means, even if such means were insane and meant to prove a person's insanity” – Muammar Gaddafi, The Green Book
(photo: @Politisite)

The Arab Spring has delivered a rich summer harvest. Libya is the latest domino to tumble joining his neighbours in Egypt and Tunisia and it not hard to believe Syria and Yemen might be far behind, despite the grandstanding of their own long-standing leaders. For now, it is difficult not to feel almost universal joy at the astonishing fall of Gaddafi. With the exception of members of the regime and maybe Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the world is rejoicing Gaddafi’s 42 year reign is over. It's a big moment. Gaddafi has been in power since man first landed on the moon, and of civilian leaders in the last century only Fidel Castro, Chiang Kai-Shek and Kim Il-Sung have lasted longer.

His overthrow has been supported by the left and the right though some on the left agonised hard over the NATO bombing campaign. That campaign now looks to be the crucial turning point when Gaddafi threatened to crush the rebellion in March. Then when matters drifted into a three month stalemate, NATO’s bombing of Tripoli in May proved the spark for the revolution. Gaddafi had lost the support of people on the ground, a mood the rebels sensed as they moved eastwards.

It was a long fall from grace. Gaddafi was reasonably popular at home in the 1970s and 1980s and loved among the European left for the way in which he thumbed his nose at the western establishment. Few loved him for his own eccentric political philosophies. Gaddafi’s Third International Theory was taken from the mishmash of aphorisms that is the Green Book which prognosticated on matters as diverse as breast feeding and genetic differences and attempted to steer the country in a middle (or muddle) path between capitalism and communism.

In the 1980s his willingness to help western resistance organisations such as the IRA and Red Brigades put him more on the outer leading to pariah status after the 1986 Berlin disco bombing and 1988 Lockerbie bombing. Yet his power internally was never threatened. By the 2000s, he was making a remarkable international comeback. In 2008 200 African kings and tribal leaders pronounced him “king of kings” and then more importantly African leaders and presidents (many of whom he trained in Libyan camps) made him head of the AU in 2009.

The West was also having a rapprochement with Gaddafi. Bush’s wars after 9/11 left the west needing allies wherever they could find them. Tony Blair killed two birds with one stone when he praised Gaddafi in 2004 for his support in the War while lobbying for a half billion dollar investment in Libya for Shell. In the end it was the oceans of oil that brought Gaddafi back in from the cold. Never anxious to give Britain a leg up when it comes to petroleum deals, the US normalised relations for the first time in 28 years under President Bush in 2008.

The west finally felt they could do business with Gaddafi. But it seems the Libyan public did not agree. Gaddafi stifled resistance by ensuring almost one in five Libyans worked as informants. Surveillance was a normal part of every workplace. Military service has been compulsory since 1984. Gaddafi has survived coup attempts in 1969 (barely two months into the job), 1975, 1977, 1985 and 1993 and having emerged from the military in a coup himself has abolished traditional military rank to avoid having to deal with a powerful leader caste.

Ultimately Gaddafi made enough enemies who just needed an excuse to act. The Tunisian actions lit the tinder and sparked a civil war that took the east easily but which met sterner resistance on the road to Tripoli. Gaddafi’s willingness to bomb his own people showed his tenacity to survive above all else. But as Juan Cole notes, once enough of his heavy weapons capability was disrupted and his fuel and ammunition supplies blocked, the underlying hostility of the common people to the regime could again manifest itself, as it had in February. While his exact fate remains unknown at the time of writing, Gaddafi is a dead man walking. It is a triumph for NATO. The template for military action should now be used in Syria which has also turned its military against its own population.

Assad's moment of truth or dare

The Syrian city of Hama remains defiant despite a week-long assault by President Bashar al-Assad’s troops. On Thursday Syrian forces took Turkish journalists around the city to show them they were back in control. While the government claimed it was ridding Hama of “terrorists”, residents had a different story. They told of told of indiscriminate shelling by the army, snipers aiming at civilians and corpses piling up in the streets. Human rights groups say 1,700 people have died so far in the crackdown with casualties highest in Hama. (photo of Hama July protest:Wikipedia)

It is little surprise Hama should be at the heart of the revolution as it has long been a hotbed of anti-Ba’athist activity. Shortly after the Ba’athists first seized power in Syria in 1963, Islamic groups in Hama rose against the new secular regime. That rebellion was crushed as was another in 1982. Tens of thousands were killed in what became known as the Hama Massacre and parts of the city were flattened. There were echoes of that in July when 136 people were killed in Hama in the “Ramadan Massacre”. Syrian forces attacked demonstrators using tanks, artillery, and snipers.

