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Anti-Syria vote exposes real Bush
world
By Stephen Zunes
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy in Focus)
On October 15, the
United States House of Representatives - with an
overwhelming bipartisan majority - passed the Syria
Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act
of 2003, which imposes strict sanctions against the
Syrian government. (A similar bill was introduced
earlier this year in the Senate and is pending.)
Both Republican and Democratic leaders in the
House International Relations Committee agreed to not
allow for any witnesses opposing the bill to testify at
the committee hearings for the bill, which is a major
shift away from previous US policy that stressed
engagement with the nationalist government in Damascus.
Given the already somewhat limited trade between
the US and Syria, as well as Syria's growing commercial
ties with western European countries, the impact of the
sanctions will be minimal. What is noteworthy about the
vote, however, is that a careful reading of the bill
reveals a rather frightening consensus in support of the
Bush administration's unilateralist worldview.
Only four of the 435-member House of
Representatives cast a dissenting vote.
Ironically, both politically and economically,
Syria has liberalized significantly over the past decade
or so. The level of repression is far less than it was
during its peak in the 1970s and is significantly less
than a number of other Middle Eastern countries,
including close US allies like Saudi Arabia. Similarly,
the size and power of Syria's military has been reduced
dramatically from its apex in the 1980s as a result of
the dissolution of its Soviet patron. Syrian links to
international terrorism have also declined markedly.
This begs the question as to why this resolution
was passed now?
The answer may lie in today's
unipolar world system where the US, rather than
supporting comprehensive and law-based means of
promoting regional peace and security, insists on the
right to impose unilateral demands targeted at specific
countries based largely on ideological criteria. As the
one-sidedness of the vote on this resolution indicates,
both the Republicans and the Democrats - including the
most liberal wing of the party - now accept this vision
of US foreign policy.
There are still many
reasonable criticisms that can be directed at the
authoritarian regime of Bashar Assad and its policies.
However, the resolution imposing the sanctions is so
filled with hyperbole and double standards that it
undermines its own credibility. In fact, its real
purpose may be to simply demonize a government whose
main offense appears to be its refusal to support the
Bush administration's foreign policy agenda in the
Middle East.
The primary grievances expressed in
the legislation against Syria are in regard to the
regime's alleged support for international terrorism,
its ongoing military presence in Lebanon, its hostility
toward Israel, the alleged military threat from its
weapons of mass destruction, its alleged support for the
former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein and those Iraqis
resisting the US occupation, and its status as a
non-permanent member of the United Nations Security
Council.
Below are some excerpts from the
legislation, sorted by category, followed by an
analysis:
Support for international
terrorism
Among the findings listed in the
resolution include:
(4) The government of Syria is
currently prohibited by US law from receiving US
assistance because it has repeatedly provided support
for acts of international terrorism, as determined by
the Secretary of State for purposes of section 6(j)(1)
of the Export Administration Act of 1979 (50 USC App
2405(j)(1)) and other relevant provisions of law.
(5) Although the Department of State lists Syria
as a state sponsor of terrorism and reports that Syria
provides "safe haven and support to several terrorist
groups", fewer US sanctions apply with respect to Syria
than with respect to any other country that is listed as
a state sponsor of terrorism.
According to the
State Department's most recent annual report on global
terrorism, "the Syrian government has not been
implicated directly in an act of terrorism since 1986".
With the exception of Cuba - which is kept on the list
for purely political reasons - all the other countries
designated as state sponsors of terrorism (North Korea,
Iran, Sudan and Libya) are either currently or were in
the very recent past involved in direct support and
sponsorship of terrorist activities.
It is
noteworthy that, during the Syrian-Israeli peace talks
in the 1990s, the Clinton administration offered to
remove Syria from its list of states sponsoring
terrorism if it agreed to terms offered by Israel.
During that period, State Department officials admitted
that keeping Syria on this list was not a result of
direct Syrian support for international terrorism, but
as a means of political leverage against the regime.
