Syria and the Attack on the American Embassy

On Sunday, Damascus said it preferred to maintain its tenuous relationship with Washington after the American ambassador’s visit to Hama last Friday. But it wasn’t long before the Syrian regime sent its followers to attack the U.S. and French embassies in Damascus. How is all of this to be understood?

Before commenting, in order to make it easier to understand the regime’s behavior, I must share two important expressions I’ve previously heard from officials in the region about the Syrian regime’s way of thinking. One day an Arab official told me, “When contemplating the Syrian regime’s actions, don’t subject them to political logic, that would be a mistake. Rather, always try to think in the same way as the regime itself thinks in order to grasp its character.” He added, “If the regime were to act with the logic of a nation state, Syria would not be in this position, neither would the region with this sort of regime.” I also heard from a high ranking Arab official who had dealt with the Syrian issue since the time of Assad Senior that, “the best way to deal with the Syrian regime is to build upon its mistakes, which are many. The regime is its own worst enemy.”

By evoking these two analyses we could say that the Syrian regime is no longer keen on the presence of the American ambassador in Damascus the way the Syrian people and President Obama are. Syrians find protection from oppression in the presence of the American ambassador, which is what happened last Friday in Hama. In fact, the Syrian opposition called for the remaining foreign ambassadors to do what the French and American ambassadors have done. As for Obama, he is facing increasing pressure from Congress to withdraw the ambassador as Bush Senior did after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri in 2005. Yet Obama is defending the presence of the U.S. ambassador in Damascus as the only opportunity to know the truth of what’s really going on inside Syria, which is right, and so the U.S. ambassador has made serious moves that may embarrass Congress, but has subsequently stomped painfully on the fingertips of the Syrian regime, as well.

Thus, the response of the regime to the American ambassador’s visit to Hama comes natural, if not delayed. This regime is suffering terribly from not taking into account the changing times and the U.S. ambassador’s visit to Hama will be considered a slap in the face for the Syrian regime, not externally, but internally. This humiliation will be felt nowhere more than in the army; there will be senior officers who, regardless of their sect, will not like what happened today, and may make the regime anxious since the entire history of Syrian coups has included gestures of maintaining dignity and so on.

The Syrian regime’s affront today against the American ambassador is only proof of the regime’s confusion, weakness and floundering. As we have already said, it would not have been reasonable for Washington’s ambassador to head to Hama without the regime’s knowledge and this later became clear since Damascus was aware of it. But the mass protests in Hama last Friday, as well as the Syrian people’s reception of the U.S. ambassador with roses, caused the regime to lose its mind as we have seen today. This is natural for a regime that makes many mistakes, and is far from having any vision on how to deal with the crisis it is confronted with, and this is making its dilemma worse.