The roads to Damascus (Les chemins de Damas)
France knows Syria well. It carved out the country from the remnants
of the Ottoman empire. But France, who
opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, gambled the hard line on regime change in
Syria and lost. The recent crisis in
Syria, said recently ‘Les chemins de Damas’ author to L’orient Le Jour, has
been treated in France with emotions and political irrealism.
The authors of ‘Les chemins de Damas’, Christian
Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, are successively Grand reporter at RTL and
journalist at Le Figaro. They were both
taken hostages by an alQaida affiliated group in Iraq in 2004 for four
months. Malbrunot and Chesnot have been
keen observers of the Middle East and jihadist groups. They published on Iraq and Qatar, and Malbrunot
has published on Palestine. Malbrunot writes a blog on the Middle East for Le Figaro and he is the only French reporter to have met and interviewed Syrian
president Bashar al-Assad in the most critical period of the crisis in 2012. Assad gave recently an interview to Paris Match in December 2014, and today to Foreign Affairs.
‘Les Chemins de Damas’ is an investigation
into how the Syrian crisis was mismanaged by Paris, despite a deep knowledge of
Syria formed by a long history of hostility and collaboration at the diplomatic
and intelligence levels between the two countries. The main sources for Chesnot and Malbrunot are
the principal actors of this long history.
That’s one of the many strengths of the book. The book has also annexes of previously
unpublished intel reports and diplomatic cables, as well as a letter from
Hollande to Saudi king, dated Decembre 2013, concerning the Saudi financing and
buying of French military equipment destined to Lebanon and the kingdom.
The book offers a brief historical
background and it is rich in historical context and covers the French-Syrian
relations during a time period extending between the Lebanese civil war and the
present day. It is divided in
eight sections that follow the ups and downs of the relation between France and
its former colony, more exactly 'protectorate'. The introduction is an overview of the main
content while the conclusion attempts to exlain France’s attitude during the
current Syria crisis suggesting France might take the road to a Damascus ruled
by the Baath again. The preface of the
book is by general Philippe Rondot, a
veteran of the French secret services as well as a specialist of the Arab
world. Mr. Rondot retired only recently
and he gives the authors great insight throughout the book. His insight is informed not only by his own
experience but also by his father’s legacy in the Levant. Pierre Rondot, a St
Cyrien in the French army who served in Morocco and the Levant, is credited of establishing
the Lebanese and Syrian secret services. The core of the book follows the relationship during the presidencies of Mitterrand, Chirac and Sarkozy, with the greater part devoted to the current crisis.
There is a great deal of continuity and
quality in what the French know about Syria, and this is reflected in Chesnot
and Malbrunot’s book, which makes the main question the book addresses all the
more relevant : how could the French have been so wrong on Syria recently? So the book tries to answer this very question.
Covert wars
The book starts by detailing the covert war
that France and Syria waged on each other during the Lebanese civil war,
wrestling to become the main influence in Lebanon. This covert war started with the
assassination of the French ambassador in Beirut in Septembre 1981 during what
might have been the most critical period in the Lebanese civil war. The
assassination was blamed first on Iran, but the French suspected Syria. There were retaliations. A bomb explosion at a Baath party
headquarters in Damascus killed 43 people, a week after the assassination of the French ambassador in Beirut. In 1983, few minutes
after the attack on the US marines, 58 French UN soldiers die from an explosion
at their barracks in Beirut. This became known as the Drakkar post attack or the Beirut barracks bombings. In 2008, when Bashar el-Assad was on official
visit to Paris, some in France protested the visit, recalling the attack on the French soldiers,
but an Elysee source told Le Monde that France blamed the
assassination of the French ambassador on Syria but thought that Iran was
behind the Beirut barracks bombings.
The critical years of the Lebanese
civil war, which culminated with the withdrawal of the PLO form Beirut, the
massacres of Sabra and Chatila, the Israeli occupation and the killing of the US marines and French UN soldiers, convinced the international community that the situation in Lebanon
couldn’t be managed but by Syria.