According to the same State Department report,
"The Syrian government has repeatedly assured the US
that it will take every possible measure to protect US
citizens and facilities from terrorists in Syria. During
the past five years, there have been no acts of
terrorism against US citizens in Syria. The government
of Syria has cooperated significantly with the US and
other foreign governments against al-Qaeda, the Taliban
and other terrorist organizations and individuals. It
also has discouraged any signs of public support for
al-Qaeda, including in the media and at mosques."
In 2002, Syria became a party to the 1988
Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts of
Violence at Airports Serving International Civil
Aviation, making it party to five of the 12
international conventions and protocols relating to
terrorism.
Furthermore, Syria has passed on
hundreds of files of crucial data regarding al-Qaeda and
other radical Islamic groups in the Middle East and
Europe to US officials, including information on the
activities of radical cells and intelligence about
possible future terrorist operations. Seymour Hersh
reported in the July 28 New Yorker that the Central
Intelligence Agency had told him that "the quality and
quantity of information for Syria exceeded the agency's
expectations" but that Syria "got little in return for
it".
Congress has now decided to risk a
suspension of such important cooperation in the struggle
against international terrorism by imposing sanctions
against the Syrian government. This is the same Congress
that has continued to support close military and
economic ties to the government of Saudi Arabia, despite
its lack of such cooperation.
Another finding in
the bill noted: (6) Terrorist groups, including
Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command (PFLP-GC), maintain offices, training camps, and
other facilities on Syrian territory, and operate in
areas of Lebanon occupied by the Syrian armed forces and
receive supplies from Iran through Syria.
However, Syria's role in promoting international
terrorism is not as extensive as this finding makes it
appear. The PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist group that peaked
in its popular support and terrorist activities in the
1970s and has been in decline ever since. The PFLP is
now a legal opposition political party within areas
controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Their limited
military activities in recent years (which have been
targeted primarily but not exclusively against Israeli
police and military) have been launched from within the
West Bank and Gaza Strip in areas controlled by Israeli
occupation forces and the Palestine Authority (PA). No
military operations appear to have come from Syria.
The terrorist activities by the PFLP-GC have
also declined markedly since their apex in the 1970s.
There have been some minor incidents attributed to the
PFLP-GC in recent years, such as two attacks on illegal
Israeli settlements, one in the occupied Golan Heights
in 2001 and the other in the Gaza Strip in 2003. There
have also been some incidents along the Lebanese border
that some reports link to the PFLP-GC, though these have
not been confirmed. There is no evidence that Syria had
any connection with the clashes, which originated in
southern Lebanon in areas that are outside of direct
Syrian military control.
Hamas and Islamic
Jihad, the only two groups mentioned in the resolution
that do engage in major ongoing terrorist activities,
are based in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in areas
controlled by Israeli occupation forces and the PA. It
appears that all of their terrorist attacks have
originated within the areas under PA and Israeli control
and none from areas of Syrian control. Hamas and Islamic
Jihad have political offices in Damascus, as they do in
the capitals of a number of Arab countries, and have
done some political organizing in some Palestinian
refugee camps, including those in Syria. Most of Hamas'
outside support has come from individuals and
organizations based in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the
Gulf. Islamic Jihad has received most of its outside
support from Iran. The Damascus regime has brutally
suppressed Syrian Islamists who espouse similar
ideological views as these two extremist Palestinian
groups.
The alleged Islamic Jihad "training
base" located in a Palestinian refugee camp near
Damascus that was bombed by Israel in early October
appears to have actually been an abandoned PFLP-GC
facility. The Bush administration defended the attack by
claiming that there were active military facilities at
the site, though they could only show evidence of some
anti-aircraft batteries, which are usually considered to
be defensive weapons rather than instruments of
terrorism. Given that Islamic Jihad's mode of operations
is strapping explosive devices to the bodies of suicide
bombers who walk into public areas with high
concentrations of civilians, it is unclear why they
would need a "training base" in a foreign country
anyway.
