Being nice to Syria will lead nowhere
By Barry Rubin

In the Middle East, violence is not the result of poor communication but a
tool for political gain. Nothing proves that point better than Syria's
successful use of violence and terrorism to promote its interests. No amount
of dialogue is going to change that reality.

Now Syria is using a Palestinian front group to start a war inside Lebanon,
just as it employed another Lebanese client organization, Hizballah, to
battle Israel last year. The Syrian government's message is simple: Lebanon
will know no peace until it again becomes our satellite.

In two years, 15 major terrorist attacks targeted Lebanon's
independent-minded leaders. Most notorious was the assassination of popular
former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005, which also killed 22
bystanders.

In response, the UN set up an international investigation whose interim
reports pointed the finger at Syria and even, in unpublished drafts, at
Bashar's closest relatives for the killing. Last week, the United States,
Britain, and France introduced a resolution in the UN to set up a tribunal
to try the murderers.

Since the tribunal is in cooperation with Lebanon, Syria must ensure that
country's parliament vetoes the plan. Suddenly, bombs start exploding in
Beirut and a Syrian-backed Islamist group stages an uprising against the
government.

People get the hint. Cross Syria and you get hurt. To hold the tribunal
given events in Lebanon, says South African diplomat Dumisani Kumalo, "We
would need to have our heads examined. We were for going very slow to start
with. Now we are even slower."

What is less understood is how the regime's radical strategy is used at home
and why this makes it impossible to gain anything from engaging with Syria.
Like other Middle Eastern dictatorships, Syria's rulers face a paradox. How
to stay in power after failing so completely? The economy is a mess, there
is little freedom, and the regime is dominated by a small Alawite minority
which is both non-Muslim and historically secular.

Since taking power in 2000 on his father's death, Bashar has met this
challenge. He sends terrorists against Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and even the
U.S. military but nobody retaliates in kind against him. At home, the regime
sounds increasingly Islamist; abroad it is the biggest sponsor of radical
Islamist groups in the region.

As a result of their interests and as a matter of survival, Syria's rulers
need anti-Americanism and the Arab-Israeli conflict to mobilize support and
distract from their failings. For example, when Syrians demanded reforms
after Bashar took power, then Vice-President Abd Halim Khaddam told a
meeting that nothing could change as long as Israel controlled the Golan
Heights. But actually getting back this land would be disastrous for the
regime since making peace with Israel would dissolve that excuse but also
because it would open massive demands by its own citizens for democracy,
prosperity, and reform.

Bashar has even declared a new doctrine he calls "Resistance" which combines
Arab nationalism and Islamism. The West's goal, he claims, is to enslave the
Arabs. The mistake made by other Arabs was to abandon war. "The world will
not be concerned with us and our interests, feelings, and rights unless we
are powerful" and victory requires "adventure and recklessness." Any who
disagree are mere "political mercenaries" and "parasites."

This mandatory radicalism ensures that Syria interprets Western concessions
and confidence-building measures as acts of surrender, proving its strategy
is working. Years of dialogue and numerous visits by secretaries of state
could not even get Syria to close the terrorist offices in Damascus, much
less make any policy changes.

Anwar al-Bunni, a democratic dissident, explained in 2003 that the only
thing that held back the regime was fear of America. Only due to "the fright
it gave our rulers, that we reformers stand a chance here."

But once U.S. members of Congress flocked to Damascus, offering words of
praise and advocating détente, Bunni was proven right. He was sentenced on
trumped-up charges to five years' imprisonment.

Being nice to Syria will lead nowhere because the regime thrives on conflict
and its demands-including a recolonized Lebanon--are too much against
Western interests to meet. U.S. policy should treat Syria's regime as a
determined adversary whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of
America, no matter who sits in the White House.
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Barry Rubin is author of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan),
director of the GLORIA Center, and editor of MERIA Journal.