Hama and Homs were among the earliest city to join this year’s Arab Spring but the two biggest cities Damascus and Aleppo (home to half the country’s population) have been mostly quiet. But that may be about to change. Reports just in from Al Jazeera north east Damascus is the focus of a major government offensive. As one protester puts it, the regime is feeling time is against it after strong Arab and international reaction against the crackdown. The security forces want to end anti-Assad protests within one or two weeks.

Assad belongs to the minority Alawite sect which has ties to Shia Islam. Alawites are 12 percent of Syria’s 22 million people but hold a vastly outsized portion of the high-ranking positions in the government and the military. Sunnis consider them heretics. When the French ruled in the early 20th century, they granted the Alawites their own state and they were autonomous Syrian independence in 1946. In the 1930s, the French rejected calls from Sulayman Al Assad against union with Syria. Since then, the Assad family has built its power in the Alawite political movement in Syria. When Hafez Al Assad seized power in an intra-party coup in 1970, most of the Alawite community lined up behind him. Hafez was a hardline ruler and it was he who authorised the 1982 Hama massacre. Bashar al Assad absorbed the lessons well after becoming president in 2000 on his father’s death.

Bashar was an accidental president. When his father died in June 2000, it only took hours for the Syrian parliament to vote to amend the country's constitution to allow al-Assad to become president lowering the age of eligibility of the president from 40 to 34. It had been elder brother Basil who was originally groomed as Hafez’s successor, and was chief of security. Meanwhile Bashar studied medicine in Britain, receiving a degree in ophthalmology, and headed the Syrian Computer Society. But in 1994 Basil was driving his Mercedes to the airport at high speed during a fog. He slammed into a roundabout and died instantly. Bashar was rushed home from London to rejoin the army.

The army remains Bashar’s greatest ally today. Like the president, most of the top brass are Alawite. Assad's brother Maher controls key military units packed with Alawite soldiers. One security expert told Reuters the regime had been careful about placing Alawite loyalists in all key positions. Some Sunni officers have risen to high ranks but have very little power to command troops. It is unlikely the army will switch sides any time soon.

If pressure has to be brought to bear, it must come from outside. The US added to its sanctions on Syria on 10 August to blacklist telco Syriatel and the Commercial Bank of Syria, a Syrian state-owned institution and its Lebanon-based subsidiary, Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank. They add to existing sanctions including freezing assets and bans on business dealings, personal sanctions on Assad, as well as Syria's vice president, prime minister, interior and defence ministers, the head of military intelligence and director of the political security branch. Internally, the protests have reached a point of no return. As the Economist puts it, the savagery of the regime’s response has convinced protesters that the movement has to continue or face revenge of unimaginable proportions.

Wikileaks cable reveals Syria's price for US support

Syrian is ready to cooperate with America again over Iraq but only at a price and flatly refuses to link an Israeli deal with Iran’s nuclear capability. These are the key messages revealed in one of the top secret cables published by Wikileaks this weekend. The cable “10Damascus8, Codel Gregg’s December 30 meeting with President” discusses “a frank one hour meeting” between Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad and six visiting US Senators Judd Gregg, Evan Bayh, Arlen Specter, Mike Enzi, John Cornyn and Amy Klobuchar on 30 December 2009. (Photo credit not known, sourced here)

Asad began the talks by saying he wanted a return of Turkish-facilitated indirect talks with Israel but said Syria's relationship with Iran should not be linked to Israeli peace negotiations. Syria's ties with Hamas and Hezbollah could be “satisfactorily resolved” only after peace was achieved. Asad said he wanted to see better relationships with the US but his foreign minister Walid al-Muallim said the ball was in the Americans’ court for taking the next positive step.

Asad called Iran the region’s most important country and said the West should acknowledged Iran's NPT-protected right to enrich uranium under IAEA monitoring. Instead of insisting Iran ship all of its Low Enriched Uranium at once as the West demands, Asad said Iran’s counter-offer to ship several batches of LEU for enrichment abroad was "reasonable". Asad said Iran was not interested in pursuing a nuclear weapon, but warned an Israeli military strike on its nuclear infrastructure would fail to end the program and would only increase Iran's determination.

Asad also refused to link Iran’s nuclear program with Israeli talks, arguing it would complicate both issues. Asad said eight months of indirect peace talks in May 2008 with Israel under Turkish auspices had achieved more than several years of direct negotiations with Israel in the 1990s. Direct talks failed because of the lack of "rules of negotiation." He said indirect talks represented the best way to establish terms of reference similar to those reached by James Baker in 1991. Asad urged the US and EU to support the Turkish initiative. “Israel's military superiority would not secure it from attack against missiles and other technologies,” he said.