State Department reports of some limited
Syrian logistical support for these groups may indeed be
accurate. However, there is little to back the
resolution's claim that Syria - at least at any time in
the past decade and a half or so - "has repeatedly
provided support for acts of international terrorism".
Syria is at most a very minor player in this regard.
The only group mentioned in the resolution that
has received significant Syrian support for its
operations is the extremist Lebanese Shi'ite group
Hezbollah, though Syria's principal Shi'ite ally in
Lebanon has traditionally been the rival Amal faction.
Most of Hezbollah's support has come from Iran, and even
that has declined markedly since the early 1980s.
During the 1982-84 US military intervention in
Lebanon, terrorist cells that later coalesced into
Hezbollah engaged in a series of kidnappings and
assassinations of Americans, as well as bombings against
the US embassy and Marine barracks, among other
terrorist operations. However, Hezbollah has since
become a legally-recognized Lebanese political party and
serves in the Lebanese parliament. During the past
decade, its armed components have largely restricted
their use of violence to Israeli occupation forces in
southern Lebanon and in disputed border regions, not
against civilians. Since attacks against foreign
occupation forces are considered legitimate under
international law, it is unclear as to why Congress
still considers Hezbollah to be a "terrorist" group.
Military presence in Lebanon
Among
the findings of the resolution is the following:
(7)
United Nations Security Council Resolution 520
(September 17, 1982) calls for "strict respect of the
sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and political
independence of Lebanon under the sole and exclusive
authority of the government of Lebanon through the
Lebanese army throughout Lebanon".
A reading of
the full text of this resolution reveals that this was
actually in reference to Israel, which had launched a
major invasion of Lebanon three months earlier and at
that point held nearly half of the country, including
the capital of Beirut, under its military occupation.
Indeed, Israel was the only outside power mentioned by
name in the resolution. Though the Israelis pulled out
of Beirut shortly thereafter and withdrew from most of
central Lebanon by the following year, Israel kept its
occupation forces in southern Lebanon until May 2000 in
violation of this Security Council resolution and nine
others calling for its unconditional withdrawal.
At the time that UN Security Council resolution
520 was passed, there were also Syrian troops in the
country. (Palestinian forces had been withdrawn shortly
beforehand.) These Syrian forces entered Lebanon six
years earlier as the primary component of an
international peacekeeping force authorized by the Arab
League to try to end Lebanon's civil war. The US quietly
supported the Syrian intervention as a means of blocking
the likely victory by the leftist Lebanese National
Movement and its Palestinian allies.
Having
already abused their mandate by that time, one can
certainly make the case that this resolution applied to
Syria as well and - given that Syrian troops remain in
Lebanon to this day - that Syria is still in violation
of this resolution. While not formally an occupying
army, the Syrian military presence makes it possible for
Damascus to exercise an enormous amount of influence on
the Lebanese government, particularly in foreign
affairs, in a manner similar to that of the Soviet Union
in relation to the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe
during the Cold War.
It is interesting to note,
however, that none of the supporters of the Syrian
Accountability Act - the vast majority of whom were in
office during at least some of the nearly 18 years that
Israel was in violation of this resolution - ever called
on Israel to abide by UN Security Council resolution
520, much less called for sanctions against Israel in
order to enforce it. Indeed, virtually all of the
backers of this resolution then in office were
supporters of unconditional military and economic aid to
the Israeli government during this period when Israel
was in violation of this very same resolution for which
they have now voted to impose sanctions on Syria for
violating.
It is also worth noting that
currently over 90 UN Security Council resolutions are
being violated by countries other than Syria, the vast
majority of which are by governments for which this same
Congress has allocated billions of dollars worth of
unconditional military and economic aid.
