Life in Syria has never been simple. The realities, meticulously hidden under a veneer of homogeneity, have always been too complex for even the most discerning of scholars. The peaceful coexistence between the country’s myriad ethnic, religious, and tribal groups is the result of a complex layer of concessions, compromises, tacit agreements, and other pragmatic arrangements perfected over the centuries.
Those who think that the difficulties the Americans are having in Iraq are going to make them rethink their commitment to effecting serious change in the Middle East and adopt some kind of a neutral hands-off stance vis-à-vis regional developments are, simply put, deluding themselves. In fact, the invasion of Iraq promises to be merely the beginning of a long period of direct American interventionism in the region. Whatever difficulties the Americans are bound to encounter along the way, whatever changes should take place at the helm, substituting Democrats for Republicans, conservatives for liberals, doves for hawks, or vice versa, could affect the choice of the particular interventionist strategy to be deployed, but it will have no impact on the interventionist policy itself. The United States has no option but to intervene. Continue reading “Taking it seriously”
Special to The Daily Star
One year after the invasion of Iraq and with the US as its unwelcome neighbor, the Syrian regime (or, at least, most of its power centers and semi-autonomous institutions) seems to have finally grasped the reality of the need for drastic change, perhaps even for an overhaul of the old way of doing things. But can Syria in its current hopelessly divided state and given its poorly qualified cadres produce a sorely needed new vision and mechanisms for change? Continue reading “Syria’s year of living dangerously”
The text of a lecture given at the Woodrow Wilson Center during my first ever visit to Washington, D.C. which also marked my first venture back to the U.S. since I left in September of 1994.
The Syrian Shadow Government and the Possibilities of Change
Introduction
Syrian-American relations have always been much too complex, despite the fact that they have always been rather minimal. There was hardly a time when the relations between the two countries could be described as warm or cordial, not to mention strong. As such, the current observable lack of good will, to put it mildly, between the two sides is not exactly a new phenomenon or a peculiar development. Rather, there are many outstanding issues in Syrian-American relations that remain unresolved and that have not, in fact, been seriously addressed yet. Continue reading “A View From Inside Syria”
The Ammar Abdulhamid Archive 