The best outcome of a Western democracy’s engagement with a despotic regime is that the engagement itself catalyzes the regime’s demise. By forcing human rights onto the nuclear disarmament agenda at Reykjavik, Reagan implicitly got Gorbachev to admit that, yes, the USSR had got a bit of a problem with intellectual and political freedoms. This in turn created the breathing room for glasnost without the collapse of the entire Soviet edifice might not have happened as quickly, if at all. When President Obama nominated Robert Ford to the post of US ambassador to Syria in 2010, he can’t have known that only a year on, his man in Damascus would become the most powerful American icon of solidarity with the Syrian people as well as a possible accelerant for the end of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal dictatorship.
Ford’s nomination was blocked by Senate Republicans last December (he went to Damascus as a recess appointment) and despite his recent okaying by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no floor vote on his confirmation has taken place. If he isn’t confirmed before this session of Congress expires, Ford will have to leave Syria. It’s imperative that he remain — at least so long as the regime keeps up appearances by allowing him to.
A recent interview with the ambassador, conducted by an online US website, has provided a terrific overview on just how undiplomatic — I mean that in the best possible sense — Ford’s activities in Syria have been in the last several months, especially after his electrifying visit to the briefly liberated city of Hama in early July. In him Washington has not only got an invaluable liaison to the Syrian opposition but also an independent fact-finder who, judging by his rhetoric, inveighs against so much State Department piffle on what’s really going on in the country.
“I’m sorta amazed that they’re not fucking crazy,” Ford told Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller, referring to Syrian protestors who impressively face roving firing squads each week and to the many ex-political prisoners of the regime who remain unbowed and principled after years of solitary confinement.
By the ambassador’s reckoning, and based on conversations with numerous Syrians, “the Islamist element is actually not very strong in this country… The Muslim Brotherhood is pretty much stamped out by Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad. And so most of the Islamists that are active politically are outside of Syria.” As to any evidence of armed “insurgents” fighting the regime, Ford places their total number in the “tens.” These, he says, are mainly the riffraff Assad himself dispatched into Iraq in the early Aughts to help kill American, British and Iraqi soldiers after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Now they’re back to the bite the hand that fed them, not that you’d gather as much from reading Anthony Shadid in The New York Times who often makes it sound as if Hama is already Fallujah.
Ford also added that his movements in Damascus are unrestricted whereas travel outside the capital requires requests for special permission — permission that is routinely denied. So off he goes anyway to threats of “consequences.”
Obama’s late announced policy of regime change for Syria has no doubt loosened the excellency’s tongue, but still, it’s unprecedented to hear a statesman talk this about the head of his host government:
“I can understand it if it was against orders and you just were trying to remake a police force or you were trying to remake a prison system and so there are a lot of orders being disobeyed, but you would want people held accountable. But because I see no accountability, I can only assume that on some level that [Bashar al-Assad] accepts it if not encourages it. To me that would be evil.”
It’s when the e-word gets trotted out — especially by a career Arabist — that you ought to start paying closer attention to totalitarianism. Over a week ago, Ford attended the funeral of slain Syrian activist Giyath Matar. Shortly after he left, Assad’s security forces attacked the funeral.