In
short, virtually the entire Democratic Party in the
House of Representatives has joined its Republican
colleagues in supporting the Bush administration's
contention that UN Security Council resolutions should
only be acknowledged or enforced in regard to
governments the US does not like, but UN Security
Council resolutions should not be enforced or even
acknowledged in regard to America's allies.
The
operational part of the bill reads: (3) the government
of Syria should immediately declare its commitment to
completely withdraw its armed forces, including
military, paramilitary and security forces, from
Lebanon, and set a firm timetable for such withdrawal.
While this is a very reasonable demand in
itself, given the support by the vast majority of this
resolution's supporters of the Israeli occupation of
Lebanon, it would be naive to think that most sponsors
of the bill actually care about Lebanese sovereignty. If
they did care about Lebanese sovereignty they would have
demanded that Israel abide by UN Security Council
resolution 520 and nine other resolutions demanding
Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon prior to Israel's
long-overdue pullout in May 2000. They did not, however.
This seems to indicate that Congress is using the
ongoing presence of Syrian forces in Lebanon as an
excuse to isolate one of the few countries in the Middle
East that dares challenge Washington's policy
prerogatives in the region.
In a final irony,
the star witness in the House International Committee
hearings in support of this bill, particularly in regard
to the Syrian role in Lebanon, was Michel Aoun, the
Lebanese general who seized the post of prime minister
of a military government in 1988 and unsuccessfully
tried to block the Taif Accords which brought an end to
that country's bloody 15-year civil war. He was ousted
by Lebanese troops with the help of Syrian forces in the
fall of 1990, just prior to the launch of the 1991 Gulf
War. What none of the committee members bothered to
point out during his testimony was that the US quietly
supported the Syrian assault against his regime since
Aoun's chief foreign backer during his time in power was
none other than Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Relations with Israel
Among the
findings of the resolution is the following:
(13)
Even in the face of this United Nations certification
that acknowledged Israel's full compliance with
Resolution 425, Syria permits attacks by Hezbollah and
other militant organizations on Israeli outposts at
Shebaa Farms, under the false guise that it remains
Lebanese land, and is also permitting attacks on
civilian targets in Israel.
Shebaa Farms is on a
disputed border region between Lebanon and Syria that
Syria (perhaps opportunistically) now acknowledges is
part of Lebanon. In any case, it is not part of Israel:
the area was seized by Israeli armed forces during its
1967 invasion of Syria's Golan plateau and they have
held the territory under military occupation ever since.
Armed resistance against foreign occupation forces is
considered legal under international law. In any case,
there have been no attacks against Israeli forces since
January 2003.
Furthermore, while the UN has
acknowledged Israeli withdrawal of ground troops from
Lebanon, the secretary general's most recent report on
the situation in June denounced Israeli violations of
Lebanese air space as "provocative" and "at variance
with Israel's otherwise full compliance with Security
Council resolution 425".
There have been
virtually no border clashes on the Lebanese-Israeli
border involving Hezbollah since the 2000 Israeli
withdrawal, though this past July shells from Hezbollah
anti-aircraft fire against Israeli planes illegally
encroaching onto Lebanese airspace fell into Israeli
territory, injuring three Israeli civilians.
Furthermore, there are no Syrian forces near Lebanon's
border with Israel, thereby making it unclear as to how
Syria could "permit" or not permit such attacks other
than by entering the territory and attempting to
forcibly disarm them, likely provoking a series of armed
clashes they would wish to avoid.
Another
finding observes: (15) The Israeli-Lebanese border and
much of southern Lebanon is under the control of
Hezbollah, which continues to attack Israeli positions,
allows Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other militant
groups to operate freely in the area, and maintains
thousands of rockets along Israel's northern border,
destabilizing the entire region.
This clause is
misleading on several counts: With a few very minor
incidents, Hezbollah attacks against Israeli positions
since the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops from
southern Lebanon have been restricted to Israeli
occupation forces in the Shebaa Farms region on the
Lebanese-Syrian border. Iranian Revolutionary Guards had
a visible presence in the area during the early 1980s,
but subsequent sightings have been quite rare.
