Assad: A Master of Diplomacy and Offender of Americans

As the U.S.-brokered cease-fire between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah takes effect, the earlier humiliation of Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Damascus is swept under the carpet. Last Tuesday, Syrian President Hafez Assad refused to see the American envoy, claiming he was too busy with previously scheduled meetings with Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s prime minister. The snub apparently infuriated President Bill Clinton. But offending American envoys has become, if not a habit, at least a useful way for Assad to magnify his stature as a key player in Middle East diplomacy.

The “Assad enigma”--a rigid negotiator, on the one hand, while a patient, interested listener, on the other--has time and again misled Israeli, American and Western decision-makers to believe that the 70-year-old Syrian leader has changed his spots. His mere readiness to talk has often mistakenly been interpreted as a sign of flexibility. Consider:

The Israeli media recently reported that even the cautious Yitzhak Rabin was enchanted by the “sphinx of Damascus,” as Assad is dubbed in the region. Before his assassination last November, Rabin had conveyed to Syria, via the Clinton administration, his willingness to make a deal: an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights in return for a full-fledged peace treaty that would include open borders, free movement of peoples and goods, diplomatic relations, trade links and the demilitarization of the Golan Heights. The same proposal was, more or less, iterated by Shimon Peres, Rabin’s successor as prime minister. But Assad surprised the Israelis, as well as the Clinton administration, by not jumping on what most observers see as sincere and far-reaching Israeli concessions. Instead, he presented a new set of conditions.

In the same rigid manner, Assad refused most of last week to compromise in the mini-war in Lebanon. “Assad is not a flexible leader; he never has been one,” contends a former senior Israeli intelligence official. “His regime, however, is guided by a strong pragmatism and a sense of real politics.” According to this intelligence expert, “when Assad believes that Syria’s national interests demand it, he will create the impression that he is changing.” He has done so since the fall of the Soviet Union, realizing that his main financial, political and military benefactor has disappeared. Because of this, Assad needs to improve his relations with Western Europe and the United States.

Indeed, since 1970, when, as defense minister, Assad led a military coup and seized power, his narrow pragmatism has been a well-known stabilizing factor in the Middle East. In October 1973, he joined President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in surprising Israel in the October war and reclaimed parts of the Golan Heights. But the Israeli counterattack blocked Assad from achieving his real goal--the liberation of all the occupied Arab lands--and dragged him into indirect negotiations with Israel. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy produced a disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria in 1974 and gained Assad the admiration of Kissinger as a tough negotiator.

Assad’s pragmatism and caution are evident in the way he has kept, for 20 years, to the letter of his agreement with Israel over the Golan Heights. Despite his support for the most radical Palestinian and international terrorists, he has never allowed them to use Syrian territory as a launching pad against Israeli targets across his own border. Instead, Assad has used Lebanon to engage Israel in an indirect, small-scale war of attrition. The irony is that he has controlled Lebanon and turned it into a client state only after getting Israel’s tacit agreement to partition Lebanon into two spheres of influence, one Israeli, the other Syrian. Israel had hoped that by allowing the Syrian occupation, it would gain peace and tranquillity on its northern border.

But Syria frustrated Israel’s expectations. Assad has allowed Hezbollah to launch rocket attacks against Israeli town and villages, which led most recently to the Israeli retaliatory operation code-named “Grapes of Wrath.”

In the current crisis, Assad has, once again, demonstrated his balancing skills on the Mideast diplomatic tightrope. He has used the militant fundamentalist organization as a lever against Israel even as he promises Christopher that he will curb their activities. The cease-fire reached late last week includes a written promise from Syria that it will restrain Hezbollah from attacking Israel and forbid the fundamentalists from using populated areas as rocket-launching pads. For its part, Israel pledged to stop all attacks against Lebanese civilians and to negotiate, in the near future, with the Lebanese government on withdrawing its troops. The agreement also states that peace talks between Israel and Syria will soon resume in Washington.

But because he rejected the Rabin-Peres formula of “all the land for a full peace,” many Israeli observers question whether Assad is really interested in making peace with Israel. “We are inclined to believe that he is more interested in the process,” contends a close aide to Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak, “than in the peace.”

Israeli experts explain that a peace agreement with Israel, Assad’s sworn enemy, would irritate Iran, his major ally. It might also trigger Muslim fundamentalist opposition to his regime while opening up his closely controlled society to Western influence. This, in turn, might endanger his and his family’s grip on Syria. “Maybe Assad is not ready to pay the price of peace,” muses a senior American diplomat in Christopher’s entourage, “even though he will get back the Golan Heights; thus, maybe he prefers to stick to the status quo.”

Whether there will ever be an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement, the new cease-fire on Israel’s northern border is an impressive success for the Americans. It is also a testament to the diplomatic competence of the Syrian president who helped seal the deal. Clearly, Assad remains a master of the “diplomacy of ambiguity.”*