France then expatriated the rebel Lebanese army commander Michel Aoun,
who fought the Syrian army, and made peace with Damascus. This would lead down the road to the Taef agreement and the
pax Syriana in Lebanon that will last fifteen years, between 1990 and 2005.
The pax Syriana will be followed by a period
of relatively good relations between
Paris and Damascus. But the French
didn’t wait until the end of the Lebanese civil war to mend relations with
Damascus. François Mitterrand paid a
visit to Syria in Novembre 1984. The
people close to Mitterrand at the time of the visit told the authors that Mitterrand
despised the methods of Hafez but held him in great respect and was impressed
by him.
There is hope for western capitals to influence Syria again after Hafez's death
But the height of the French-Syrian
relations will be reached when Bashar el-Assad succeeds
his father at the presidency. Hafez el-Assad’s
death has been anticipated by Paris when news of his declining health were
known after the Jordanian and Israeli secret services managed to take a urine
sample during his visit to Jordan to pay
his respects at king Hussein’s funerals.
Hafez was feared and expectations among regional and international players to influence the future
of Syria were henceforth permitted with Bashar. France, like others, and maybe more than others, was eager and ready for change in
Syria.
When Bashar el-Assad takes over after his
father’s death, there is hope in the country and hope abroad. In the country there is hope
for reforms, and in France and other western countries, there is hope that the
fortress Syria, built by the
respected and feared Hafez, would not and cannot be maintained by his son. France wanted Syria's influence in Lebanon diminished. Lebanon was and still is a source of great tension between the two countries. While close collaborations
between Damascus and Paris at the security and economic levels were ongoing, a tension was building
between the two countries in Lebanon, mainly thanks to Lebanon's prime minsiter, Rafik Hariri.
Rafik Hariri worked hand in hand with both the
Syrians and the French, and it is understood that it was Hariri, whom Chirac
had met earlier in 1981 at a donor’s event after his failed bid for France’s
presidency, who suggested to Chirac to mentor young Bashar. Hariri’s role is dissected
at length in the book and he will attempt to emancipate himself
from Syria by using his personal relationship with Chirac. There is a story about Chriac visiting Damascus for Hafez’s
funerals. He pays a visit to the French embassy where he is secretly met by
Hariri welcoming him on the stairs as if he were the real owner of the
place. This small event is emblematic of
Hariri and of the relations between the two men.
Chirac’s Middle East policy became hijacked by Rafik Hariri who counselled
Chirac on all matters related to the Middle East, to the great dismay of the
Quai d’Orsay, and the French secret services, who saw in it a ‘Harirization’ of
France’s foreign policy in the region.
Chirac wanted to act as a mentor for Bashar
and Bahsar granted French advisors and
companies contracts in a bid to reform the state apparatus at the
adminsitrative level and open the economy to foreign and private investments. The
authors speak on many occasions of Bashar’s genuine desire to distinguish his
rule from his father’s. But Bashar faced
resistance at home from an anchylosed state apparatus and administration, and
from old regime apparatchiks like Abdel Halim Khaddam who would later leave
Syria for a Hariri paid golden exile in France. Bashar’s willingness to reform the state had many
French experts, businessmen and academics shuttling between France and
Damascus, invited to evaluate and propose partnerships and solutions, including the creation of a national school of administration modeled on the French one, which
produces high level civil servants and elected officials. The authors tell the story of
the French academic, responsible for setting up the Syrian school of
administration, visiting Rafik Hariri in Beirut to offer him the same deal, at the behest of Chirac who wanted to please his friend Hariri. They say Hariri wasn’t interested. He
received the Academic in his bedroom, in his pajamas, and told her that he was more
interested in the creation of business opportunities, not in governance.
