Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06DAMASCUS2599
2006-06-05 14:04:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Damascus
Cable title:  

SARG ENDS ITS PRESSURE ON EMBASSY SCHOOL -- FOR NOW

Tags:  AMGT PGOV PREL SY 
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VZCZCXRO7968
OO RUEHAG
DE RUEHDM #2599/01 1561404
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 051404Z JUN 06
FM AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 9387
INFO RUEHXK/ARAB ISRAELI COLLECTIVE
RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE
RUEHGB/AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 0083
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0116
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DAMASCUS 002599 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

PARIS FOR ZEYA; LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/12/2015
TAGS: AMGT PGOV PREL SY
SUBJECT: SARG ENDS ITS PRESSURE ON EMBASSY SCHOOL -- FOR NOW

REF: A. DAMASCUS 1216


B. DAMASCUS 2216

C. DAMASCUS 2489

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

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DAMASCUS 002599

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

PARIS FOR ZEYA; LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/12/2015
TAGS: AMGT PGOV PREL SY
SUBJECT: SARG ENDS ITS PRESSURE ON EMBASSY SCHOOL -- FOR NOW

REF: A. DAMASCUS 1216


B. DAMASCUS 2216

C. DAMASCUS 2489

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


1. (C) Summary: In the past ten days the SARG has issued
all of the required residence visas for some 45 direct-hire
American and Canadian teachers and family members, ensuring
their orderly departure at the end of the school year and
return to Damascus Community School in the fall. For months,
the SARG refused to issue the visas, as a reminder that it
could severely restrict the Embassy's range of functions in
Syria. Although the SARG used negative media coverage of the
mid-May death of a DCS student to challenge the school's
legal status, it moved quickly afterwards to resolve the visa
problem and licensing issue, a signal that it did not intend
to use the school any further as a pressure tactic against
the embassy. This schizophrenic pressure campaign highlights
a tactical split in the SARG over how far to carry its
confrontation with the U.S. End Summary.


2. (C) The embassy-affiliated Damascus Community School
(DCS) has recently weathered three of the most difficult
months in its 50-year history, due mostly to SARG efforts to
use the school as part of its ongoing effort to restrict a
range of Embassy operations. (Note: 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, reportedly 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. Ref A.)


3. (C) For nearly a year the SARG delayed issuing resident
visas for some 42 direct-hire DCS teachers and their family
members (ref B). As this school year wound to a close, the
issue became much more pressing since without the resident
visas and the accompanying exit/re-entry stamps, teachers

would have been unable to return to school next fall.


4. (C) A lobbying campaign organized by the Charge and
directed at the MFA, the PM's office, and at other
ministries, involving diplomats, western businessmen, and
influential Syrians, all of whom have children at the school,
had the desired impact, and the SARG gave preliminary
indications that it would resolve the visa issue
expeditiously.


5. (C) Nonetheless, as this campaign got underway, the SARG
responded to the lobbying by raising a second issue, the
school's purported lack of any license from the Ministry of
Education. (Note: DCS has operated since 1957 on the basis
of an exchange of diplomatic notes between the MFA and the
Embassy. Other private schools in Syria in the past 18
months have also been subjected to SARG efforts to gain
control of their curricula and operations by using the
licensing issue.)


6. (C) After the tragic May 18 death of 12-year-old Nour
al-Samman, a DCS student, while on a school-organized trip
(ref C),the SARG launched a nasty media campaign, attacking
the school for negligence, holding it responsible for the
student's death because it was unlicensed and had not
received any authorization for organizing such a trip.
Articles on the accident also attacked DCS for accepting
Syrian students at the school in violation of Syrian laws
controlling private education. The SARG put the Syrian media
at the disposal of the angry, grieving father of Nour
al-Samman, who attacked the school in even stronger terms and
called for its closure.


7. (C) The SARG apparently reconsidered rather quickly its
exploitation of the accident to attack DCS. On May 22, the
Syrian media offered widespread coverage of the Minister of
Education Dr. Ali Sa'ad's statement dismissing rumors
(largely provoked by its own media campaign) that the SARG
intended to close DCS. Sa'ad acknowledged that the school
had been in operation for half a century "in accordance with
diplomatic conventions and norms." Seeking to defuse the
licensing issue, he noted that the school could either seek a
license in accordance with Syrian law or stop accepting
Syrian students who do not have dual nationality. Other

DAMASCUS 00002599 002 OF 002


articles made clear that the SARG intended to resolve the
residence visa issue.


8. (C) COMMENT: Why the SARG reversed course so abruptly is
not completely clear. Its initially negative spin on the
student's death may have been an opportunistic parting shot,
taken after it had decided to back off and leave the school
alone. Apparently the success the embassy had in mobilizing
the diplomatic and international communities to weigh in
persuaded the SARG that it could not turn the pressure on the
school into a strictly bilateral issue, making it a less
attractive target. It is also possible that the SARG only
wanted to show the embassy that it could squeeze the school
and make life difficult for American diplomats in Damascus,
but that it never intended to push the issue to the point of
closing DCS.


9. (C) The school issue also seems to highlight a split in
the SARG over how far to press its tactic of restricting the
embassy's range of functions and how far to carry its policy
of embracing confrontation with the U.S. and Europe.
Well-informed observers here believe that regime hard-liners,
pressing for more confrontation, initially seized control of
the school controversy (via the visas issue). Senior Ba'ath
Party officials like Regional Command National Security
Bureau chief Hisham Ikhtiyar (a former head of the General
Intelligence Directorate) and Minister of Education Ali
Sa'ad, as well as VP Farouk A-Shara'a, allied themselves with
senior figures in the security services and other regime
hard-liners in advocating escalation of the confrontation
with the U.S. and Europe. A second camp, led by FM Walid
Mu'allim, urged a more nuanced, flexible escalation, one that
picked its targets carefully and used them to remind the West
that it should re-engage with Syria or pay the costs. For
this latter group, the school was a a poorly selected target
because the interests of non-Westerners (including Arab
diplomats with children in the school) and of Western
businessmen and influential Syrians from the most wealthy
pockets of society were affected. Attacking a school also
inevitably generated bad publicity for the SARG, no matter
how it manipulated the issue. Mu'allim and his group
apparently prevailed on this issue and the SARG removed the
school from the confrontation agenda. Nonetheless, the
pressure on the embassy's range of functions is otherwise
likely to continue, as the SARG continues, in its tentative,
occasionally bumbling way, to reinforce its confrontational
posture and to try to remind the U.S. of the costs of
isolating Syria. In this regard, we cannot rule out that DCS
will be targeted again at some point in the future.


SECHE