Back to the future
How old Syria takes are making a comeback

Sometime in the early-2000s a consensus emerged in the West on how to deal with Syria. The general approach was set by Europe’s political leadership: UK Premier Tony Blair, who visited Damascus in 2001, and French President Jacques Chirac, who followed in 2002. The thinking was that despite the fraught relationships with his late father, Bashar would be different. He was young, Western-educated, married to a British-Syrian, and appeared open to liberal reforms that would transform Syria into a pillar of moderation and stability. It seemed that he might even be open to cutting ties with Iran and making peace with Israel. That he had crushed the nascent Damascus Spring did not seem to damage his reformist credentials because it was blamed on an “old guard” that was said to be holding the young leader back. Once the “new guard” had cemented its position, good things would follow. 

The expert commentariat on Syria developed this narrative into a mantra. At its heart was a theory of change borrowed from the European experience of the 18th and 19th centuries: liberalisation of the economy would empower the commercial and professional middle classes to demand a greater say in political affairs, and this would lead to a steady emergence of representative government over a 20-40 year timeframe. Bashar’s economic reforms, which began in 2004 with the privatisation of the banking sector, was seen as the first step on this low-road to democracy. Eager to influence the process, Western think tanks engaged with “reform-minded Baathists”, and most of their Syria research centred on how Europe could aid Assad’s economic reform agenda.

Putting theory to the test
One of the first real-world tests for the mantra was the EU-Syria Association Agreement, which  stemmed from the 1995 Barcelona Process: a project for dialogue and cooperation between the EU and twelve neighbouring Mediterranean countries. By 2006, eleven of these latter states had signed tailored partnership agreements with the EU that stressed political, economic, and social activities and included significant financial assistance and preferential trade arrangements. Syria, however, remained the exception, with Assad wary of any agreement that included provisions on human rights and WMDs. The Syria experts who favoured an association agreement argued that the long term political benefits for the EU outweighed legal quibbles. Assessing the various opinions on the matter, the British academic Chris Phillips wrote at the time:

Syria expert Joshua Landis argues that US sanctions and international isolation have not worked, so a new approach should be tried. The proposed EU agreement, he suggests, would tie Syria into the global economy and discourage it from siding with those that undermine the global order, notably Iran. Similarly, the economic benefits of such a pact would help develop a larger Syrian middle class who would, in turn, promote greater international co-operation, as has happened in China.

Despite the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri – widely believed to have been ordered by Assad – and Syria’s support for insurgents in Iraq, as well as its increasingly close ties to Iran, the EU did not give up on the notion of an association agreement. In 2008 talks resumed, the result of indirect Israeli-Syrian negotiations, and of Damascus's adoption of a seemingly more positive stance on Lebanon, symbolised by the election there of Michel Suleiman as president that year and by Syria's pledge to open an embassy in Beirut. Following these developments, senior-level diplomatic exchanges between Europe and Syria – largely frozen since 2005 – resumed. Syria, however, procrastinated and the process was put on permanent hold in 2011. 

Lipstick on a pig
Thirteen years later, Syria is a very different place: divided territorially, broken economically, half its population displaced, and largely under the thumb of competing foreign powers. Despite this, the old takes of the 2000s are making a remarkable comeback, albeit in a new guise. 

A side-event at the Brussels VIII conference last month was entitled “Harnessing Economic Autonomy for Peace: Reimagining Syria’s Path Forward.” The objective was “to discuss and analyse the extent to which economic factors, particularly the empowerment of local economies, can be instrumental in fostering peace in Syria.” The emphasis was on “support and empowerment of SMEs and the middle class in Syria’s peacebuilding efforts.” The context may have changed but the basic premise of Europe’s former engagement with Syria – economic incentives for behaviour change – had not.

Back in the 2000s, one of the key incentives for an economic-led approach to Syria was the EU-Syria Association Agreement. Today, it is the UNDP and the Early Recovery Trust Fund. As in the 2000s, Assad will not open Syria up politically, let alone implement UNSCR 2254; but he has adopted a neutral position on the Gaza war, much to the satisfaction of Israel and its European allies, and is playing footsie with the Arabs on a promise to curtail Iran’s influence; and while Assad can no longer portray himself as a reformer, his wife still can. Her Syria Trust for Development (STD) is well-placed to capitalise on schemes to support SMEs, such as the Wataneyeh programme that claims to “help small businesses survive and thrive by offering them financing facilities that are otherwise unavailable through regular commercial banks.” The fact that her shady ‘economic council’ has reportedly extorted many dozens of businessmen on pain of arrest will not worry too many people, just as Rami Makhlouf’s business empire built in the 2000s on monopolistic practices did not worry those that extolled Assad’s market-oriented reforms. Fattening up Syrian enterprises only for Mrs Assad to then shake them down is no one’s idea of ‘economic autonomy’, and yet this is what is likely to happen.

Escaping from politics to economics hardly ever works; but despite repeated failure, the international community seems poised once again to rely on economic incentives as a pathway to stability and political reform. Only this time there is the additional promise from humanitarians that SME support will enhance ‘social cohesion’ and therefore contribute in some vague manner to finding a way out of Syria’s war. As an approach to peacebuilding, this is so de-politicised and risk-averse that it might end up doing more harm than good. Injecting cash to support the private sector is only helpful from a conflict resolution perspective if it is explicitly linked to a genuine political solution.