The frantic collaboration in education, culture, and business investments will
resume with Sarkozy between 2008 and 2011, after the relation cools between
2005 and 2008, due to the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Syria stood accused of assassinating Hariri, but the international community later absolved Syria only to point fingers at Hezbollah.
The Harirization of France’s foreign policy meant that France was seeing
the region through the lens of political Sunni Islam since Hariri’s patron is
the king of Saudi Arabia. This might have led to a de facto rapprochement between France and the US
who was also close to Saudi Arabia when it came to crafting its policies in Lebanon and Syria.
But during the period between 2000 and 2005, Hariri grew frustrated with Bashar as Bashar
wasn’t letting Hariri, who was a businessman more than a politician, lay hands on Syria’s new budding economy, especially the
telecom sector which the Baath considered as a sector of strategic importance
not to be given to outsiders.
Regime change
Hariri was the origin of UN resolution 1559 sponsored by France and for which France cooperated closely with the US to
demand all foreign armies depart Lebanon. This was a first in France's policy in the region where it previously had a policy distinctive from the US. But UN1559 failed to weaken the Syrian influence in Lebanon after 2005. So after what might have been considered as a last attempt to co-opt Bashar, encouraged this time by Qatar and executed by
Nicolas Sarkozy, between 2008 and 2011, a decision for direct regime change in Syria was taking shape in the minds of western politicians when the 'Arab Spring' knocked at Syria's door in Deraa.
In a recent interview with Paris-Match, Bashar el-Assad confirmed that
Sarkozy’s initiative to resume good relations with Damascus was at
Qatar’s behest. It is reasonable to believe that the French
were surprised by what happened in Deraa. Assad was due to
make a high level visit to Paris in 2011, after his highly visible 2008 visit
where he attended the Bastille day parade.
Between 2008 and 2011, Assad visited Paris at least three times, two on
an official schedule and once in a private capacity with his wife. Sarkozy’s ‘Relance’ was beneficial for
France. Between 2008 and 2011, La crème
de la crème of French companies were signing contracts with the Syrian state
and private French entrepreneurs were opening businesses in Syria. However, business wasn't easy for foreign companies in Syria because of the problem of state corruption.
But despite the ups and downs, and up until the uprising, the authors write
that the security collaboration never ceased between Syria and France, even
after the assassination of Rafik Hariri. France honored its contracts to deliver two
Helicopters for
Bashar’s personal use in June 2005, 4 months after Hariri’s assassination. And Alcatel built
a secured network of telecommunications on Mount Qassioun for fourteen of the
highest ranking members of the ruling Baath party. This despite France’s deep involvment with the international justice process that accused Syria of Hariri's assassination. Its agents were first on the ground of the
explosion that killed Hariri and members of his convoy. France was also involved in producing a witness
who was later discredited. France hosted a re creation of the Beirut explosion on its terrirory for the
international tribunal, in great secrecy, allowing only Israeli planes to fly over the site two days
before the reenactment took place. This was done without even informing homeland security about the fly-over.
Then Deraa happened. France seems to have been caught off-guard
and was wary of not repeating the mistake of being on the wrong side as
with the Tunisia revolution. Plus, France was now feeling strong, fresh from the Libya adventure.
The agenda for regime change in Syria might have been just an idea lacking serious
planning and coordination, taking shape only through improvisations along the wave of the 'Arab Spring.' What
probably weighed in the decision to proceed with precipitation in Syria was the fallout of the July 2006 war in Lebanon during which Syria
provided support and weapons to Hezbollah to resist the Israeli assault. This made Hezbollah and his Syrian and Iranian allies strong and made the matter to break this alliance urgent.
However, the
Syrian uprising was unfolding on the ground in a different manner from what was
described in the media and in the communiqués of the Quai d’Orsay. The authors write that at the height of the civil
non violent protests there were only 400000 present over a total of twenty two million people. French intelligence agents, who were present on
the ground in Deraa and elsewhere, witnessed violent protests by Islamists early on. We learn for example that there were French agents in Baba 'Amr in Homs when French journalist Edith Bouvier was evacuated and that they were probably the reason why Edith Bouvier refused to be evacuated by the Syrian red crescent. Early on, the chants
weren’t ‘selmiah’ (we want peace), but ‘we want to topple Assad.’ Early on, Islamists, organised and supported
from the outside, were armed on the ground.