Furthermore, Israel has far more powerful,
accurate and lethal military hardware on its side of the
border. Israeli attacks in Lebanon over the years have
resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, while
Hezbollah attacks have killed less than two dozen
civilians on the Israeli side, none for at least five
years. The only apparent increases in armaments on the
Lebanese side appear to be the placement of additional
anti-aircraft batteries, which are defensive in nature.
No part of northern Israel has been subjected to
military occupation by Lebanese, though Israel illegally
occupied parts of southern Lebanon and beyond for 22
years between 1978 and 2000.
Congress, however,
apparently believes that it is this Lebanese militia
inside Lebanon - not an Israeli army that has invaded,
occupied and repeatedly bombed its neighbors - that is
responsible for "destabilizing the entire region".
The operational clause of the bill states: (6)
the governments of Lebanon and Syria should enter into
serious unconditional bilateral negotiations with the
government of Israel in order to realize a full and
permanent peace.
First of all, it is unclear why
Congress insists that Lebanon and Syria must enter into
bilateral negotiations as opposed to multilateral
negotiations as called for by the United Nations in
Security Council resolution 338, particularly given the
interrelatedness of the concerns of these three nations.
The Syrian and Lebanese governments have offered
full diplomatic relations with Israel and strict
security guarantees in return for a total Israeli
withdrawal from occupied Syrian territory in accordance
with UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which
successive US administration have insisted should be the
basis for Arab-Israeli peace. However, the US-backed
Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has categorically
rejected an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Syrian
territory, even in return for full diplomatic relations
and strict security guarantees.
Syria has
expressed its willingness to resume peace talks with
Israel where the discussions left off in 2000. Israel's
right-wing government has refused, however, saying the
talks must start from scratch. By insisting that Syria
must enter new talks "unconditionally" rather than
resume them from the two parties' previous negotiating
positions - where both sides made major concessions,
which took several years to reach and came very close to
success - Congress is effectively rejecting the position
of the more moderate former Israeli government of Ehud
Barak and instead embracing the rejectionist position of
current right-wing leader Sharon.
As a result,
it is unclear how entering into such negotiations with
an occupying power that categorically refuses to
withdraw from conquered land would "realize a full and
permanent peace" unless the intent of Congress is to
force complete Syrian capitulation in accepting Israel's
annexation of Syria's Golan region. This would be an
unreasonable demand, however, since the UN Charter
expressly forbids any nation from expanding its
territory by force and UN Security Council resolution
497 declares the Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan
is illegal and must be rescinded.
Military
threat
Among the findings, the resolution
includes:
(18) The government of Syria continues to
develop and deploy short and medium-range ballistic
missiles.
(19) According to the December 2001
unclassified Central Intelligence Agency report entitled
"Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile
Threat through 2015", "Syria maintains a ballistic
missile and rocket force of hundreds of FROG rockets,
Scuds and SS-21 SRBMs [and] Syria has developed
[chemical weapons] warheads for its Scuds".
What
Congress fails to mention is that Israel has a vastly
superior missile capability relative to Syria, fielding
short-range Jericho I and medium-range Jericho II
missiles, both of which use solid propellant and are
nuclear-capable. Israel's missiles are significantly
more advanced technologically, are more accurate, have a
wider range, and can carry a larger payload than the
Syrian missiles.
Meanwhile, Syria's northern
neighbor Turkey has at least 120 MGM-140 tactical
missiles as well as cruise missiles. Egypt has
intermediate-range Badr 2000 missiles, not to mention an
array of short-range missiles, including the Harpoon,
the Ottomat, the CSS-N-2 and the Project T.
It
should not be surprising to Congress that in such a
strategic environment Syria would also opt to develop
short and medium-range ballistic missiles.
Another finding observes: (25) Syria is not a
party to the Chemical Weapons Convention or the
Biological Weapons Convention, which entered into force
on April 29, 1997 and on March 26, 1975, respectively.
