Inside the Syrian Missile Crisis

Inside the Syrian Missile Crisis

News that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has provided Hezbollah with Scud missiles threatens to spark a regional conflict and poses a new challenge for President Obama's engagement policy.

BY ANDREW TABLER | APRIL 14, 2010

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak sent officials in Damascus and Washington scrambling when he claimed Tuesday that Syria is providing the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah with Scud missiles whose accuracy and range threaten more Israeli cities than ever before. His unexpected announcement, though vehemently denied by the Syrian regime, threatens to spark a new war between Israel and its antagonists in the region while further undermining U.S. President Barack Obama's efforts at engagement with Syria.

The alleged missile transfer now looms over the Senate confirmation of Obama's ambassador-designate to Syria, Robert S. Ford, who is slated to be Washington's first emissary to Damascus in more than five years. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's apparent decision to transfer more accurate and longer-range weapons to Hezbollah is a disheartening development for U.S. officials, who had hoped Obama's diplomatic opening would lead the Syrian regime to moderate its behavior. As Damascus arms its Lebanese ally with an increasingly lethal array of weaponry, Syria's credibility as a peace partner for Israel is increasingly in doubt.

Weapons have been flowing from Syria to Lebanon for decades. However, in recent months, reports have indicated that the sophistication of the weapons systems provided to Hezbollah has grown. In October 2009, the British military magazine Jane's Defence Weekly reported that Syria had supplied Hezbollah with M-600 rockets, a Syrian variant of the Iranian Fatah 110, whose rudimentary guidance system can carry a 500-kilogram payload to a target 250 kilometers away.

In early March, the head of the research division of the Israel Defense Forces' Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, that Syria had recently provided Hezbollah with the Igla-S man-portable air defense systems. The shoulder-fired weapon can bring down the Israeli drones, helicopter gunships, and low-flying fighter aircraft that routinely fly over Lebanon to gather intelligence.

Reports of increased weapons transfers surfaced again following Ford's nomination hearing on March 16. Rumors circulated around Capitol Hill that Syria had delivered Scud-D missiles to Lebanon. These reports did not specify whether the missiles were Russian Scud-Ds or Syrian varieties of Scud-Ds, which are upgraded versions of older Scud models that Syria reportedly began producing in mass quantities during the last year. Both missiles have a range of up to 700 kilometers, which means they could hit most, if not all, Israeli cities even if fired from northern Lebanon. Both can carry chemical or biological warheads.

Less than a week after a Feb. 17 visit by Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns -- the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Damascus in more than five years -- Assad hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah at a banquet in Damascus. During the visit, Assad openly mocked U.S. efforts to distance Syria from Iran and stated that his government is "preparing ourselves for any Israeli aggression."

These weapons transfers appear to mark a continuation of Assad's belligerent stance. While Lebanon has long been the battlefield between Syria and Israel, the transfer of these weapons may indicate that the Syrian president is calculating that the next war with Israel could involve strikes on Syrian territory. Conversely, others have postulated that the transfers could also be designed to put pressure on the United States to get Israel back to the negotiating table -- a bizarre tactic that is clearly not working.

In trying to answer these questions, U.S. congressional leaders -- most notably Senator John Kerry -- have visited Damascus over the last few weeks and attempted to engage Assad directly on the issue. The results of the meetings have not been made public. Meanwhile in Beirut, the United States is said to have issued a number of diplomatic démarches to Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri complaining about the transfers. Given that the Lebanese government exercises no control over the Syrian-Lebanese frontier, the démarches are likely to go unheeded.

These revelations have generated conflicting reactions in Washington regarding engagement with Syria. Skeptics say that the uncoordinated engagement by France, Saudi Arabia, the European Union -- and now the United States -- has fueled a bizarre outbreak of "Syrian triumphalism," causing Assad to throw caution to the wind. Syria's decision to send Scuds to Lebanon, they say, proves Damascus is unwilling to distance itself from Tehran. They argue that posting a U.S. ambassador to Syria under current circumstances would send the wrong signal to Damascus and only embolden Assad further.

Advocates of deeper engagement with Damascus argue that sending an ambassador will improve communication with the Syrian regime, thereby averting future crises. One unintended byproduct of Washington's policy of isolating Syria has been the elevation of the importance of Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha, who has proved to be an unhelpful interlocutor. The return of an ambassador to Damascus could provide channels to bypass Moustapha -- and also help avoid an "accident" that, in the atmosphere of rising Syrian-Israeli tensions, could spark a conflict.