Asad then bristled at suggestions Syria was allowing extremists across its borders into Iraq. Asad blamed the situation on the absence of political cooperation with the US. The Americans possessed a "huge information apparatus" but lacked the ability to analyse this information successfully. "You're failing in the fight against extremism,” he told the Senators. “While we lack your intelligence capabilities, we succeed in fighting extremists because we have better analysts.”

Asad said Syria had refused to cooperate with President Bush because it did not trust him and because his administration had wrongly accused Syria of supporting foreign fighters. When President Obama assumed office, Syria tried to be positive. Asad said he had shared the idea with Special Envoy Mitchell of a border security cooperation initiative with Iraq as a first step (the CIA analyst disputed this saying it was an American suggestion to which Syria reluctantly agreed).

Asad also compared the difficulty of patrolling the large Iraqi border with similar issues on US-Mexico border. "In the US you like to shoot (terrorists),” he said. “Suffocating their networks is far more effective.” Asad blamed “US mistakes in Iraq" for trouble in the region. The report said despite a shared interest with the US in ensuring Iraqi stability, Syria would not immediately jump to intelligence cooperation without ensuring its own interests would be respected. "I won't give it (intelligence cooperation) to you for free," Asad told the Senators.

The Senators had two other agenda items they wanted Syria to address: to facilitate the release of three detained Americans in Iran, and re-open the Damascus Community School. Asad said he was unfamiliar with the detained Americans issue but was “ready” to reopen the school after he shut it down in response to a US military attack in 2008 that killed seven Syrian civilians.

The cable went into a great more detail of the discussions than was revealed by Senator Specter’s account of the CODEL in the February congressional record. While Specter mentioned the Turkish solution and the "decoupling" of Iran he made no mention of the LEU offer or what Asad requested of the US in exchange for intelligence support.

The report is one of 15,000 Top Secret classified documents released by Wikileaks on the weekend. On Sunday they began the painstaking task of publishing over a quarter of a million leaked US embassy cables. The cables date from 1966 to February 2010 and contain confidential communications between the State Department and 274 embassies in countries throughout the world.

Aleppo citadels and carpets

Aleppo is one of the oldest cities in the world. There is evidence of continued occupation in this part of Syria dating back to 5000BC. Some of the crumbling streets look that old and are in need of serious attention. It was also a city that looked labyrinthine and I would need assistance to get around. I asked the guy who ran my fleabag hotel where I could get a map. He didn’t understand me so he walked me to the shop next door where the owner translated my question. He pointed down the road to the tourist police office.

There I was helped by a young, tall and smiling man whose slightly oily appearance somehow reminded me of Franz Kafka. His English wasn’t great but he wanted to be friendly. He was also inquisitive. What is your work? He asked. I said computers. He then asked for my email address “in case I have question about computers.” Feeling a bit dodgy about this request, I gave him a fake address. But perhaps I needn’t have been suspicious. He told me the citadel wasn’t very far away. He gave me a map, a thick book about Syria and walked me around the corner to the ATM (It didn’t work for me, but that was hardly his fault). I wanted to be quickly away from the scene of my “crime” in case he quickly emailed and got an “address not known” response.

The map wasn’t easy to interpret and none of the streets had English transliterations of their Arabic names. I walked in the direction of what I assumed to be the citadel only to realise I was completely wrong when I got as far as what was the main football stadium. I knew the 50m high citadel dominated the landscape but I couldn’t see it anywhere. Finally after a half hour of wondering through nondescript streets the mammoth structure came into view.

There have been castles of some sort on the site for 5,000 years. The prophet Abraham is said to have milked his sheep on the citadel hill. But warfare and earthquakes have long since taken care of whatever castle Abraham saw and the present structure dates from around the 13th century. There was just one entrance a 16th century fortified gateway, added by the Egyptian Mamlukes, and accessible only by an arched bridge.

The road to it was a maze through the old city. I went in through the Bab Antakya (Antioch Gate) which protected the city from the west. Once inside I passed through the long and winding covered souk that led to the citadel. Halfway through, I was approached by an eager merchant. "Hello, where you from, what’s your name?" he asked. I made the mistake of telling my details (luckily he did not ask for an email address). "Ah you come visit my shop, and see my rugs. I am mentioned in all the guide books. I am in Lonely Planet". I told him I was on my way to the citadel. “Ah, it is closed today, holiday. Come visit my shop.” I said I might visit his shop after I had checked out for myself whether the citadel was shut. After a few more protestations, I finally got rid of him. A few more sellers came up asking my name and where I was from. This time I steadfastly stayed true to my purpose and refused to communicate with any of them.

