Syrian skills

Against the odds, Damascus has emerged triumphant from attempts to isolate and diminish it, writes Mustafa Labbad*

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Once again, Syria has moved to the regional centre stage following the recent summit in Damascus that brought the Syrian president together with the emir of Qatar, the Turkish prime minister and the French president. The four-party summit epitomised the current balances of power and intersecting interests in the region. Moreover, it established Damascus as the "counterpoise" on the regional scale and the "pacesetter" of the Levant.

Not only did this summit highlight Syria's geopolitical centrality as key to the equations in the Arab east, it also throws into relief the extraordinary bankruptcy of the "moderate axis" in the region. Moreover, the presence at this summit of Qatar, head of the Gulf Cooperation Council and a Washington ally yet with well-known connections with Iran; of Turkey with its regional weight and US links; and France with its obvious international weight, have made it palpably clear that the international and regional isolation that had been imposed on Damascus since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri is now definitely a thing of the past.

Syria has been and remains a fundamental part of the ebb and flow of regional tensions due to its capacity as that crucial link in the Iranian-led alliance that helps regulate Iranian influence in Iraq and connect that Iranian influence in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet, in spite of its alliance with Iran, Damascus has succeeded in juggling regional divides and contradictions to its best advantage. Nothing makes this clearer than its alliances with two major regional powers, Iran and Turkey. For, in addition to being part of the Iranian axis, Syria is simultaneously the closest Arab country to Turkey in terms of mutual interests. It is via Ankara that Damascus is currently negotiating with Tel Aviv, enhancing Syria's ability to influence other issues of import in the region. We could thus say that Syria is effectively the pivot in the balance between all non-Arab forces in the region.

Syria's superb negotiating abilities are all the more impressive when we compare them to those of Saudi Arabia. In spite of the enormous surge in oil prices (earning it more than $1 billion a day) and its strong alliance with Washington, Riyadh could not sustain its drive to keep Syria regionally isolated. As a result, Syria was therefore eventually able to dismantle the regional and international alignment against it, the walls of which tumbled upon the visit by Sarkozy, representing both France and the EU. Clearly, Damascus would not have been able to achieve this breakthrough had it not been a brilliant tactician capable of capitalising on its importance to various regional parties so as to manoeuvre itself into increasingly better negotiating positions. In addition to such dexterity, it exhibited a thorough understanding of the language of mutual interests and its impact on international politics. Particularly indicative of this was its conclusion of a petroleum drilling deal with France's gigantic Total petroleum company, which forms the kernel of industrial capitalism in France.

The Arab Republic of Syria is a mosaic of the ethnic and sectarian blend of the Levant, as well as a miniature of that region's geopolitical balances. It is not a coincidence, therefore, that Syria was the heart and substance of the Sykes-Picot Agreement that drew the lines and set the fates of the Arabs of the Levant from 1916 onwards. Syria stands in Turkey's way to the Arabian Peninsula and in Iraq's way to the rest of the Middle East. At the same time, Syria is Lebanon's geographical breathing space, and the source of Lebanon's reverberating significance, and it is Palestine's geographical and historical lung. Indeed, in a strong sense, the concept of the nation state does not fully apply to Syria in view of the absence of the historical root to the modern Syrian state in its current borders.

This constitutional reality has compelled this state to cling to an Arab identity as a way to preserve itself as an abstract political entity. Arabism was not so much a political choice for Syria (as it was for Egypt, for example) as it was a geographical, historical and demographic fate. This fact leads us to an extremely important geopolitical realisation, which is that Syria is the lynchpin for playing a regional role in the Levant. Historical proof of this reality is to be found in the regional roles Egypt played from the age of Mohamed Ali to the present. Recently, however, Cairo seems to have -- for the first time since the creation of the modern Egyptian state -- abandoned its own regional ambitions and almost clashed with Damascus within the framework of the Saudi-led "moderate axis" that lacks both a project and legitimacy. Nevertheless, in spite of its considerable financial and international and regional strategic assets, Saudi Arabia lacked the necessary political and tactical skills to support so much as a minimal level of Arab interests in the region.

In the end, one can only go with the saying, "If you're not in the game, root for the best player." After all, to be fair, Syria's consummate adroitness in manipulating regional power balances and manoeuvring between its various polls has enabled it to safeguard its political regime and evade a barrage of international pressures. Who knows? Perhaps Cairo might be inspired by such dynamics, against the backdrop of recent developments and what awaits the region, to step out of the sidelines and back into the game. Perhaps, too, this would bring about a more equitable distribution of the cards in the regional deck.

* The writer is director of Al-Sharq Centre for Regional and Strategic Studies.