The ability of U.S. diplomacy to avert a crisis now depends on the Scuds' current location. Reports citing U.S. and Israeli officials indicate that missiles have crossed the border, but it is unclear how many missiles possibly destined for Hezbollah still remain on Syrian soil. If fighting does break out, diplomats in Washington are concerned that the conflict could distract diplomatic attention from the more pressing U.S. national interest: efforts aimed at halting Iran's nuclear program. In the event of a regional war, Washington would no doubt be distracted from its task of marshaling international support for U.N. sanctions on Iran. By demonstrating that Hezbollah could not be neutralized without Syrian cooperation, the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war helped break the Assad regime's international isolation -- a lesson not lost on Tehran.

Israel has traditionally responded to threats such as these by bombing Hezbollah missile sites in Lebanon. However, Israel has indicated privately over the last year that the next conflict could include strikes inside Syria as well, or perhaps target weapons convoys as they cross the porous Syrian-Lebanese border.

Although the risks of a Syrian counterstrike are great, some Israeli officials might see an advantage in striking at both Syria's and Lebanon's military hardware. Analysts say most decisions to go to war would be based on Israel's strategic calculations in the north. But there are regionwide calculations over Iran as well. If Israel destroys Hezbollah's weapons, it could provide a window of time in which Israeli cities are under a decreased threat of missile attack. This would give Israel a perfect opportunity to strike Iran without risking an immediate retaliation from Tehran's allies to its north. This scenario would not be cost-free for Israel, but given its overriding concern over Iran's possession of a nuclear weapon, Israeli leaders might judge it to be an acceptable level of risk. Given that an Israeli strike on Iran still seems out of the question for the time being, however, this may be one of the reasons why cooler heads have prevailed so far.

At the center of this unenviable situation sits ambassador-designate Robert Ford. The surprising escalation on the part of the Syrian regime represents yet another challenge to Obama's policy of engagement -- not to mention regional peace. Quiet diplomacy has so far managed to prevent the situation from disintegrating into an all-out war. However, if Israel locates the Scuds in Lebanon, this deceptive calm might not last for long.

Andrew Tabler is Next Generation fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of the forthcoming book In the Lion's Den: Inside America's Cold War with Asad's Syria.

The Road to Resistance

2007 marks the 40th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. Andrew Tabler reports on the options Syria is considering to get it back.

Medhat Saleh believes in taking matters into his own hands. Born in the Golan village of Majdal Shams three months before Israel captured the strategic plateau in June 1967, Saleh decided Israel’s annexation of his homeland 14 years later would not go unchallenged. After repeated general strikes by the Golan’s 22,000 residents led to nothing, he formed a secret organisation with some friends in 1984. “We dug up Israeli anti-personnel mines and planted them around the Israeli bases,” says Saleh, 41, a burly man with dark hair and eyes and distinct white skin – a hallmark of many in his Druze community. “We hid them under our belts as we walked. We wanted to be martyrs.”

Before Saleh could achieve self-immolation, he was arrested. Reflecting on his 12-year sojourn in various Israeli prisons, he explains how up to 30 inmates were kept in a single 16 metre-square cell. “Conditions were bad,” says Saleh. “They used tear gas on us five or six times, and health care was really poor.”

Saleh’s travails did not end when he was released in 1997. As he headed to Damascus he had to dodge minefields and scale electric fences with wooden ladders. Eventually he crossed the demilitarised zone in April 1998, where the Syrian government hailed him a champion of the local resistance against Israeli occupation – an accolade that helped propel him to parliament later that same year. But at the same time the regime continued to reiterate that peace was a “strategic choice” and the frontier remained silent.

Following last summer’s war in Lebanon, where Hezbollah paramilitary operations fended off a 33-day bombardment by Israeli forces, many Syrians saw “resistance” as the best way to pressure Israel into returning the occupied plateau. A stream of stories appeared in the international press speculating that the Golan could once again be a frontline issue in a war between two old foes.

Six months later, the picture is confused. In January the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported how a number of prominent private Israelis and Syrian had been drafting a secret document to pave the way for the Golan Heights to be returned to Syria. Both the Israeli and Syrian governments dismissed the document, denying any involvement in the talks, which supposedly took place between September 2004 and July 2006 in Europe.
And as Israel continues to refuse to engage in peace talks, Syrians are organising popular resistance committees and preparing for a new kind of fight. While many signs peddle the war option, a closer look at these local group’s agendas, as well as Syria’s overall strategic concerns, shows that the Hezbollah-model remains on the back burner – at least for now.

Why resistance, why now?

For many Syrians, resistance is an accepted part of the negotiations with Israel. “Unfortunately with the Israelis, if you fight them they call you terrorists. And if you don’t fight them, they say ‘why should we negotiate with you?’” says Samir al-Taqi, director of the Orient Centre for Studies in Damascus.