But Mr Lonely Planet was right – the citadel was closed. Though it was a Tuesday, it was a “holiday” of some sort. The doors on the arched bridge were firmly shut. But even closed, it looked impressive. It was an elliptical structure with stone walls 50m high and a 100m wide. The base had of almost half a kilometre and a width of 325m. It took a good 15 minutes to walk a loop of the base. The large moat surrounding the citadel was a defacto tip for Aleppo and strewn with rocks, household and street rubbish. Deep inside the moat was a boy, no older than ten, driving a bulldozer (perhaps legitimately, but in Syria you can never tell).

“Hey, my Ireland friend!” My reverie was rudely interrupted. Mr Lonely Planet had found me again. “You must come now and see my shop, I have wonderful carpets, very cheap!” I had to be very firm and tell him I wasn’t interested in carpets, however cheap. I fled the scene and walked rapidly back through the covered souk avoiding all eye contact with anyone who looked like they were about to offer me the deal of the century.

Surviving Syria

The Syrian Government showed last week it has no intention of conforming to democratic norms after the First Damascus Criminal Court sentenced a dozen leading activists on politically motivated charges. The 12 signatories of the so-called “Damascus Declaration” were found guilty on trumped-up charges of “weakening national sentiment” and “spreading false or exaggerated news which would affect the morale of the country.” The Damascus Declaration is a coalition of political parties and independent activists whose stated goal is to build internal support for peaceful democratic change in Syria. There was brief hope in the Damascus Spring of 2001 just after President Assad came to power but security crackdowns put paid to any lasting democratic breakthrough.

The country itself occupies an ambiguous status between rogue nation supporting Islamist groups while at the same time providing refuge for the US extraordinary rendition program. That sense of imprecise belonging is obvious on the streets of Damascus and Aleppo, the countries two biggest cities. I was unable to get money anywhere in Syria from an ATM and I assume there is no reciprocal agreement between the banks of Syria and Australia (there is certainly no diplomatic relations between the two). Yet when stuck for local currency I was able to walk into the most prominent building in Aleppo – the $US300 a night Sheraton and change euros into Syrian pounds with ease.

However I did not carry a lot of cash and my entire supply of US dollars was wiped out at the border from Turkey when they charged me a whopping $50 for the privilege of getting a visa to enter the country. I tried haggling the cost but the border officials weren’t souk salesmen looking for my custom - they genuinely didn’t care whether I came in or slunk off on the bus back to Turkey. The guy at the immigration desk also stole my only pen as his one broke. This was after a three hour wait filling in forms and waiting for the head honcho to stop arguing with a gaggle of burqa-clad harridans so he could frown at my passport from several different angles before letting me into his country. Oddly enough the one question they didn’t ask was whether I was intending to travel on to Israel.

So with little cash and even fewer opportunities to use credit cards I knew my stay in Syria would be short. The planned visits to Krak des Chevaliers and Palmyra would have to wait for another time. I would have to make a beeline for the Jordan border. Arriving late in Aleppo I stayed the night in a fleabag hotel. I walked to the city’s highlight, the 13th century citadel that soars over the town. Passing through the undercover souk en route, I was accosted by a carpet salesman who claimed to be mentioned in Lonely Planet. I resisted all attempts to visit his emporium but he did provide the useful information the citadel was shut for “a holiday”. I would have to admire it from the outside only.

I then walked to the train station where I bought a ticket to Damascus at 6am the following morning. With any luck, there might be a connection to Amman later that day. I was up early the following morning and off to the station in plenty of time for the train. But at the station, the conductor point blank refused to allow me board.

It turned out that yesterday, I was sold a ticket back to Turkey not Damascus (it was all in Arabic so I hadn’t a clue of the destination from reading it). Having come from Turkey I didn’t want to backtrack – I was headed for Jordan and Israel (though I wasn’t telling the Syrians that). Anyway with the aid of a few helpers and a few more of my ever dwindling supply of Syrian pounds I was scrambled onto the already departing Damascus train which left at 5.45am (the 6am train was for Antakya, Turkey). After 5 hours of scrubby desert country (and a long and indecipherable pantomime followed by Tom and Jerry on the TV in the carriage), the train dropped me off on the outskirts of Damascus (there is a city centre station which is mysteriously closed).

