SARG EFFORTS TO RESTRICT EMBASSY OPERATIONS

C O N F I D E N T I A L DAMASCUS 001216

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

PARIS FOR ZEYA; LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/12/2015
TAGS: PGOV PREL AMGT SY
SUBJECT: SARG EFFORTS TO RESTRICT EMBASSY OPERATIONS

REF: A. USUN 00203

B. DAMASCUS 1106

C. DAMASCUS 1158

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Stephen A. Seche, per 1.4 b,d.


1. (C) Summary: With increasing intensity over the past
three months, the SARG has mounted an effort, spearheaded by
the MFA, to restrict a range of Embassy operations. The SARG
has imposed a new, centralized system of visa issuance,
seriously impeding the travel of official Americans. It has
prevented the Charge from meeting with anyone at the MFA
higher than the Chief of Protocol, issued a directive
ordering members of the Syrian Chambers of Commerce and
Industry not to meet with Embassy officials, imposed new
restrictions on DAO travel, and effectively limited PD's
programming efforts, especially exchanges. In addition, the
MFA is signaling that it may implement other measures to
hamper the ability of reporting officers to meet with
contacts. Several factors seem to have provoked this SARG
conduct, including unhappiness over USG response to requests
for visas for President Bashar al-Asad and many in his party
to attend UNGA last fall, and limitations imposed on access
to USG officials by the SARG Ambassador in Washington. Thus
far, the Embassy is managing to accomplish its major
objectives, although these restrictions are beginning to
impinge upon operational requirements. While there is an ad
hoc quality to some of these measures, the increasingly
cumulative impact, supported by feedback from contacts,
indicates that this effort represents a high-level shift in
attitude by the SARG toward USG activities in country. End
Summary.


2. (C) The SARG over the past three months has begun
implementing a series of measures, the net effect of which is
to impede Embassy access and operations. Several factors
seem to have contributed to the genesis of the measures,
including the USG's failure to issue visas in a timely manner
for President Bashar al-Asad and some of his party to attend
UNGA last fall, evidence of increasing USG support for the
political opposition and civil society in Syria, and
sanctions on senior regime figures (Asif Shawkat) and key
institutions (the Commercial Bank of Syria). The unhappiness
of Syria's ambassador to the U.S., Imad Mustafa, over his
limited access to USG officials, (as well as the delay in
renewing visas for Syrian diplomats at the UN, ref A) also
apparently contributed to this SARG effort.


3. (C) This bureaucratic cold shoulder still seems to be in
its early stages. Thus far, the Embassy is managing to
accomplish its major objectives, although with increasing
difficulty. For example, PD is still conducting its exchange
programs, reporting officers are getting out to see contacts,
and DAO is traveling as needed. Nonetheless, if the SARG
maintains this pressure over a sustained period, or increases
it, Embassy functions will suffer. Thus far it is not clear
if the SARG wants to send a relatively simple reciprocity
message based on a perception that we have treated it
cavalierly, or if the SARG has decided to implement, at the
Embassy level, a component of its more confrontational
posture, designed to get our attention and persuade us that
ignoring Syria's interests will cause our interests in the
region to suffer.


4. (C) VISAS: Over the past several months, the SARG has
begun to slow-roll the issuance of visas for official
Americans. Initially, the Embassy was able to resolve most
of these through the MFA Chief of Protocol. This avenue now
seems to be closed off, and the visa backlog has worsened.
In recent weeks, a number of TDY'ers, including NEA/ELA
Deputy Office Director, the RMO (despite regional
accreditation),a DHS team set to do refugee assessment, a
diplomatic courier, and a range of support personnel
scheduled to perform critical maintenance at the Embassy
(telephone technicians and Amman-based regional facilities
managers) were not issued their visas and had to cancel
travel plans, despite submitting applications weeks before
the need to travel. At present, Embassy records indicate
that the SARG is withholding issuance of 21 visas to
applicants who have applied at various Syrian embassies
overseas or in Washington in the past two months. This does
not count the would-be TDY'ers mentioned above who had to
cancel their trips.


5. (C) Apparently -- although we have never been informed
officially of this here in Damascus -- the SARG has put in
place new procedures to centralize at the Syrian Embassy in
Washington the issuance of visas for official Americans.
Each application will need to be accompanied by a dipnote
from the State Department, according to informal explanations
provided by working level officials in MFA Protocol. When
asked why this was necessary, an official at Protocol pointed
to what he termed "unreciprocal" visa adjudication by the
USG, although none of the examples provided withstand
scrutiny.


