In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [10]
While the negotiations were ongoing, the US embassy in Damascus officially returned to the “constructive engagement” policy of the 1970s. However, there were limits this time: a mere day before delegates convened in Madrid, the US State Department issued regulations banning “defence services” to Syria, effectively cutting off the possibility of any bilateral military cooperation.5 US law also continued to ban American economic assistance to and restrict trade with Syria due to its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Nevertheless, Syria remained the only country on the US terrorism list with which the United States maintained full diplomatic relations.6 Private-sector cooperation developed to unprecedented levels, as the embassy worked with Syria’s business community to arrange export licenses for American products. The Syrian government awarded a $430 million gas-development project to Conoco, an American energy company, to be carried out in conjunction with French energy giant Total.
Relations were generally businesslike, but there were still flare-ups. Syrian youths stormed the US ambassador’s residence in December 1998 and ripped down the flag in response to the United States and United Kingdom’s bombing of Iraq that month in Operation Desert Fox—an attempt to cajole Iraq to comply with weapons inspectors. Washington virulently protested the Syrian incident and requested that the government sell it land to build a new, secure embassy in a suburb of Damascus.7
When Assad died three months later, Washington adopted a “wait and see” approach with his son and successor, Bashar. For a while, the situation was uncertain. In October 2000, Syrian protestors tried to storm the US embassy after the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, controversially led a Likud Party delegation around the al-Aqsa Mosque, effectively bringing a decade of peacemaking to an end.
It was then that diplomats in Damascus began to notice some changes. Syria’s oil exports increased dramatically, leading Washington and London to accuse Syria of violating UN sanctions on Iraq by accepting up to one hundred fifty thousand barrels per day of Iraqi crude through a derelict section of the Kirkuk-Banias oil pipeline (which was built in the 1940s to carry crude from Iraq to Syria’s Mediterranean coast) in return for exports of poor-quality Syrian products.8 The Syrians, for their part, attributed the increase to having converted its power stations from oil to natural gas, which was now more plentiful in Syria due to the government’s project with Conoco. In his first visit to Damascus in February 2001, US secretary of state Colin Powell had raised the pipeline issue with the Syrian leadership, but the oil and other goods kept flowing.
As it was the end of the working day, Daniel and Mary Brett invited me for a drink at the Marine Bar, located across the street from the embassy. We each grabbed a draft beer from the smiling Syrian bartender and took a table in the bar’s paved garden. Syrian women, all wearing tight-fitting Western-style clothes like Leila, mixed freely with American diplomats and staff, playing pool and darts.
As the beer flowed, I began to ask more and increasingly direct questions. How could OBG produce an objective report on Syria? I explained how hard it had been to carry out research in Egypt—a US ally and a country relatively open to the world. And who would be a good local partner?
Daniel and Mary Brett just looked at each other and laughed. “I don’t know,” Daniel said. “Go and see the Syrian-European Business Center [SEBC]. While we don’t help them, we quietly support their goal to help Syria’s private sector. They also seem to be the only international project really doing anything.”
I called the SEBC the following morning to set up an appointment. After a few minutes on hold, I was patched directly through to the project’s director, Alf Monaghan. I briefly introduced myself and explained why I was calling.