I asked was there a train to Amman today. "No", replied the station master. "Ok, what about tomorrow?" He shrugged his shoulders and said "maybe..." Insh’allah!
Undeterred, I started walking in what I thought had to be the direction of the city centre. Barely 200m away I found a bus station which had a bus to Amman in 5 hours time. I used up the last of my remaining local currency to buy the ticket and had nothing left over for the cost of them looking after my bags for a few hours. I had to trudge the one hour distance to the city with all my luggage.

I had time for a quick look round before I trundled back to the bus. Many buildings had President Bashar Assad prominent painted on to them, I saw a statue hailing the liberation of Jerusalem (1184 from the Crusaders not 1967 from the Arabs), a very colourful local funeral, and drank a strong coffee next to the Umayyad mosque with my last change and chatted with a retired elementary English teacher from Azerbajani Iran.

Then it was the long chug back to the bus before we set off for Jordan. We were close to the border when the driver shouted something in Arabic. We stopped at a market where everyone got off. I assumed it was only to stock up on food but one passenger showed me what he got and what I too needed. It was an exit visa costing another 500 pounds (about $15). This was more than what I had left in local currency. At this stage I feared I would be spending time in a Syrian prison until I miraculously located 10 euro which was buried deep in my wallet. The market keeper was only too happy to sell me the exit visa for hard currency and I was able to make good my escape.

When the bus finally crossed into Jordan I saw an ATM at the border which gave me money and next door was a shop selling Heineken beer. Though I didn’t buy any, I knew I was back in civilisation again.

Seriously Syria: attempting entente cordiale with the US

Israel and Syria continue to warm up to each other this week if a “fourth round of indirect diplomatic talks” can be said to produce heat. Both parties will meet in Turkey next week to discuss items such as the Golan Heights, water rights along the Jordan River, avoid war with each other, and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations. No easy tasks, for sure. But Syrian sources quoted in the Washington Post say that agreement is tantalisingly close in three of those areas: borders, waters and security. The last element, normalisation, is the sticking point, as it means normalisation with the US. This will not occur until there is a new occupant in the White House.

Even with a wait of a few months, this is cause for optimism. US-Syrian relations have long been marred by disagreements. In the Cold War era, Syria was considered a Soviet satellite state though its Ba’athist administration kept an eccentrically independent stance. Syria has seen both sides of political violence. In 1986, Syria was the victim of one of the largest terrorist attacks of the 80s when an explosion in Damascus killed 144 people and injured another 149. Syria blamed the attack on Israeli agents, but could provide no proof.

Syria was an active agent of terror too. That same year Syrians were suspected to be involved in the Berlin La Belle Disco attack. Two US servicemen and a Turkish woman died in the incident, for which Libya was blamed and attacked in supposed retaliation. Shaul Bakhash, writing in the New York Review of Books, said there was “persuasive evidence” two Jordanian brothers carried out the attack as Syrian recruits. However the information was not shared with other US media as the truth did not conveniently fit with the demonisation of Gaddafy’s Libya.

The same scenario applied a year earlier when the air terminals in Rome and Vienna were attacked on the same day. The US carried out retaliatory attacks on Libya, killing 100 people. The New York Times editorialised it was justified to “save the next Natasha Simpson” (an 11 year old US victim of the air terminal bombs) but pointed fail to provide any evidence Libya was the culprit. Meanwhile Italian and Austrian authorities said the perpetrators were trained in a Syrian-controlled area of Lebanon and had arrived in Europe via Damascus. When the Italian Interior Minister reiterated his belief Syria was responsible, the New York Times duly reported it without feeling the need to justify their earlier comment about Libya.

But Syria and the US have been allies too. In 1976, Syria entered Lebanon in 1976 with US approval in an attempt to end the Lebanese civil war. Instead the civil war dragged on another 15 years and Syrian troops stayed on in violation of UN Security Council resolution 520. According to Noam Chomsky, Syria help implement such massacres as occurred in the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel Al-Zaater, where thousands died at the hands of Syrian-backed Christian forces armed with Israeli weapons.

Today, the relationship between US and Syria remains ambiguous. While the State Department officially categorises Syria as a sponsor of terror, the US was happy to receive Syrian help about Islamist radicals suspected of having connections with Al Qaeda. Syria has been a willing participant in the US extraordinary rendition program, most notoriously in the case of Canadian IT programmer Maher Arar.

However relations cooled significantly after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told an American audience that Syria had gained membership of the “axis of evil” club in an update of George W. Bush’s tiresome metaphor of 2002. The US also accused Syria of aiding and abetting Iraqi insurgents while its likely involvement in the assassination of Lebanon PM Rafik Hariri also raised US hackles. The Bush administration have since tried and failed to oust the Assad Government by all means short of invasion.