This is true, yet Israel and Egypt, which are
the world's two largest recipients of US military aid,
are not parties to these conventions either. Congress
apparently believes that while it is legitimate for
Israel and Egypt to refuse to ratify these important
arms control conventions, Syria's refusal to ratify
these same two conventions is grounds for economic
sanctions.
Similarly, another finding in the
bill notes: (20) The government of Syria is pursuing the
development and production of biological and chemical
weapons and has a nuclear research and development
program that is cause for concern.
While it is
widely acknowledged that Syria, like several other
countries in the region, has a chemical weapons program,
there is no evidence that Syria currently has any
biological weapons. Furthermore, it is unclear why
Syria's civilian nuclear program is of such "concern"
for Congress: Syria is a signatory of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and has "accepted the full
scope safeguards of the International Atomic Energy
Agency to detect diversions of nuclear materials from
peaceful activities to the production of nuclear weapons
or other nuclear explosive devices". Furthermore, there
is no evidence to suggest that they have any kind of
nuclear weapons program.
Yet another finding
observes: (22) On May 6, 2002, the Undersecretary of
State for Arms Control and International Security, John
Bolton, stated: "The United States also knows that Syria
has long had a chemical warfare program. It has a
stockpile of the nerve agent sarin and is engaged in
research and development of the more toxic and
persistent nerve agent VX. Syria, which has signed but
not ratified the [Biological Weapons Convention], is
pursuing the development of biological weapons and is
able to produce at least small amounts of biological
warfare agents."
The Defense Department has
pointed out that while Syria has a biotechnical
infrastructure capable of supporting limited agent
development, it has not begun a major effort to produce
biological agents or to put them into weapons, and Syria
would need significant foreign assistance to manufacture
large amounts of biological weapons.
Finally, it
should be noted that Bolton has very little credibility
among the intelligence community, which was reportedly
"fed up" with his assertions regarding Syria. (During
this same testimony, Bolton claimed that Cuba also had a
biological weapons program, which was roundly dismissed
as pure fantasy.) That Congress would cite Bolton rather
than more credible reports from other US government
agencies regarding Syria's chemical and biological
capabilities is indicative of the continued willingness
by both Republicans and Democrats exhibited most
prominently in the buildup to the US invasion of Iraq -
to believe whatever the Bush administration wants to
tell them.
The operational clause of the
resolution states: (5) the government of Syria should
halt the development and deployment of medium and
long-range surface-to-surface missiles and cease the
development and production of biological and chemical
weapons.
Syria's development of its advanced
missile programs and weapons of mass destruction came
only after other countries in the region first developed
theirs, programs that still exist today and from which
the Syrians still feel threatened:
The first
country in the Middle East to obtain and use chemical
weapons was Egypt (which used phosgene and mustard gas
in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen).
There is no indication Egypt has ever destroyed any of
its chemical agents or weapons and it is believed that
the US-backed Hosni Mubarak regime is continuing its
chemical weapons research and development program.
Similarly, it is widely believed that Egypt began a
program that produced weaponized biological agents as
far back as the early 1960s. As of 1996, US officials
publicly acknowledged that Egypt had developed
biological warfare agents, and there is no evidence that
they have since been eliminated. Egypt is considered a
major US ally and Congress annually grants over $2
billion worth of military and economic assistance to the
Mubarak government.
Israel is widely believed to
have produced and stockpiled an extensive range of
chemical weapons and is engaged in ongoing research and
development of additional chemical weaponry. Israel is
also believed to maintain a sophisticated biological
weapons program, which is widely thought to include
anthrax and more advanced weaponized agents and other
toxins. Israel also has a sizable nuclear weapons
arsenal with sophisticated delivery systems.