The political stakes are as high as the plateau’s snow-capped mountains. The Golan is the Levant’s tactical pivot, the high ground from which a country’s domination over the region can be seen and heard. When Israel captured the Golan it erected communication towers and listening posts pointing in all directions. Syria then reclaimed about a third of the territory lost in 1967 in the subsequent 1973 War, including the capital Quneitra. But almost all of the strategic high ground remains in Israeli hands. In a manoeuvre that added further insult to injury, in December 1981 the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) voted to annex the Golan – a decision that was declared “null and void” by UN Security Council Resolution 497.

Israel and Syria last held formal peace talks in 2000. But just as they appeared close to a deal to return most or all of the Golan Heights to Syria the negotiations broke down. Many Golanese see resistance as a natural outcome of their forty years of displacement. “Syria tried the peace process and got nowhere,” says Majid Abo Saleh, a spokesman for the Popular Commission for the Liberation of the Golan. “Israel destroyed over 1,165 of our villages to ensure our people would not go back. What do they expect?”

Israel’s “scorched earth” withdrawal from Quneitra following the Disengagement Agreement of 1974 has left a permanent scar on the remaining Syrians living in the Golan. They are reticent about what any future negotiations with Israel will bring. With dynamite and bulldozers, the Israeli army flattened the city from its final command posts. Minarets were blown apart and churches burned, leaving empty sanctuaries of broken tile and stone. The army even used the city’s 400-bed hospital for combat training and target practice.

The estimated 500,000 Golanese who remain displaced (the Naziheen in Arabic) eke out meagre lives in resettlement communities around Damascus and the southern Syrian city of Daraa. Some 22,000 Golanese in five villages remain under Israeli occupation, cut off from their friends and loved ones. Contact is only possible via special crossings organised by the Red Cross/Red Crescent a few times a year. The rest of the time, communication is limited to conversations over the demilitarised zone using bullhorns. As the 40th anniversary of the Golan’s capture by Israeli forces approaches, patience among the Golanese is understandably wearing thin.

“We just want permission from the government to go to the front, buy guns, and liberate our land,” says Nidal, a 33-year-old displaced Golan resident. “Look to Hezbollah: just a few hundred people destroyed tanks and helicopters. Why can’t we do it like them?”

Forms of Resistance

Last June, a mere two weeks before the outbreak of war in Lebanon, Abo Saleh’s Popular Commission for Resistance issued its first communiqué, explaining that “the enemy only understands the language of resistance.” A general conference was held the next month, followed by the selection of a politburo as hostilities in Lebanon drew to a close. While the timing of the commission’s formation raised eyebrows, Abo Saleh says his organisation’s “resistance” will take on more peaceful forms. “We don’t have any weapons,” he explains. “We want to raise awareness of the plight of the displaced. So we are going to launch a media campaign in Arabic and English and see how it goes.”

In the Israeli-controlled area of the Golan, more aggressive forms of resistance seem to have been quietly underway for years. On February 14 – on the 25th anniversary of massive general strikes against Israeli identification cards – the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot published a statement from a previously unknown Syrian group operating within the Golan who claimed to have held an Israeli soldier prisoner since 1997.

The group, called the Resistance Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights, issued a defiant message: “Zionists, do not think your millions of dollars will bring you back the soldier missing in the Golan. You know very well how he will return. We place all responsibility for the lives of our prisoners on the occupation, and ask all the international and humanitarian bodies to intervene and bring their release from the prison camps of oppression.”

Similarly, two days after war broke out in Lebanon last July, another previously unknown organisation called the Syrian National Resistance in the Occupied Golan claimed responsibility for the burning of an Israeli camp in Majdal Shams. Later that month, the same group reportedly attacked an Israeli patrol with a roadside bomb near Quneitra. The group also threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers to swap with Syrian prisoners of war in Israeli jails. The incidents, as well as the soldier’s capture, remain unconfirmed.

“From the first day of the occupation, there was resistance,” says Nawaf Sheikh Faris, Governor of Quneitra Province - the Golan’s administrative district. “It took on many forms: cultural, media, as well as military resistance.”
With a tough and calm manner, Faris seems the very personification of the Syrian position. “Syria’s strategic choice remains peace,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean we will sit and do nothing.”


Human Resources

The history of the Golan occupation is detailed along the walls leading up to the lone checkpoint, which links the Israeli and Syrian controlled areas of the plateau. Old slogans by the late President Hafez al-Assad pledging peace are now flanked by other mottos. The most prominent is President Bashar’s call that “God Protects Syria” – a reference that seems to follow Hezbollah’s Islamic resistance model. The fact that it fills the white band in the Syrian flag, alongside the two stars representing the onetime union between Syria and Egypt, makes the message even more powerful.

