Obama’s Syrian Gamble

Quoted at length by Ben Evansky in LiveShots

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.‪‪

“Down With Dictatorship!”

Quoted in The American Spectator

Ammar Abdulhamid, the Executive Director of the pro-democracy Tharwa Foundation, was much more critical of the Obama Administration’s policy (as well as that of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who recently visited Syria). “Nothing can be gained from engaging tyrants,” he said. Abdulhamid noted that the regime that Western governments are attempting to engage does not speak for the Syrian people, saying “the true leaders of Syria are in prison.”

“Peace and stability cannot happen at the expense of our freedom,” Abdulhamid insisted. He’s right of course. I fear that the Obama Administration is determined to learn this lesson the hard way.

Simple Facebook question raises problems around the world

Quoted in CNN

Facebook recently changed its listing for the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 — so users there could choose to say whether they live in Israel or Syria.

It was responding to pressure from a pro-Israel group called HonestReporting — and from Facebook users who set up a group on the site itself called “Facebook, Golan Residents Live in Israel, not Syria.” Continue reading “Simple Facebook question raises problems around the world” →

Their Audacity to Hope

Brave individuals who challenge the status quo in authoritarian societies—and expect our support

Mention in the Wall Street Journal

Mr. Muravchik might have said more about why Western states should support liberals, in all their vulnerability. Take the Syrian dissident Ammar Abdulhamid. Audacious and articulate, Mr. Abdulhamid abandoned a life of privilege in Syria (he is the son of a famous actress) and chose exile in the U.S. so that he could give full force to his criticism of the Assad regime. Yet like many of those described by Mr. Muravchik, he has committed himself to a liberal ideal, and sacrificed a great deal, in return for very little so far. When Western governments revert to so-called reasons of state — where “realism” and supposed self-interest often triumphs — Middle Eastern liberals become a vanguard easily discarded.