But an Obama or McCain White House will not have the same level of vindictiveness. Syria and Lebanon are finally coming to terms with each other, with successful peace talks brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifah. The reconciliation between Syria and former colonial power France is also significant in geopolitical terms. According to Professor Hilal Khashan, chair of the political science department at the American University of Beirut, Syria is indirectly approaching the US through its talks with France and Israel. "The Damascus regime will only conclude a peace deal with Israel that is overseen by America," he says.

Lebanon deal brings end to political stalemate

After five days of talks in Qatar, Lebanese factions have agreed on a deal to end the country’s 18 month political stalemate and renewed fighting that claimed at least 67 lives this month. The outcome was greeting by celebratory gunfire in Beirut as Lebanese TV broadcast the Doha ceremony live which brought an end to five days of talks. But weary Government leaders have had to give way on major provisions to avoid the alternative of outright war. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said it was "an exceptional agreement at an exceptional time". Parliamentary secretary Saad Hariri also put the best spin on the outcome saying "I know that the wounds are deep, and my injury is deep, but we only have each other to build Lebanon.”

Other parties in the region were less circumspect. Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed the talks as a victory and called Qatari Emir (and Prime Minister) al-Thani to congratulate him on the agreement. Iranian News Agency ISNA also congratulated the Qataris for their efforts. They quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini who said “The Islamic Republic of Iran hopes that the Doha accord ... will provide a blossoming and brilliant future for the Lebanese.”

Iran and Assad had good reason to be happy – their proxy Hezbollah made major inroads in the talks. They have almost doubled their seats in cabinet from 6 to 11. Crucially, it now has enough seats in cabinet to give it veto power in the new national unity government. It also benefits from a new electoral law that divides Lebanon into smaller districts which will give the country’s sects better representation. Shiites make up between 30 and 40 percent of the Lebanese population, yet are accorded only 18 percent of parliamentary seats. However, one downside is the need to disarm – the deal states that the "use of arms or violence is forbidden to settle political differences".

The deal also paves the way for parliament to elect a new president. Lebanon has been without a president since November 2007. Al-Thani said the deal will be "carried out immediately” and he believes the election of a new president will occur within 24 hours. The post is likely to be filled by Army chief Michel Suleiman. The army is seen as the one institute that stands above the fray. Suleiman is a good compromise candidate and despite being a Maronite Christian is regarded by the country's rival political factions as relatively neutral. More importantly he has kept the army on the sidelines of civil conflict.

Several key issues remain unresolved after Doha. Among them are what will happen to Hezbollah’s large weapons cache, and thorny question of Lebanon’s quixotic relationship with Syria. The Lebanese government blamed Syria for the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But Syria has so far refused to co-operate with a UN investigation into the murder of Hariri and ten other government officials. In October 2005, UN investigator Detlev Mehlis told then Secretary-General Kofi Annan the plot to kill Hariri "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials”.

Nevertheless, one immediate benefit of the outcome of the talks was the end of a 180 day Hezbollah sponsored blockade of the centre of Beirut. The protest began on 1, December 2006 when the opposition set up a sprawling tent city on streets leading to the offices of the Prime Minister Siniora, in a bid to force him to step down. The camp site paralysed the commercial heart of the city and large parts of the centre became a ghost town as dozens of restaurants and businesses were forced to shut down. Today, trucks started clearing the tent city under the orders of Opposition parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri. While protesters headed home, workers returned to the city to pick up the pieces. Fadi Harb, an employee at a nearby cell phone shop, said happily, "This agreement means calm, peace, security, stability and the future."

Six Day War: consequences keep coming

On the fortieth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Amnesty International issued its damning 2007 report on “Israel and the Occupied Territories.” The report (pdf) condemns Israel’s policy of military checkpoints, blockades, and a 700km fence inside the West Bank which curtails movement between communities and is destroying the Palestinian economy. Amnesty say the restrictions are not there to prevent suicide bombing in Israel but instead are imposed on Palestinians to benefit Israeli settlers in the area.

The report was issued on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the Middle East’s most defining event: the Six Day War which started on 5 June, 1967. The war changed the political map and its impact is felt to this day. The war itself was swift and severe. Israel gained a spectacular victory over its Arab neighbours. Egypt lost Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, Syria lost the Golan Heights, and Jordan lost East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Arab countries call this war an-Naksah (the setback).

The roots of the war lie in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. In 1956, Egypt nationalised the canal which was already off-limits to Israeli shipping. Israeli forces attacked the Sinai while British and French paratroopers took back control of the canal. The US demanded British withdrawal from the canal and Israeli troops from Sinai. A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was deployed to the Canal Zone and the Sinai to keep the peace.