“Hezbollah showed that it is now possible to inflict damage on a regular army using three things: a RPG-29 Russian handheld anti-tank grenade launcher; an anti-aircraft missile; and a heavy machine gun,” says Al-Taqi. “Human resources replace high-tech weapons. Now it will depend on who is able to introduce new tools with the help of the Russians and Iranians.”

With one of the highest birth rates outside of the Palestinian Territories, Syria has plenty of recruits. “We have thousands of people who are ready to be Fedayeen (fighters),” says Saleh, who is in regular contact with communities in the occupied Golan. “We are switching to more sophisticated means.” While a guerrilla-style Hezbollah war in the Golan Heights seems more plausible for many Syrians, Al-Taqi is quick to point out that the geography of the area makes this option a risky move for Syria. “We can hurt them…but a war of attrition is difficult. After all, Damascus is within range of the Israeli army’s field guns,” he says.

Reporting by Obaida Hamad. (From Syria Today Magazine www.syria-today.com)

Keeping Options Open - Far Too Long

Editorial
Syria Today Magazine

The waiting game in the Golan may be over.

June marks the 40th anniversary of Israel’s seizure of the Golan Heights. In a show of further opposition to Israel, Syria marked the occasion on February 14. Was this a publicity stunt by Damascus to deflect attention from the second anniversary of the assassination of the former Lebanese PM Rafik al-Hariri for which Syria stands accused? Not quite. On that day in 1982, around 20,000 Syrians living under occupation in the Golan demonstrated against Israel’s annexation of the plateau the previous December. In particular, the Golanese refused to accept Israeli plans for identification cards.

After the last Syria-Israel negotiation on the Golan Heights ended in 2000, life has been relatively calm on the streets, with the odd report filtering through to the international media on the annual shipments of apples from Syrian farmers living under Israeli occupation to Syria and the bi-annual crossings by Golanese students to University in their home country. Old times might be right around the corner, however. Reports continue to appear in the Syrian and regional press of various organisations preparing for “resistance” activities in the Golan. One such group even claimed that it captured an Israeli soldier in 1997.

In the visitor center of the “Liberated Quneitra Museum” – which consists simply of the buildings destroyed by Israel when it was forced out of the city following the 1973 War – a careful look at a scaled model of the Golan gives you a sense of how Golanese resistance may differ from that in south Lebanon last summer.

Despite retrieving in 1973 almost a third of the territory Israel took in 1967, Syrian forces remain on the strategic low-ground and under the watchful eye of listening towers and other high-tech instruments on the occupied summit. Inside occupied territory, only five mainly-Druze villages remain in tact on some of the Golan’s highest ground following Israel’s scorched earth policy in the Golan. The other 1,165 villages that Syria claims Israel destroyed on the slopes facing Lake Tiberius (Sea of Galilee in English) were replaced with modern Israeli settlements, horse ranches, wineries and ski resorts.

The contrasts with south Lebanon are striking. Almost 1.5 million Lebanese inhabit the areas adjacent to the border between Lebanon and former Palestine - known as the blue line - which until international forces showed up last summer was under the control of the Shiite resistance group Hezbollah. Arms shipments could arrive easily and paramilitary operations were conducted with such stealth that Israeli intelligence had no idea about the massive bunkers in the area. South Lebanon is also full of rolling, rocky hills about the same elevation as those immediately south of the blue line. The area’s residents also had a lot of practice resisting occupation as well, most notably during the days of Israel’s “security zone” in south Lebanon from 1978 to 2000.

The sectarian divide in south Lebanon, which is primarily Shiite Muslim with pockets of Maronite Christians, also meant that Iranian support for Hezbollah activities were easy to manage.

How will Syria catch up on the resistance option? Those organising popular resistance committees say that they are focusing on raising awareness of the plight of the Golanese. After the February 14 celebrations, resistance organisers plan to publish materials on the plateau and its people and how 40 years of no peace, no war has affected their daily lives. They say they don’t have any weapons – at least yet.

The Golan has been the quietest of Israel’s battlefronts since the Disengagement Agreement of 1974. Israel feels so comfortable with the situation that they have established farm settlements adjacent the barb wired border with Syrian forces in the demilitarised zone. But in an age of extremes, where leaders from the far corners of the world hurl ideological insults at each other instead of talking, all it takes is one incident to change the political playing field. The last two major military confrontations between Israeli and paramilitary forces in Gaza and south Lebanon started with the capture of Israeli soldiers. Israel has been unable to get these soldiers back, as the effectiveness of its armed forces has declined thanks to its foes getting their hands on Israel’s rocket equipment.

How’s this all going to end? It’s anyone’s guess. Non-state actors eager to get into a fight are multiplying almost as fast as new blogs on the Internet. Containing such groups will take an international police effort, but it will also involve solving the problems of the growing numbers of displaced people in a region already beset with poverty, ignorance, and religious extremism.