Early on, the media lied. The French ambassador Eric Chevalier present
in Syria at the time, and who famously went to Hama on his own initiative with
Robert Ford when the protests started there, complained about France24 for its biased
coverage, which wasn’t in his opinion close to the reality inside Syria. Chevalier was adamant at repeating that regime change wasn't going to be easy in Syria and that Assad wasn't going to fall.
The irreality of the Syrian war in the media
The authors critique the media when they write that, caught by a defiant international media whose coverage was about regime change, the Syrian regime didn't want to appear bent on reforms, because there
was a risk of appearing soft, and losing ground. They also argue that if
the protests were only internally motivated, asking for reforms, then a simple apology for
the Deraa shootings might have worked. This
is argued in a chapter titled ‘The sorcerer’s apprentices’ and validate the early assessment made by Assad of the protests, that they were the work of external actors waging war on Syria. For instance, it is obvious that the Muslim
Brotherhood led the early protests and it is known that the Muslim Brotherhood
had no foothold in Syria, being an external organization, not a
grassroot Syrian organization. The
authors also write that the Islamist radicals, not indigenous to Syria, did not
want a pacifist rebellion which was going to leave them on the side. They prepared
the ground for a military rebellion very early.
There are many indications in the book that external actors wanted to
militarize the crisis. Former deputy
prime minister Abdallah Dardari confided to the authors that intercepted phone
communications heard Saudis saying ‘we want blood.’ There were also calls from the radical
cleric Ibn Andallah al-Hosni to kill Christians, Shias and Alawites, as early
as August 2011. The same cleric also spoke
of the need for an influx of foreign fighters to make jihad in Syria, adding that, following the
Libyan model, Syria needs an alliance between the West and militant Islam
(quoted verbatim by the authors). This
was the time when the West thought it could control Islamist fighters and use
them to achieve its ends in Libya, Syria and maybe elsewhere. Under this tacit paradigm, western media
turned a blind eye on the militarization and the sectarian and extremist
characters of the rebellion, and presented a pacifist rebellion oppressed by an evil regime. Only more than a year later, early 2013, the media came to admit that there was some
armed rebellion in Syria. By then they
started to speak of a ‘mainly pacifist rebellion.’ On the other hand, the authors write that under assault, the regime hardened its stance,
and from August first to August eight 2011, many prominent pacifist militants were
arrested or assassinated. Syria's tragic fate was sealed early in the crisis.
Once the uprising turned to militarization,
western powers, France included, who by then uttered only the usual ‘Assad must
go’, delegated the management of the crisis to Qatar.
They will come to regret it later.
Contacts were taken with secular opponents of the regime to join the
external opposition, which was mainly Islamist, for the sole purpose to
hide both the Islamist and militaristic aspect of the uprising, to make the
uprising appear as an internal one, and to provide a fig leaf to a full blown war
on Syria by external powers. But the
fig leaf won’t work for long, secular figures were a minority in the
opposition. Under the patronage of Qatar,
the Muslim Brotherhood imposed its conditions, using secular figures without
giving them support, and refusing a proposal to form an internal
opposition council, which would have led to a diminished Brotherhood influence.
In octobre 2011, When Sarkozy’s foreign
minister Alain Juppé meets with the newly formed opposition council, with secular fig leaves
Kodmani and Ghalioun as members, he speaks of France’s support for the pacifist
revolution. But by then the ‘revolution’
was fully militarized and fully Islamist.
