How Syria helped win Johnston's
release By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The world rejoiced over the
release of British Broadcasting Corporation
journalist Alan Johnston, who had been held
captive by Islamist militias in Gaza for 16 weeks.
Hamas, recently ejected from government by
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, took the
credit.
Johnston was taken immediately
from captivity to meet former prime minister
Ismail Haniyya of Hamas. Pictures of the men,
hands clasped, made front page news and Hamas, now
in control
of
Gaza after armed conflict with Abbas' Fatah
movement, used the occasion to boost its image in
the Arab and Western world. However, there was
another champion behind Johnston's release: Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad.
The British
started to re-engage the Syrians last October when
then prime minister Tony Blair sent a special
envoy, Nigel Sheinwald, to Damascus to meet Assad.
Sheinwald came to Syria after having met US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and he
presented the Syrians with a variety of issues
that Britain wanted Syria to help with in the
Middle East. Syria complied immediately. One of
the issues was to support the cabinet of Iraqi
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Syria sent
its foreign minister to Baghdad, opened an embassy
in Iraq, and received President Jalal Talabani in
Damascus, legitimizing the Maliki regime. Last
May, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem met
his British counterpart, Margaret Beckett, in
Brussels. She specifically requested that Syria
use its strong influence in Palestine to help
secure Johnston's release. Syria, after all, is
well-connected to Hamas, which in turn is
connected to the Islamic Army that kidnapped
Johnston.
Last month, speaking from
Damascus, Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal told
reporters that his party would do all possible to
secure Johnston's release. Meshaal did not make
promises, however, saying only that he would try
his best. Less than one month later, on July 5,
Johnston was released, after three days of
intensive talks between Hamas and his captors, and
handed over to Ahmad al-Jaabari, the deputy
commander of the Qassam Brigade, the armed wing of
Hamas.
Also involved in the talks was
Kamal Neirab (Abu Awad) who is the
commander-in-chief of the Popular Resistance
Committees, and a member of Hamas. Sheikh Suleiman
al-Dayeh, a leading Salafi cleric in Gaza, was
asked to give his final say on the matter and he
backed Hamas' argument that Johnston should be
released immediately.
Coming from
Damascus, Meshaal's statement was very significant
since it showed Syrian seriousness in resolving
the Johnston case. The Syrians were clearly very
much involved in the negotiations. Mehsaal
telephoned Walid al-Moualem late on July 3 to tell
him that talks over Johnston's release "were
bearing fruit". In turn, the Syrian minister
contacted the British charge d'affaires in
Damascus, Roddy Drummond, (Ambassador John Jenkins
was on vacation) at 1am to relay Meshaal's
message.
Negotiations lasted until 3am and
led to the final release on July 5. The entire
story was published in the London daily, al-Hayat,
by Syrian journalist Ibrahim Hamidi, who is one of
the best-informed writers on Syrian affairs and
who has access to Meshaal. Hamidi interviewed
Meshaal, who explained Hamas' position, saying:
"The movement [Hamas] considered, from the start,
his [Johnston's] release as a national and moral
duty." When asked if Hamas expected a reward from
the British, he replied: "What we did was a duty
[aimed] at correcting the mistake of kidnapping a
respectable journalist." He added that the episode
carried two messages.
One message was to
the Palestinians themselves, "that nobody is above
the law". This seemed like a message to the
Islamic Army, who operated militias in Gaza and
often challenged the authority of Hamas itself.
Days before the Johnston release, Hamas had
kidnapped Khattab al-Makdisi, the right-hand man
to the Islamic Army's commander, Mumtaz Digmosh,
to bargain for his exchange along with 16 other
members of his militia, for 21 prisoners from
Hamas.
The second message was that the
Europeansshould re-examine their policies toward
Hamas. Al-Hayat quoted Mohammad Nasser (Abu Omar),
a member of the political bureau of Hamas, saying
that a high-level British-Hamas meeting had taken
place in Damascus last week. Representing the
British side was David Craig, the consul in
Jerusalem, who came in secret to Syria to meet
with Meshaal. British sources confirmed the
meeting, saying, "the objective was to seek
Meshaal's assistance for humanitarian purposes",
adding that it was conditional that no ransom,
whether political dispensation or cash, be paid to
Digmosh, the head of the Islamic Army.
This was the first senior meeting between
Hamas and the British since May 2005. Back then,
Meshaal appeared on al-Jazeera TV and confessed
that in early 2004 Hamas had in fact sat down to
negotiate a truce with US officials. The Americans
tried to get Hamas to disarm, and only when Hamas
refused did the US allegedly give Israel a green
light to assassinate the Hamas founder, Ahmad
Yassin, in March, and his successor Abd al-Aziz
al-Rantisi, in April, 2004. British foreign
secretary Jack Straw also admitted that British
diplomats had met with Hamas.
This is not
the first time that Syria has used its influence
in the region to secure the release of Western
hostages in the Middle East. It did so numerous
times during the Lebanese civil war. The most
famous example was in 1983 when Syria helped
release Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman Jr, who had
been shot down over Lebanon and captured while on
a mission to bomb Syrian positions in the war-torn
country.
After meeting with President
Assad, US presidential candidate Jesse Jackson
secured Goodman's release. Both Goodman and
Jackson were received at the White House by
president Ronald Reagan on January 4, 1984, and
Syria was thanked for its efforts. More recently
Syria used its influence with Iran to secure the
release of 15 British sailors captured in Iranian
waters last May. That was done after Tony Blair's
special envoy, Nigel Sheinwald, contacted
President Assad to seek Syrian support and
mediation with Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad.
This is a point Syria has
long been making since long before its relations
with the US deteriorated after the Gulf War in
2003. The West knows this, but due to recent US
pressure, refuses to acknowledge this in public.
Namely, that Syria can play a very positive role
in the Middle East, as a source of stability
rather than instability. On numerous occasions,
Assad has said that the US and Europe will need
the help of Syria and will come knocking on its
door. The reasons are simple.
Syria, the
only country that has refused to bend to US
pressure and sign a flawed peace deal with Israel,
has credibility in the Arab street. Radical groups
like Hamas and Hezbollah trust and listen to
Syria. That does not apply to countries like
Jordan and Egypt, that can play a mediating role
in some crises but do not have the credibility
that Syria enjoys. Syria loves to play the
fireman, especially in Palestinian affairs. Doing
so gives the country leverage over other Arab
affairs and proves that it is still a power broker
in Palestine.
That status was reduced when
former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was
around and tried to clip Syria's wings in
Palestinian politics - in vain, due to Syria's
strong alliance with Hamas.
Second, Syria
uses this diplomacy to market its image in the
Western world as a source of stability. It loved
the way Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House
of Representatives, described it during her April
2007 visit to Syria, saying, "the road to Damascus
is the road to peace".
The Syrians want to
be seen as problem-solvers rather than
problem-seekers. They want to show the world -
mainly the US - that just as they can deliver in
Palestine, they can deliver in Iraq and Lebanon.
Former US secretary of state Warren
Christopher wrote in The Washington Post about his
encounter with Syria in the 1990s and how the
country influenced the leaders of Hezbollah to
stop the conflicts with Israel in 1993 and 1996.
He said: "We never knew exactly what the Syrians
did, but clearly Hezbollah responded to their
direction." And perhaps we won't know what the
Syrians did with Hamas, but clearly Hamas - and
the Islamic Army - responded to their direction.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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