Since U.S. President Barrack Hussein Obama assumed presidency in January he has overhauled Washington’s foreign policy and approached many leaders who have been considered foes in the past.

Mr. Obama has relaxed ties with Cuba, shook hands with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, expressed intentions to open unconditional direct talks with Iran, and taken other steps that would have been a taboo during the Bush administration.

On his policy for the Middle East Mr. Obama has dramatically softened Washington’s stance towards Syria. U.S.’s special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell made a second visit to Damascus on Saturday to revive the Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

Earlier on Friday the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem met with his English counterpart, David Miliband, in London and described Mr. Mitchell’s visit as “the first step of dialogue.”

Although Syria has shown a shift in its Lebanon policy, but the intention behind the West’s reconciliatory approach towards Syria is to further isolate and pressurize Iran. Any willingness on part of Syria to move in this direction has yet to be seen. In fact, the anti-U.S. Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr visited Damascus last week and met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“It is fair to say that Syria is in a unique position to influence Iranian policy choices,” said Mr. Miliband. “There will never e a better opportunity for Iran to assume an appropriate place in the community of nations.”

Syria is also being offered carrots. So far foreign investments by U.S. allies in Syria have been on the rise, the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions has been discussed, Mr. Obama has offered to send an ambassador back to Damascus after a four-year hiatus, and Mr. Assad has reciprocated by sending a July 4th message full of praise to Mr. Obama unofficially inviting him to Damascus for talks.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steimeier was in Damascus last month to start indirect peace talks. French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a two-day visit to Damascus last September to formalize normal relations between the two countries on the highest level after a freeze of political contacts for more than three years.

In this series of papers various possibilities, incentives and the history of ties between U.S. and Syria will be discussed. The conclusion will analyze future possibilities.

Background

With a population of 19.7 million, the Syrian Arab majority is divided into Sunni, Shi’ite, Alawite, and Druze communities.

Syria is said to be the longest continuously settled area on the planet. It has one of the world’s richest and longest histories, but the modern state was only created in 1920, when Western powers (Britain and France) carved it out of the Ottoman Empire, which had begun to crumble after WWI. Syria and Lebanon went to France which received League of Nations mandates to govern them.

An independent Syrian republic was established in September, 1941. However, foreign troops did not fully withdraw until April 1946. Syria became the founding member of the Arab League and participated in the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

During the Cold War the entire region was fractured between Arab states aligned with Washington or Moscow, with Syria tottering in between. In Syria the Soviets won.

Between 1958 and 1961, Syria merged with Russia’s ally Egypt and erased itself from the map altogether, forming the United Arab Republic. The U.S. found this threatening and responded by landing troops in Lebanon that same year, for the first time placing it in a collision course with Damascus.

Five years later, in March 1963, officers belonging to the radical socialist Baath (Renaissance) party seized power through a coup. The Baath Party leadership has been dominated by the minority Alawite community and has ruled since then uninterrupted. Although a coup d’etat in 1966 bought a leftist faction headed by Salah Jadid to power and another one in 1970, led by Hafez al-Assad, resulted in a swing back to the center.

Many Arabs still blame Syria for triggering the 1967 Six-Day War, in which the Israeli troops captured the Golan Heights from Syria. Syria reacted by severing diplomatic ties with the U.S.

In 1970s Mr. Hafez al-Assad liberalized the economy and grew with the influx of petrodollars.

After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Mr. Hafez al-Assad thwarted then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s effort to make peace arrangements with Israel.

In 1976 Syria unsuccessfully tried to intervene in the Lebanese civil war and got entangled in Lebanon’s domestic conflicts.

Mr. Hafez al-Assad, broke from fellow Arab leaders and supported Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s, because of his vehement opposition to Iraq's Saddam Hussein

In 1990 the number of seats in the Assembly was increased to allow greater representatives from “independents”, roughly half of the 250-seats were allocated for workers and peasants. However, real power in Syria rests with armed forces and internal security and intelligence services.

In accordance with the socialist program the regime industrialized all major industrial, commercial and financial institutions. The country saw emergence of enormous health care and education programs, opening opportunities for many Syrians, especially in the countryside.

In 1991 Hafez al-Assad won the 7-year presidential elections by receiving more than 99 percent of the votes.

Despite of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc the Syrian regime didn’t changed structurally. However, the relationship has drastically changed since Gorbachev came to power. Some Analysts believe that the Syrian regime has come to the realization that only the U.S. could persuade Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

The U.S. successfully persuaded the Syrians to join the anti-Saddam coalition in 1991. Syria sent 20,000 troops to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Assad’s eldest son, Basil al-Assad, was killed in a car crash in 1994. After Hafez al-Assad’s death in June 2000, Basil al-Assad’s younger brother, Bashar al-Assad, who is a London trained ophthalmologist, took over the helm. He embraced the Damascus headquarters of Hamas and fortified his alliance with Iran.

During the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, Syria displayed magnanimity in sheltering more than one million Iraqi refugees. Syria was accused by the U.S. of keeping its porous borders open for insurgents to enter Iraq and the Syrian-U.S. relations appeared to go into a freefall.

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Syria in 2004.

Syria was accused of planting the one-ton bomb that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 21 others in February 2005. The attack still remains subject to UN investigation.

During 2005 Cedar Revolution Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon under a UN mandate.

In the July 2006, during Lebanon war atrocities by Israel Mr. Bashar al-Assad went on to support Hezbollah. He was among the first to recognize the democratic election of Hamas and declared its support for the group during the recent Gaza crisis.

In May 2008, Hezbollah led alliance triumphs over anti-Syria parties, backed by the U.S. A Qatari brokered peace deal ends the fighting.

In December 2008, the Syrian embassy in Beirut opens. Syria Ambassador to Lebanon, Alli Abdul-Karim Ali arrives in March 2009. Lebanon reciprocates by opening its first embassy in Syria in the same month, naming Michel Khoury as its ambassador.

Last year Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan mediated between Syria and Israel and tried to reach a compromise. However, Damascus broke off contacts over Israel’s war crimes on the Gaza strip. Mr. Erdogan himself walked out of a G-8 summit protesting Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

To be continued… -