The drive for a war of intervention led by France and the UK with chemical weapons as casus belli
The chapter titled ‘La haine’ (the hate)
exposes the attempts made by France to provoke an intervention in Syria. Most of these attempts turned around chemical
weapons' use and how France tried to pin it on the regime despite the fact that
there was no hard evidence the regime used chemical weapons. Moreover, France
blatanly ignored the use of chemical weapons in the spring 2013 by the rebels
in the Aleppo area. The authors come to the same conclusion as Seymour Hersh in his two investigative reports about
the subject, published in the LRB, here and here. They detail the
implication of the Élysée in doctoring a report on chemical attacks in which
the informants’ note, that a gaz leak could have resulted from a regime
bombardement of a secret rebels’ chemical weapons laboratory, was simply
redacted.
But another interesting story is the alleged
‘investigation’ led by a journal close to the French government line on Syria,
Le Monde, on chemical weapons’ use.
Starting in May 2013, le Monde published a series of articles on chemical weapons’ use by the Syrian regime in Ghouta. Laurent Fabius, foreign minister under
Hollande, thanked Le Monde for their 'help' in a June 5th appearance on
French TV channel 2. However, Chesnot
and Malbrunot reveal that Le Monde journalists who took the samples from Syria,
served only as ‘mules’ carrying samples given to them by the doctors of the ‘free Syrian
Army’, collected from more than one site, sites that le Monde journalists
weren’t able to verify. Le Monde
photographer and journalist took the samples and handed them to French intel
agents across the border in Amman, where they were stationed after the closure of their embassy in
Damascus. The samples were then given to
the French embassy in Amman who sent them directly to the only Paris laboratory capable
of analyzing such samples, without the knowledge of the Quai d’Orsay. The Quai was surprised to receive a letter from
Le Monde editor-in-chief, Nathalie Nougayrède, asking when she could expect the
results of the analysis. Under such
circumstances, The Quai had to publish the results, which converged with earlier reports
made after sample collection by French intelligence. The results of the French investigations pointed to discrete traces of sarin
used on a small scale. It is around this
time, write the authors, that Paris and London, against all other western
countries, were in a drive for an intervention war on Syria. The next chemical
weapons attack of August 2013 was just few weeks away and it was going to be on a larger scale.
The 'New Roads to Damascus'
The book ends with a final chapter titled ‘The new roads to Damascus’. In it, the auhtors conclude that Paris, among
all other countries, must have known well the difficulties related to regime change in
Syria because of the strength of the regime. The Syrian government, ever since
an earlier bloody revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood in the eighties, was ready
for such a challenge. The authors advise that
western countries should have aimed for reform and not for regime change. They anticipate the resumption of relations
between western countries and the current regime in Damascus, and the need for
security collaboration between Syria and the West to fight Islamist radicals.
The authors write that France acted with
emotions and was not able to assess the reality of the uprising but rather
wanted its wish for regime change to become a reality. Not everyone saw things this way: as dissent inside the Quai d’Orsay grew
on the irrealist stance France took on Syria, a personal envoy of Sarkozy was
disptached to tell dissenters that one message was to be heard and followed:
‘Assad was going to fall.’ Where differences of
opinions existed, they were muted.
What emerges from the book is a relationship
between France and Syria that became vassalized, subjected to other interests: the Gulf and the US. Chirac
saw Syria through the eyes of his friend Hariri and Saudi Arabia. And Sarkozy departed from Chirac’s policy only to follow Qatar’s. In both cases, the US, whose policies in the region have long been aligned with the Gulf's, won by rallying to its hardline on Syria, and in both cases, the formidable French diplomacy in the Levant not only became redundant, but was now working against its initial aims when it won a mandate on these countries after WWI; protecting Christian minorities.
Contrary to appearances, France didn’t lead during the Syrian
crisis, it merely followed blindly, and against its own intelligence, experience and
interests, policies made in the United States and the Gulf, serving as a
frontline for these policies. The best proof of this is that one can look hard at a rationale, direction, and centre of decision for France's Syria policy, and yet find none.
Since March 29th 2006