Syria Plays on Fears to Blunt American Support of Rebels

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Syria’s Shifting Strategy: As the war continues, Syrian officials are trying to convince Western countries that they should not support rebel forces because, the officials contend, many are extremists allied with Al Qaeda.

By ANNE BARNARD

Published: April 24, 2013 224 Comments

DAMASCUS, Syria — As Islamists increasingly fill the ranks of Syrian rebels, President Bashar al-Assad is waging an energized campaign to persuade the United States that it is on the wrong side of the civil war. Some government supporters and officials believe they are already coaxing — or at least frightening — the West into holding back stronger support for the opposition.

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Most of the prisoners, like Khaled Hamdo Shami, were Syrians, not from other countries.

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Confident they can sell their message, government officials have eased their reluctance to allow foreign reporters into Syria, paraded prisoners they described as extremist fighters and relied unofficially on a Syrian-American businessman to help tap into American fears of groups like Al Qaeda.

“We are partners in fighting terrorism,” Syria’s prime minister, Wael Nader al-Halqi, said.

Omran al-Zoubi, the information minister, said: “It’s a war for civilization, identity and culture. Syria, if you want, is the last real secular state in the Arab world.”

Despite hopes in Damascus, President Obama has not backed off his demand that Mr. Assad step down. The administration has also kept up economic pressure on his government and has increased nonlethal aid to the opposition while calling for a negotiated settlement to the fighting.

But the United States has signaled growing discomfort with the rising influence of radical Islamists on the battlefield, and it remains unwilling to arm the rebels or to consider stepping in more forcefully without conclusive evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, as some Israeli officials assert.

There is frustration with the West’s inability to help nurture a secular military or political opposition to replace Mr. Assad.

It is difficult to see behind the propaganda of either side because government officials or the rebels — depending on the territory — control access. Information is a strategic weapon in the stalemated conflict, as both sides seek support from suffering Syrians and foreign countries.

The government’s new strategy was on display during a two-week visit to Damascus by journalists for The New York Times.

Exhibit A was a group of blindfolded prisoners who shuffled into a dimly lighted courtyard one recent evening, each clutching the shirt of the man in front of him. Security officials billed them as vicious Islamic extremists who came from all over the world to wage jihad in Syria.

The men turned out to be five Syrians, a Palestinian and an Iraqi, and they described a range of goals, from Islamic rule to representative democracy.

In Damascus, officials and supporters sounded several themes: They believe they can win the war, and see no need to moderate the military crackdown. They expect Mr. Assad to run for re-election next year, and some say he can win, brushing off doubts about how voting will work in a country where nearly half the people have been forced from their homes.

Some officials and members of the Syrian elite even say — however far-fetched — they can persuade the West to embrace their president as a champion of common values and interests, even as he presses a military strategy widely criticized as striking civilian targets indiscriminately.

Most of all, the war seems to have inspired some of Mr. Assad’s supporters. Some prominent Syrians, long frustrated by corruption and favoritism, say they have a newly compelling reason to stick by the government.

Now, they say, they are fighting for an idea: preserving Syria’s mosaic of religions and cultures.

And they see themselves, with their well-traveled, secular lifestyles, as ideally equipped to connect to the West.

That is the mission of Khaled Mahjoub, a Syrian-American businessman.

At the nearly deserted Four Seasons Hotel, Mr. Mahjoub ordered Lebanese rosé. Syrians, he said, embrace joy at the hardest times. He smoked a thick cigar as Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” played softly in the background, mixing with the clap of mortar rounds headed for the Damascus suburbs.

“Syrian tobacco,” he said. “One hundred percent organic.” 

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