I recently traveled to Syria with two of my colleagues at CSIS, Jon Alterman and Thomas Sanderson. We did so at the invitation of the Orient Center in Damascus to discuss US and Syrian relations and met with a range of Syrians concerned with the distance and tensions between our countries. We also met with President Asad and the Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem....
...the Syrian perspective was that the Bush Administration had no serious interest in talking to Syria, and that any progress would have to come after it left office. I will not attempt to speak for my colleagues, but my perspective was that we faced serious problems in our relations over Syria’s polices towards Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Iran.
At the same time, I was again struck by the fact that Syria remains one of the more secular and modern societies in the Middle East. Its people are often well educated, almost always friendly, and are not anti-American in the broad sense of the term. The people we spoke to showed considerable pragmatism and flexibility in their views, and Syrians are an easy people to talk with. Unlike some of the region’s ideologues, it is possible to have a real dialogue....
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