Unlike the case of Iraq, there are no UN
Security Council resolutions demanding that Syria cease
its development of weapons of mass destruction or
missile programs. The only UN Security Council
resolution addressing proliferation in this part of the
Middle East is UN Security Council resolution 487, which
calls on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under
the trusteeship of the International Atomic Energy
Agency. Israel is still in violation of this resolution,
though this does not seem to bother Congress.
Syria has called for a weapons of mass
destruction free zone for the entire Middle East,
similar to what already exists in Latin America and the
South Pacific. By imposing strict sanctions on Syria for
failing to disarm unilaterally, however, Congress has
roundly rejected this concept or any other kind of
regional arms control regime. Instead, Congress has gone
on record supporting the idea that the US has the
authority to say which country can have what kind of
weapons systems, thereby enforcing a kind of weapons
apartheid, which will more likely encourage, rather than
discourage, the proliferation of such dangerous weapons.
Support for Iraq
The findings of the
resolution includes the following:
(30) On March 28,
2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned: "We
have information that shipments of military supplies
have been crossing the border from Syria into Iraq,
including night-vision goggles ... These deliveries pose
a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We
consider such trafficking as hostile acts, and will hold
the Syrian government accountable for such shipments."
(34) On April 13, 2003, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld charged that "busloads" of Syrian
fighters entered Iraq with "hundreds of thousands of
dollars" and leaflets offering rewards for dead American
soldiers.
There has been absolutely no
independent confirmation of either of these charges.
These clauses and other parts of the resolution imply
that the Syrian government has been a major backer of
the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In reality,
despite being ruled by the Ba'ath Party, Syria has
historically been a major rival of Iraq's Ba'ath regime.
Syria broke diplomatic relations with Baghdad in
the 1970s and never renewed them. Damascus was the base
of a number of exiled anti-Saddam Iraqi leaders and
organizations. Syria was the only Arab country to back
Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. It was one
of the only non-monarchical Arab states to have backed
the US against Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991,
dispatching troops to support Operation Desert Shield.
Iraq and Syria backed rival factions in
Lebanon's civil war. As a member of the UN Security
Council, Syria voted last November in favor of the
US-backed resolution 1441 that demanded full cooperation
by the Baghdad government with UN inspectors, with the
threat of severe consequences if it failed to do so.
Most recently, Syria voted in favor of the US-backed
resolution 1511 on post-war Iraq.
In reality,
the problem Congress seems to have with Syria is not
that Damascus really has supported Saddam Hussein's
regime and its remnants, but that it - like most nations
in the world - simply opposed the US invasion of Iraq.
In addition, it seems rather extraordinary that
Congress would make statements by Donald Rumsfeld part
of their findings on this resolution, given the defense
secretary's history of misinformation on issues related
to Iraq:
For example, on March 30, Rumsfeld
confidently stated, in reference to Iraq's alleged
weapons of mass destruction, "We know where they are.
They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east,
west, north and south somewhat." On March 23, he said
that American intelligence reports indicate that Iraqi
forces "have chemical and biological weapons, and that
they have dispersed them, and that they are weaponized,
and that, in one case at least, the command and control
arrangements have been established".
Both of
these claims have since been shown to be utterly false.
Similarly, on November 14, 2002, Rumsfeld
claimed, "Two sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein defected,
went into Jordan, and the word came out and they told
where these inspectors could go look, they went and
looked, and they found weapons of mass destruction."
This is also untrue. When the two men defected
to Jordan in 1995 they told UN weapons inspectors, among
other things, that "all weapons - biological, chemical,
missile, nuclear, were destroyed". The information they
provided to the UN inspectors was obviously useful, but
it did not lead inspectors to find any weapons since
they no longer existed.
Membership in the UN
Security Council
From the findings of the
resolution:
(31) According to Article 23(1)
of the United Nations Charter, members of the United
Nations are elected as non-permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council with "due regard being
specially paid, in the first instance, to the
contribution of members of the United Nations to the
maintenance of international peace and security and to
other purposes of the organization".