The next major flashpoint was over access to water in the early 1960s. Israel began by withdrawing water from the Jordan River to fund its irrigation projects in the arid south. Syria retaliated by building diversion works to take the waters from the Banias Stream out of the Sea of Galilee and into a dam for use by Syria and Jordan. Israel attacked the dam works in 1965 precipitating tit-for-tat low level violence between the countries for the next 18 months.

The third escalation was the Samu incident in 1966. An Israeli border patrol struck a mine and three soldiers were killed and six others injured. Israel blamed West Bank terrorists and launched “Operation Shredder” a revenge attack into Jordan. A 4,000 strong force entered the small village of Es Samu near Hebron, blew up 50 houses and killed 15 Jordanian soldiers and three civilians.

All throughout May 1967 tension increased as the Arab side prepared for war. The Soviet Union issued a false warning that Israel was massing troops in the north in preparation for an attack on Syria. Egypt and Syria already had a military alliance from the year before and Jordan joined in at the end of May. Nasser’s Egypt demanded the evacuation of UNEF from the Sinai. The Egyptian navy also blocked the strategically vital Straits of Tiran at the bottom of the Gulf of Eilat between Sinai and Saudi Arabia. The move effectively blocked Israeli vessels from getting in and out of its southern port of Eilat. With forces from other sympathetic Arab countries joining the force, Israel was confronted with an army of 465,000 troops, 2,880 tanks and 810 aircraft massed at their borders.

Alarmed by the build-up, Israel began a call-up of reserve forces and tried to find a political solution to the growing crisis. UN Secretary General U Thant visited Cairo. He agreed to remove the UNEF troops and recommended a two-week moratorium on aggressive acts in the Straits of Tiran. He also asked for a renewed diplomatic effort to solve the crisis. The US, preoccupied by the Vietnam conflict, was slow to move and its mediation plans were overtaken by events. Convinced that the Arab forces were about to attack, Israel drew up its own counter-offensive plans.

On 5 June, Israel decided on a pre-emptive strike. They took just three hours to destroy the bulk of Egyptian air force on the ground. Coming in below radar cover they killed 100 Egyptian pilots and destroyed 300 of the country’s 450 Soviet-made planes by the end of the day. With air superiority assured, Israeli army divisions swept through Gaza and into the Sinai towards the canal.

The main Sinai Desert battle took place at Abu Ageila (pdf) near the town of Arish in the north of the peninsula. This was a key battlefield in 1956 and now again eleven years later. Major General Ariel Sharon’s forces encircled the town and attacked Egyptian positions from the front, flanks and rear. Egyptian defences, ringed by mines, proved to be stronger than the Israelis expected. After two days, sappers cleared the minefield and the Israeli infantry broke through the trenches. The road to the Central Sinai was now open for the Israelis. When the Egyptian high command heard about the fall of Abu-Ageila, they ordered the retreat of all forces from the Sinai. The Egyptian campaign was effectively over.

Meanwhile Israel issued an ultimatum to Jordan to keep out of the war. Jordan refused and instead convinced that Egypt’s air force was winning the war, issued an artillery barrage on West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Israel counterattacked. On 7 June the order was given to capture the Old City of Jerusalem. Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin marched through to the Zion Gate formally mark the Jews’ return to their historic capital’s holiest site. At the Western Wall, army chaplain, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, blew a shofar (kosher instrument made from ram’s horn) to celebrate the event. Within three days they had comprehensively defeated the Jordanian army and captured all of biblical Judea and Samaria.

One day later, Israel attacked Syria. Backed by the unimpeded fire from the Israeli air force, troops entered the Golan Heights in force. Within 24 hours four brigades broke through onto the plateau. Two more groups joined them from the north and south in a pincer movement that effectively ended Syrian resistance. Israel captured the entire Heights including its now abandoned principle city of Quneitra. Fighting stopped along a defacto border that became known as the Purple Line.

By 10 June, the war was over and the parties signed a ceasefire. Israel had more than tripled the size of the area it controlled, from 20,000 square kms to 67,000 square miles. It controlled the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Sinai and Gaza. Israel now ruled more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were hostile to their new political masters. Another 325,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank fled to other parts of Jordan where they became a significant and troublesome minority group.

Israel itself thrived as a result of the war. Beforehand it was a small country of two million people surrounded by 80 million Arabs. But now the Arab world knew it could never push the Jewish state into the sea. Armed with this self-confidence and renewed energy, Israel attracted major immigration from the West and more than a million immigrants from the Soviet Union. Its population has tripled to 7.1 million (including 1.4 million Israeli Arabs), its gross national product grew by 630 percent and per capita income tripled to $21,000.

