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Change for Syria?

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US special envoy George Mitchell will be in Syria soon. Anchor Katy Clark speaks with Syria expert, Joshua Landis, about the prospects for change in the Middle East. Landis is assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World.  One of the buzzwords from President Obama’s campaign was “change”.  And there’s some hope that change could be on the horizon in the Middle East.  The President’s special Mid-East envoy, George Mitchell, is on his way to Syria.  It will be his second visit in as many months.  For years, Syria has been an implacable enemy of Israel, an ally of Iran, and a sponsor of militant groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon.  The question is whether Mitchell is able to coax a change out of Damascus.  Joshua Landis is a leading blogger on Syria, and is associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma.  Joshua Landis, I’d like your thoughts on why Mitchell is going back to Damascus?

JOSHUA LANDIS:  Well, Obama’s strategic plan for the Middle East and his attempts to get the Middle East peace process moving are in danger of stalling.  It’s a little bit like his health plan, in a sense.  And so I think this is an attempt to get the ball rolling.

CLARK:  So how do you move forward there?  I’m wondering if you think that Syria really does want to cooperate with the United States, if it can just get past the fears?

LANDIS:  I think Syria does.  You know, I just got off the phone with some people at the Syrian embassy, and they’re very concerned.  They say, “We’ve been let down by America a number of times in the past.  We want very much to move forward.  It’s in our interest.  We need good relations with America.  We want Golan Heights back, and we want peace with Israel.  But we don’t want to be roles.”  And they put it almost entirely in those words.  We want to make sure that this is going to be comprehensive, and developing that trust is difficult.  It’s important that Mitchell go continue this dialogue.

CLARK:  Do you think that something might come out of this, or these are just the small steps that must be made in democracy and mean nothing out of this particular trip that is building on a greater program?

LANDIS:  Well, I think that things can come out of this, that right now the first step is the Iraq intelligence share.  America wants to establish a regime where Syria will be arresting people on the Syria side of the border, that Americans will be giving intelligence to Syrian people, and the Syrians will go off and arrest them.  And Syrians will be happy to do this, but it also wants to be called an Ambassador and not to be called a territory state and so forth, and it’s moving ahead and working on all these things.  So that’s the first step.  Then of course there has to be movement on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Golan Heights.  And there we have a real problem, because Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel is not going to give back the Golan Heights.  Syria says, “We need the Golan Heights.”  And so much of the problems between America and Syria hinge on this issue, because Syria – as you said in your opening – supports radical groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, that America doesn’t like Israel as much.  But Syria supports them because they put pressure on Israel that Syria needs in order to get back the Golan.  And Syria’s not going to stop supporting those groups unless it has peace with Israel and gets back its land.  So American can go around this issue 100 different ways and patch up relations with Syria, but it will never have decent relations with Syria so long as Golan Heights is occupied by Israel.  And that’s the end goal that we really need to get to, and that Mitchell needs to get to.  And that’s going to be a very difficult goal.

CLARK:  Joshua Lands is director of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma.  Thank you.

LANDIS:  My pleasure.

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