In the Lion's Den_ An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria - Andrew Tabler [90]
To take my mind off the spectacle surrounding Bashar’s reelection, I focused on doing the only thing I knew to help the situation and, in a small way, promote America’s long-term interests—I offered journalism training through Syria Today. While the world focused its attention on the dramatic political changes in Syria and Lebanon following Hariri’s assassination and the 2006 Lebanon War, few noticed the economic changes that Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon caused on the Syrian economy.
During the years of Syrian occupation of Lebanon, Syrian officials used the institutions in Lebanon’s free-market economy—most notably its banks and insurance companies—to finance imported goods into Syria. These imports were mostly smuggled into Syria, which still maintained import restrictions to heavily protect the Syrian economy in line with the country’s socialist goals. Syrian and Lebanese traders paid bribes to the Syrian army and security officers who controlled Lebanon and Lebanese customs, forming large networks of corruption on both sides of the border.
When Syria was forced to withdraw from Lebanon in April 2005, these networks were suddenly broken up, as importing goods through an independent and perceivably hostile Lebanon threatened the black market that underpinned Bashar’s opening to the outside world. By necessity, the regime was forced to liberalize import restrictions and allow private banks in Syria—which had formally opened for the first time in 2004—to expand to finance Syria’s new economy.
This was in line with the recommendations of the five-year plan drawn up by Abdullah Dardari—then minister of planning, now deputy prime minister for economic affairs—the German-drafted blueprint for bringing Syria from a socialist system to a “social market economy” and the same model actually used by Germany. Throughout 2005 and 2006, the regime issued licenses for a handful of private banks and private insurance companies in Syria. These institutions issued letters of credit to fuel a boom in imports through Syria. As more boutiques and shopping centers opened throughout the capital, Syrians enjoyed the fruits of globalization—designer shoes and clothes, modern appliances, modern technology—like never before.
Instead of seeing the boom as the product of Syria’s forced withdrawal from Lebanon, most attributed it to Bashar’s vision for a more open Syria—despite the fact that most, if not all, of the state’s five-year plan had yet to be implemented. Washington’s isolation policy, combined with US sanctions, kept the United States from using its influence in this rapidly changing part of Syrian society that was, in many ways, the direct result of Washington’s effort to push Syria out of Lebanon. Instead, Iran took advantage of this power vacuum and announced a slew of investments in Syria to help fuel the boom.
To see Iran spreading its tentacles into Syria and taking advantage of the reform that I had advocated for so many years was like icing on a bitter cake. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, I had written an op-ed for the New York Times advocating the expansion of the Bush administration’s promotion of democracy to include Syrian reform. As it was clear that direct engagement between the two governments was out of the question, my article advocated reaching out to Syria’s private sector through the American embassy in Damascus instead. The article’s bottom line was that supporting Syria’s private sector would help the United States compete with spreading Iranian influence in Syria and ultimately help the country move toward a peace agreement with Israel.19