In November 1967, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which it hoped would established a formula for Arab-Israeli peace. Israel would withdraw from territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace with its neighbours. This resolution has served as the basis for peace negotiations from that time on. But the emerging Palestine Liberation Organisation embittered by the plight of their people refused to accept the resolution and turned to the terrorism that would define their struggle for next 25 years.

Some of the geographical consequences of the war were eventually unravelled. Israel withdrew from Sinai after the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The withdrawal allowed Nasser’s successor Sadat to make a historic peace with Israel. The 1993 Oslo accords marked the beginning of a political dialogue between Israel and Palestine and allowed Jordan to make peace with its old enemy across the river. Israel and Syria maintain an uneasy peace. But the demography of the entire region has changed. 450,000 Israeli settlers now live in illegal settlements in the West Bank. They brought with them a biblical sensibility that informed their belief that this was ‘their country’. Israel remains defiant that an undivided Jerusalem is their capital. Six days have caused forty years of pain that still refuses to go away.

Enter Syria stage right

Syria was the centre of one of the most ancient civilizations on earth. The Syrian Ministry of Tourism claims “every Person has two homelands, his own and Syria”. The quote is originally by French archaeologist Andre Parrot who, in 1933, discovered and excavated the Mari kingdom site which flourished in Syria the 3rd millennium BC. It remains an important country today. It has major oil reserves and occupies a strategic position bordering Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. These latter two countries have been involved in escalating tensions and the link with Syria is bubbling under the surface.

The UN is planning to send negotiators to Syria to defuse the tensions between Israel and Lebanon. However Syria has rejected one of the three negotiators Norwegian diplomat Terje Roed-Larsen. He caused offence when he overstepped his mandate in dealing with implementation of a September 2004 resolution which called for Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, and the disarming of militias especially Hezbollah which controls southern Lebanon.

Syria has been heavily involved in Lebanese politics for thirty years. In 1976, they sent an invasion force of 40,000 troops to prop up the regime of Suleiman Frangieh. Although Frangieh represented a Maronite Christian faction, he had known then Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad who was following a secular, pro-Soviet agenda (which earned him the wrath of Islamists in Syria). Syrian troops entered Lebanon, occupying Tripoli and the Bekaa Valley and imposed a short-live ceasefire. The Arab League then proposed that the Syrian troops stay as a peace-keeping force. The Phalangists Maronite militia backed by Israel then emerged as an enemy of Syria and President Assad shored up his force by placing ground-to-air missiles in Lebanon.

Israel invaded southern Lebanon to drive out the PLO bases and besieged Beirut. A UN delegation restored a temporary peace and Israeli and Syrian troops withdrew from the country. Complex internecine violence remained through the 80s between Lebanon’s various ethnic clans. The Taif Agreement of 1989 gave a prominent role to Syria in the implementation of peace for the country. Maronite General Aoun denounced the Taif agreement and launched an unsuccessful ‘war of liberation’ against Syria and their Lebanese allies. Though hostilities formally ended in 1991, Syrian troops remained in the country for another 15 years. Their departure was hastened by the assassination of Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in a car bomb explosion. Though never proven, Syria was deemed responsible for the attack, due to its extensive presence in Lebanon and to the public rift between Hariri and Damascus over the constitutional amendment extending pro-Syrian President Lahoud's term in office. Popular demonstrations known as the “cedar revolution” allied to international pressure forced Syria to remove its remaining 15,000 troops in April, 2005.

Syria is again under pressure from the US and Israel not to get involved in the Lebanon crisis. Israel has signalled it does not want an all-out conflict with Damascus and its only target is Hezbollah. It did claim however that Syria is resupplying Hezbollah with rockets. Israel claims that most of the rockets that have dropped on Haifa in the last week were manufactured in Syria. Syria removed its troops from Lebanon under UN supervision 12 months ago after the international outcry over the assassination of five-time premier Hariri. But with the Gaza offensive a month old and the two-week Lebanon operation, Israel cannot afford to immediately open a third front. For that they require the support of the US.

The US has repeatedly called for regime change in Syria and believes it to be a sponsor of terrorism. They are supported by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. On Wednesday he chillingly called for the elimination of “the threat posed by the axis of terror and hate - Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran". Israeli MP Effi Eitam, a member of the foreign affairs and defence parliamentary committee made it clear what the intention when he told AFP: "we will have to take care of Syria at some point.”