WarSclerotic

Last week President Obama renewed sanctions against Syria. In a statement the President said that the Syrians continue to support terrorist organizations and pursue weapons of mass destruction which pose a continued threat to the United States. The administration did however point out that the Syrians had made some progress in suppressing foreign fighter networks infiltrating suicide bombers into Iraq.

Some consider the renewal of sanctions by the U.S. a mixed message as the decision comes at the same time that the administration is undertaking an effort to increase diplomacy with Syria by sending a U.S. ambassador back after a five year absence. Since that announcement in February tensions with the Syrian regime have been increasing.

Last month a Kuwaiti paper reported that the Syrians were supplying Hezbollah with long range Scud missiles capable of hitting major Israeli cities, Israel’s President Shimon Peres echoed those claims. The recent reports have many analysts worried that a new war in the Middle East could be just around the corner. Indeed, Egypt recently sent a memo to Washington warning of the rising tensions between Israel and Hezbollah following the reports.‪‪ A few days later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Syria must stop supplying weapons to Hezbollah which is on the U.S. State Department’s designated list of terrorist groups.

The timing of the allegations could not come at a worse time for the Obama administration as it looks to upgrade relations with Syria by sending a U.S. ambassador there for the first time since 2005.‪ The Bush administration withdrew its ambassador to Syria, following the assassination of the then Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, amidst reports that the Syrian government was involved in the attack. The Syrian regime was later named in a U.N. investigation that incriminated the government in the plot to kill Hariri.

As part of his new outreach strategy to the Arab world, President Obama announced in February he would ask the U.S. Senate to approve Ambassador Robert Ford as his representative in Damascus. The U.S. Senate has yet to vote on his nomination and critics wonder why at a time when the administration is looking to get U.N. sanctions in place against Iran, where it doesn’t have an ambassador, it would want to upgrade relations with one of Iran’s closest allies; Syria?‪

Ahmed Salkini is the spokesman for the Syrian embassy in Washington DC, and tells Fox News that while Syria is not involved in the United States’ decision to send an ambassador back to Syria, “the presence of ambassadors in both capitals, undeniably, helps facilitate the dialogue between the two countries; yet, it is the nature of the dialogue that constitutes the nature of the ambassador’s job. When both countries set common goals to work on attaining, and agree on the mechanisms to do so, then an ambassador is pivotal to the process. However, if a lack of a common vision exists, then an ambassador’s job is significantly undermined.”

Syria is one of four countries on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba, Sudan and Iran are also on the list and Iran continues to be one of Syria’s most important allies – not only investing heavily in the Syrian economy but also supplying Syria with sophisticated up-to-date weaponry. Allies since the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the two countries signed a military cooperation agreement in 2006 to counter “common threats” from Israel and the United States.‪ ‪

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian human rights and democracy activist, who was forced to flee Syria in 2005 after he criticized Syrian President Bashar al Assad. He says the administration is rewarding bad behavior and that the U.S. decision will only embolden Assad’s regime. Moreover, Abdulhamid is convinced that this kind of concession is “another sign of confusion and weakness on the part of the Obama administration ‪

Daniel Levy a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, and tells Fox News that having an ambassador on the ground is not a gift to the Syrians, but rather part of a toolbox to help conduct effective diplomacy. He says “It is actually easier for the Syrians to avoid and sidestep the pressing issues on the bilateral U.S.-Syrian agenda if American diplomacy is intermittent, fleeting, or low-level .” Levy believes the “non-high-level engagement” that was used during the Bush presidency “was a very poor one indeed, and to continue that approach as its original architects are advocating would be to repeat those mistakes and to invite continued failure.”

Ammar Abdulhamid, founder and executive director of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to democracy promotion in the broader Middle East and North Africa region, believes the administration is mistaken if it thinks that having an ambassador in Syria, “will facilitate the communication process with its leadership (and) are missing the point.” He says “successive administrations have sent numerous high level delegations to Syria…and that all have fallen on deaf ears.”‪ ‪

Yet it seems that the Obama administration is not considering abandoning its policy, despite the threat by a few senators of holding up the ambassador’s nomination, due to the reports of Syria supplying Scuds to Hezbollah, indeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told reporters that the presence of an ambassador will give the administration a better insight into what’s happening in Syria.‪ ‪

Abdulhamid says that time and time again the U.S. has implored the Syrians to stop terror attacks… prevent the flow of arms to Hezbollah…and to cooperate with UN inspectors who are looking into its aggressive nuclear program. He says in return for Syria’s help, the Obama administration even dropped its insistence on the release of political prisoners and improving the human rights situation in Syria.‪ Abdulhamid has a few words of advice for the administration; he says that “history has shown us that the only thing the current leaders of Syria care about is empowering and enriching themselves at the expense of their people, theirs is a mafia-regime par excellence, and no amount of pragmatism and real politick can change this fact.”‪ ‪

Last month the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations backed Obama’s nominee Ambassador Richard Ford and sent his nomination to the U.S. Senate. A date for a vote on his confirmation has yet to be announced.‪‪