6. (C) EFFORTS TO RESTRICT PD PROGRAMMING: The SARG has
also started to make clear via restrictions on the Embassy's
Public Diplomacy program that the USG will not be able to go
around the SARG to fund civil society and NGO's directly.
These measures have included putting a high school exchange
program on hold, failing to respond to the deadline for
nominations for participants in teacher training and
professional-development programs, and insisting that only
SARG-nominated candidates be eligible for Syrian Fulbright
grants (essentially eliminating AMIDEAST from the process of
identifying candidates). PD recently received a dipnote
indicating that beginning next year, American junior
Fulbrighters will "be distributed" around the country to
"ease pressure" on the University of Damascus (a fabricated
problem as far as we can tell). The SARG has also refused to
issue a residency permit for an English Language specialist,
effectively preventing him from traveling out of the Damascus
area to provide training at regional educational
institutions. In addition, the SARG has also fundamentally
changed over the past few months the way in which PD officers
can interact with various SARG officials. In the past,
officers were able to contact Ministry of Education or Higher
Education officials directly for meetings on nominations and
other programming requirements. Now, the MFA is forcing the
Embassy to send a dipnote requesting meetings with officials
from other Ministries, leading to intolerable delays. The
MFA also has indicated it will send an MFA person from
Protocol to liaise between PD and ministries where necessary.



7. (C) DAO TRAVEL HASSLES: The MFA has also intervened to
try to restrict DAO from traveling out of Damascus. Per
standard operating procedure for military attaches at all
embassies in Syria, the DAO informally notified the Foreign
Liaison Office of Syrian Military Intelligence of any planned
travel. On some occasions in the past, depending on where
the travel was to occur, the DAO had the Embassy submit a
dipnote informing the MFA of the travel. Now the MFA has
begun insisting that DAO personnel cannot travel until the
MFA has formally responded to a dipnote requesting
authorization of such travel, an apparent violation of
Article 26 of the Vienna Convention. One SMI contact told
A/DATT that the measure has been implemented on the orders
Hisham Ikhtiyar, the Ba'ath Party Regional Command National
Security Office chief. In addition, other embassies are
apparently not subject to such requirements, another
violation of the Vienna Convention. The Embassy challenged
this new system last week, sending two DAO officers to Aleppo
by road simultaneous to a dipnote apprising the MFA of their
intention to travel, as permitted by international agreement.
Their travel went off unimpeded, and, to date, we have not
heard from the MFA.


8. (C) MEETINGS AND CONTACT WORK: While it has never been
easy to do reporting in Syria, due to the authoritarian
nature of the regime, the SARG has begun in the past month to
officially restrict Embassy efforts. On the economic side,
the PM's office has issued a directive to all chambers of
commerce and industry in Syria prohibiting contact with
diplomats. Though the edict (which we have not yet seen)
reportedly refers to all diplomats, we believe only U.S.
diplomats have been refused meetings (ref B). Business
contacts have said the SARG measure is meant to remind us
that our unofficial engagement with Syrian society could fall
victim to the lack of official engagement. In February,
officials of the Aleppo Chambers of Industry and Commerce
both refused to meet with visiting EconChief because of the
new policy. Since then, Damascus officials of these chambers
also refused to meet, specifically citing the new directive.


9. (C) On the political side, the MFA informed us, on the
occasion of the visit by the Syria desk officer, that any
visiting USG official needed MFA approval to meet with
Syrians, without specifying whether the restriction was
limited to visits with SARG officials. Although the Embassy
submitted a dipnote requesting a meeting with Sunni religious
leader Sheikh Salah Kuftaro (who, though he has good
relations with the SARG, is not an official),Kuftaro was not
given permission to hold the meeting and had to refuse. Two
days later the MFA insisted that Poloff, without any
Washington visitor, needed to submit a dipnote for approval
before she could meet with Kuftaro. The Embassy refused and
the meeting with Kuftaro, a long-standing Embassy contact,
did not take place. The influential al-Hayat newspaper
recently published an article about "new redlines" (ref C)
that the SARG will be enforcing, one of which concerns Syrian
contact with foreign officials. Given Syrians' intense fears
about taking action that might anger their government, it is
this redline that has been understood by most Syrians as a
threat not to get involved or have contact with Embassy
officers.


10. (C) COMMENT: While it is not yet clear to what extent
the new restrictions on our operations extend beyond the U.S.
Embassy to other diplomatic missions, our overwhelming sense
is that we are the principal -- in most cases, the only --
target. The vague assertions of reciprocity by some SARG
officials to explain these limitations on our contact and
travel are likely true, both at an operational and political
level. In both instances, the SARG seems to have decided
that it will respond in kind to perceived slights from the
USG: if its Ambassador cannot call freely on USG officials,
the Charge d'Affaires in Damascus will be equally
constrained. If we slow-roll visas for SARG officials in NY
or elsewhere, we can expect the same treatment for our
officials. Politically, this new posture of the SARG seems
to reflect its conclusion that two can play the
diplomatic-isolation game, and that until such time as we
decided to re-engage officially, the day-to-day operations
and programs of Embassy Damascus are fair game.



SECHE