I couldn't help myself, this brief letter sent to the editor of the NY Times by Syria's ambassador to the U.S.A. made me laugh out loud:
I wish to inform you that Rami Makhlouf, a businessman whom you interviewed at length, is a private citizen in Syria. He holds no official position in the Syrian government and does not speak on behalf of the Syrian authorities. The opinions he expressed are exclusively his and cannot be associated in any way with the official positions of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic.
IMAD MOUSTAPHA
Ambassador of Syria
Washington, May 11, 2011
The letter was in response to this interview (my slightly abridged version here) which formed part of a Syrian PR blitz consisting of a visit limited to one journalist (Anthony Shadid - who I think did a good job of accentuating and laying out the extortionist mentality at play in the regime's thinking) conducting two interviews with regime insiders - this while all other foreign journalists were expelled or "forcibly disappeared" (check here and here) from the country and local independent journalists were arrested ... or worse.
Ostensibly the aim of the two interview was to push out a new regime line (perhaps on advice from the ambassador himself?), you know something along the lines of threatening to degenerate the conflict into an all out sectarian conflict; threatening to use regime cells to extend the violence into vulnerable regional neighbours like Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine/Israel, and perhaps even Jordan (add Turkey to the list if you count Iranian's mobilization of some loyal Kurdish cells there); and threatening to "ignite" the Golan Heights front, which, it should be noted, hasn't seen a bullet fired in about 40 years. The idea was also to present the international community with an all or nothing scenario, betting that it would not have the will to carry the confrontation with the regime to the end, and moving to choke out and/or limit to the extreme any evidence of popular revolt, thereby demonstrating that there would be nobody for the international community to deal with as an alternative to the regime - nobody except Islamic extremists, a point highlighted in another prong of the regime's PR offensive.
If nothing else, the talking points simply highlighted the regime's long standing modus operandi . This should come as no surprise given the leaked document (check here and here) which showed the Syrian regime vying to scare Syrian Christians into abstaining from joining the revolution while inciting the Alawite community to actively take up arms in defense of the regime. Tactics to be used to further incite sectarian divisions were attacks on religious sites and assassinations along clan and sectarian lines.
In order to bolster its threats, the regime employed them early in its favorite theater for violence, Lebanon, as the Arab Spring began to blossom in Syria. In the Bekaa valley a group of seven Estonian tourists were abducted shortly after having crossed the border, and by most analyst accounts taken back to Syria to be held in captivity. A clue as to the real identity of the abductors should have come to light in view of the relatively high degree of activity by Estonian diplomats and interlocutors in Damascus, in comparison to Beirut (Estonia has since resisted EU sanctions on Syria out of fear for the safety of its kidnapped citizens). Indeed, the choice of Estonian captives was an astute one, they were European and therefore likely to draw attention, but they didn't come from the larger, more influential European powers, so that that attention could be well contained, and the repercussions limited. Similarly, the bomb attack on a Syriac Orthodox church in the Lebanese Bekaa city of Zahleh sought to use a small, relatively powerless Christian sect as a consequence-free threat to the broader Christian community in Syria.
With the upcoming announcement of a Middle East speech by the US President, and US Senate initiatives on Syria (check here and here), the letter could be seen as an early sign that the the message didn't go down as anticipated and therefore attempt to back away from the more reprehensible talking points of the Makhlouf interview.
I guess we'll have to wait and see ...
Ostensibly the aim of the two interview was to push out a new regime line (perhaps on advice from the ambassador himself?), you know something along the lines of threatening to degenerate the conflict into an all out sectarian conflict; threatening to use regime cells to extend the violence into vulnerable regional neighbours like Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine/Israel, and perhaps even Jordan (add Turkey to the list if you count Iranian's mobilization of some loyal Kurdish cells there); and threatening to "ignite" the Golan Heights front, which, it should be noted, hasn't seen a bullet fired in about 40 years. The idea was also to present the international community with an all or nothing scenario, betting that it would not have the will to carry the confrontation with the regime to the end, and moving to choke out and/or limit to the extreme any evidence of popular revolt, thereby demonstrating that there would be nobody for the international community to deal with as an alternative to the regime - nobody except Islamic extremists, a point highlighted in another prong of the regime's PR offensive.
If nothing else, the talking points simply highlighted the regime's long standing modus operandi . This should come as no surprise given the leaked document (check here and here) which showed the Syrian regime vying to scare Syrian Christians into abstaining from joining the revolution while inciting the Alawite community to actively take up arms in defense of the regime. Tactics to be used to further incite sectarian divisions were attacks on religious sites and assassinations along clan and sectarian lines.
In order to bolster its threats, the regime employed them early in its favorite theater for violence, Lebanon, as the Arab Spring began to blossom in Syria. In the Bekaa valley a group of seven Estonian tourists were abducted shortly after having crossed the border, and by most analyst accounts taken back to Syria to be held in captivity. A clue as to the real identity of the abductors should have come to light in view of the relatively high degree of activity by Estonian diplomats and interlocutors in Damascus, in comparison to Beirut (Estonia has since resisted EU sanctions on Syria out of fear for the safety of its kidnapped citizens). Indeed, the choice of Estonian captives was an astute one, they were European and therefore likely to draw attention, but they didn't come from the larger, more influential European powers, so that that attention could be well contained, and the repercussions limited. Similarly, the bomb attack on a Syriac Orthodox church in the Lebanese Bekaa city of Zahleh sought to use a small, relatively powerless Christian sect as a consequence-free threat to the broader Christian community in Syria.
With the upcoming announcement of a Middle East speech by the US President, and US Senate initiatives on Syria (check here and here), the letter could be seen as an early sign that the the message didn't go down as anticipated and therefore attempt to back away from the more reprehensible talking points of the Makhlouf interview.
I guess we'll have to wait and see ...
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