In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [26]
Syria is seven hours ahead of Washington, so when I arrived home I switched on the TV expecting to hear Washington’s response—none was forthcoming. Before heading to bed, I listened to the BBC World Service’s Newshour on my short-wave radio. The program’s host interviewed Tom Lantos, then chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and a Holocaust survivor who had helped draft the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 (SAA)—a bill designed to tighten trade sanctions on Syria because of its support for terrorism, foreign fighters entering Iraq, and its WMD program.
Because of Syria’s intelligence sharing after the attacks of September 11, the Bush administration opposed the SAA on the grounds that it tied the president’s hands in waging the war on terror. As Lantos ranted against the Syrian regime and its sponsorship of terrorism, the announcer reminded Lantos that Bush opposed the SAA and had asked the committee to block its passage. “Oh no they don’t,” Lantos retorted. “I just got off the phone with the national security adviser. They are going ahead with it.” The radio suddenly fell silent, and I drifted off into sleep.
I had a dream. I was running through the streets of Koreitem, the Beirut neighborhood that was home to the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Bombs were falling from the sky around us as we ran by a nearby lighthouse. Scores of Lebanese around me were ducking for cover. As I approached the Hariri compound’s rear entrance, I stopped and looked up at the sky to see who was bombing us. It was an American plane. Somewhere deep down, I realized that I now worked in the newest member of the “axis of evil.” I also understood that the battle between the United States and Syria would take place in Lebanon.
The following morning it was official: President Bush described the Israeli attack as “justified” and announced that he was lifting his administration’s opposition to the SAA. News coverage speculated that the new sanctions would have little impact, given Syria’s small trade volume with the United States. Politically, however, the sanctions were billed as a turning point in US-Syrian relations. When I visited a contact at the US embassy that morning for background information on the new sanctions regime, he concluded our conversation by saying, “We need to talk about whether your work helps or hurts the new situation.” As I exited the embassy and walked across Rouda Square, I contemplated ways that I might leave the country.
I had never realized my work in Syria was so precarious. It wasn’t just that I was an American working with the leader of a regime whose fortunes were fading with Washington. It was also that the NGOs that I worked for had no clear legal foundation. When Syria passed its associations law in the late 1950s during its political union with Egypt, economic assistance to developing countries like Syria was through bilateral aid agreements—that is, transfers from states to states. Beginning in the 1980s, most Western countries began funding NGO programs in developing countries instead of the states themselves because their programs were not meeting their goals. There were also concerns of corruption surrounding bilateral programs as well as manipulation of development statistics. For example, a developing country’s literacy rate might appear high on paper, but a visit to the country in question—especially to rural areas—made it apparent that many, if not most, people could not even read a newspaper.1
Syria and other authoritarian Arab countries such as Egypt took issue with development assistance falling