(32)
Despite Article 23(1) of the United Nations Charter,
Syria was elected on October 8, 2001, to a two-year term
as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security
Council beginning January 1, 2002, and served as
president of the Security Council during June 2002 and
August 2003.
In the operational clause of the
resolution, it declares that: (8) As a violator of
several key United Nations Security Council resolutions
and as a nation that pursues policies which undermine
international peace and security, Syria should not have
been permitted to join the United Nations Security
Council or serve as the Security Council's president,
and should be removed from the Security Council.
It is interesting that Congress raised no
objection when the Suharto regime of Indonesia served as
a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in
1995-96. At that time, Indonesia was engaged in an
illegal military occupation of the island nation of East
Timor in direct violation of a series of UN Security
Council resolutions demanding its immediate withdrawal
and recognition of the right of the people of East Timor
to self-determination. In the course of Indonesia's
26-year occupation, more than 200,000 people - one-third
of the country's population - died as a result of
massacres, forced relocation and related atrocities.
Similarly, no objection was raised in Congress
to Morocco serving as a non-permanent member of the UN
Security Council in 1992-93. At that time and to this
day, Morocco has been engaged in an illegal occupation
of the nation of Western Sahara, placing the kingdom in
direct violation of a series of UN Security Council
resolutions demanding its immediate withdrawal and
recognition of the right of the people of Western Sahara
to self-determination. Morocco has even refused to move
forward with a UN-sponsored resolution on the fate of
the territory despite a series of UN Security Council
resolutions calling for their cooperation.
In
other words, Congress believes that if a regime is
allied to the US, it is acceptable to serve as a
non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, even if
that government is "a violator of several key United
Nations Security Council resolutions" and "pursues
policies which undermine international peace and
security". However, in the case of Syria - even though
its violations of UN Security Council resolutions and
its threats to international peace and security are
significantly less substantial than those of Morocco or
Indonesia - Congress believes they must be removed from
that body.
Finally, it should be noted that this
resolution is from the same Congress that in October
2002 authorized President George W Bush to invade and
occupy a sovereign country, despite it being a clear
violation of the United Nations Charter and a threat to
international peace and security. Needless to say, there
are no suggestions from Congress that the US should be
denied its seat on the UN Security Council.
Conclusion
The purpose of this
critical overview is not to defend Assad's regime in
Damascus. Given the nature of the Syrian government and
its policies, a case could be made that strict sanctions
such as those enacted in this legislation might be
appropriate under certain conditions.
What is so
disturbing about this bill and its near-unanimous
support, however, is that the language of the resolution
is emblematic of the new bipartisan consensus in
Washington in favor of a hegemonic world order led by
the Bush administration. In the near-unanimous passage
of this bill, Republicans and Democrats alike are on
record in their conviction that the US has the right to
punish particular nations for certain policies while
providing military, economic and diplomatic support for
allied nations that engage in those very policies.
Both Republicans and Democrats alike are on
record trusting unsubstantiated claims by
neo-conservative ideologues who have lied repeatedly
about so-called "rogue states" in order to justify
increased US militarism and foreign wars. Both
Republicans and Democrats alike are on record rejecting
multilateral arms control treaties in favor of forcing
unilateral disarmament by some governments while sending
billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weaponry to
neighboring states. Both Republicans and Democrats alike
are manipulating popular concern regarding international
terrorism to justify policies that actually weaken the
US's ability to counter this very real threat.
The Syrian Accountability Act is not a
reflection of popular concern for the Lebanese people,
for non-proliferation, for preventing terrorism, or for
defending the United Nations. It is a reflection of an
imperial world view. Those politicians who support such
a role for the United States through such legislation -
whether they are Republicans or Democrats - must be held
accountable.
Stephen Zunes
zunes@usfca.edu is an associate professor of politics
and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at
the University of San Francisco, and serves as the
Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus
Project. He is the author of Tinderbox: US Middle
East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common
Courage, 2002).
(Posted with permission from
Foreign Policy in Focus)
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