SARG ENDS ITS PRESSURE ON EMBASSY SCHOOL -- FOR NOW

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