Syria Today | Syria and its Arab Rivals: Towards a Regional Détente?

Syria and its Arab Rivals: Towards a Regional Détente?

By Murhaf Jouejati

Following years of discord among major Arab states, recent events in the Middle East suggest that an Arab détente is crystallising. One indication is that Lebanon, which has endured one crisis after another following the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005, succeeded in forming a national unity government last month after nearly five months of political gridlock.

To be sure, Lebanon is one barometer of inter-Arab relations. This has to do with the fact that, given its hopeless sectarian fragmentation and the vested interests of its sectarian chieftains in perpetuating the status quo, Lebanon has traditionally served as a battlefield for proxy wars involving regional and international powers. In 1958, the clash between Lebanon’s rightists and leftists reflected Cold War tensions. In 1975, the slugfest had to do with sectarian power sharing (or the lack thereof) and the Arab-Israeli conflict. This time, the crisis replicated competition between Pax Americana and Iran’s aspirations for regional influence. In the process, Washington’s regional Arab allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt sought to diminish Iranian power in Lebanon amassed through its local Hezbollah ally. On the other hand, Syria, Iran’s Arab ally, sought to further Hezbollah’s power in large part to deny Lebanon’s right-wing factions the ability to broker a separate peace agreement with Israel. In recent times, the crises in Iraq and Palestine served as battlefields for the proxy wars of roughly the same rivals.

Tensions between the two camps reached their peak following the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, Saudi Arabia’s man in Lebanon. Those tensions coincided with a growing rift between Washington and Damascus over another issue, namely the US war on Iraq and Syria’s opposition to it. Although the Bush administration expected Syria to shout ‘how much’ when Washington told Damascus to cooperate, Syria did not. Nor did the colossal pressure Washington’s neoconservatives exerted on Syria, including the imposition of unilateral economic sanctions and the threat of regime change, produce the desired effect. Instead, Syria intensified its existing alliance with Iran – Washington’s Middle East bogeyman. This time, however, the Syrian-Iranian alliance was to serve both states a purpose other than its initial anti-Saddam one. For Iran, Syria is a base from which Tehran can project regional influence and a bridgehead through which it can extend its reach into the Arab-Israeli conflict. For Syria, Iran was the only regional power ready to stand up to external intrusion into the region and thwart US efforts to bring down the Assad administration.

Regional tensions subsided in part because the term of the Bush administration came to an end, but also because of the conciliatory ‘engagement’ approach the Obama administration adopted in view of fixing the regional mess it inherited from its predecessor. Washington’s friendlier moves towards Damascus, chief of which was the inclusion of Syria in Obama’s Middle East peace initiative, translated into a more cooperative Syrian government, leading to, among other things, US-Syrian cooperation along the Syrian-Iraqi border. In turn, Syria, which in many ways was behind the success of the Doha agreement, leaned on its local Lebanese allies to bring about a new Lebanese government. In addition, Syria, the land of refuge for more than one million displaced Iraqis, negotiated several important economic agreements with Baghdad – that is, before Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed Syria for all that is wrong in Iraq, an issue that has more to do with domestic Iraqi politics on the eve of the January elections than with Syrian skullduggery. In Palestine, Syria exerted noteworthy efforts to reconcile rival Palestinian factions, breaking the chill in Syrian-Egyptian relations.

The fruits of Syria’s efforts have paid off: the Saudi monarch paid a state visit to Damascus and, in doing so, delivered his stamp of approval to Assad’s policies in Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and even Yemen where Damascus has voiced its political support to the Sana’a government as it battles unruly tribesmen along the Saudi-Yemeni border. In brief, now that the Bush administration is out of the way and Syrian-Saudi relations are back on track, the ensuing Arab détente should have a stabilising effect on the Arab family.

Murhaf Jouejati is professor of Middle East studies at the National Defense University in Washington DC. He is also a professorial lecturer in international affairs and political science at the George Washington University and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute.