Jimmy Carter's Damascus dream

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Former US president Jimmy Carter on a mission to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In Damascus, almost 2,000 years ago, a reformed persecutor named Saul regained his sight, took a new name and embarked on an apparently impossible mission that changed the world.

On 17 April, former US president Jimmy Carter came to Damascus in an effort to end a conflict that continues to ruin lives and divide the region. His dream is to start a dialogue involving Hamas, the US and Israel, Washington's intractable regional vice-regent. Most say Carter will fail. But they said that of Saul too.
Syria this spring wears lightly the burdens of its resolute refusal to compromise over Palestine, its alliance with Iran and an involvement in Lebanon - which maps in Damascus show to be part of Syrian territory.

But five years ago this month, the left-wing Baath regime that has run the country since 1970 was in peril. On 9 April 2003 Baghdad fell to the US-led coalition, less than three weeks after the start of the Iraq war. Syria, it was said, would be next.

The turning point came in February 2005, when former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut. Backed by Saudi Arabia and the West, Hariri symbolised the demand that the Syrian troops deployed in the country since 1976 should finally be withdrawn.

Edmund O'Sullivan

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Strong Iran link

A UN inquiry, which is continuing, was launched to discover who was responsible. Most Lebanese people had already concluded it was Syria.

But Damascus has weathered most of the storm created by Hariri's murder, and has since strengthened its strategic position.

The link with Iran has been strengthened. In the 34-day Israel border war of 2006, Syria supplied Hizbollah. The victory of Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, and its seizure of power in Gaza in June 2007, have also strengthened Syria's hand.

In Iraq, meanwhile, the setbacks suffered by the occupiers eroded American support for a wider war. When the November 2006 Iraq study group report called for talks with Syria about Iraq's future, it was clear that Damascus was safe.

Resilience

Economics have helped. Syria, which produces more than 400,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil, has enjoyed the windfall benefits of higher energy prices. Financial flows from the Gulf have increased. Tourism numbers, though still low, are beginning to rise again. There's more money in people's pockets. The shops in Damascus' Al-Hamidiyeh souq have never been busier.
Syria's resilience has exasperated the US. Following Hariri's assassination, Washington withdrew its ambassador. In February this year, President Bush, citing Syrian involvement in Iraq among other issues, further restricted American business activities. Syria has been on the US' list of states supporting terrorism since 1979.

It is in these unpromising circumstances that Jimmy Carter, now in his 84th year, has embarked on what will probably be his last mission. Thirty years ago, he brokered the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, which led to a treaty between the two countries in March 1979.

But peace failed to follow. Carter's presidency eventually floundered on the 1979 energy crisis and his failed attempts to counter the Iranian revolution.

Human rights champion

Out of office, Carter redefined himself as a champion of human rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and won many Arab hearts in 2006 with his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, in which he said Israel's control and colonisation were "the primary obstacle" to a comprehensive peace.

Rejecting State Department advice, he has twice met Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal, who lives in exile in Damascus. All leading contenders in America's 2008 presidential election have denounced Carter's initiative.

But there is no such thing as a totally lost cause, as visitors to Syria will discover.
Samer al-Eid is a tourist guide from the village of Bassir in the south. Until recently, his 95-year-old grandmother, Jemileh, worked in the fields of the family's farm.

Human spirit

Born when the region was under Ottoman rule before the First World War, Jemileh saw British soldiers in 1918 and the arrival of the French in 1922. When the Second World War came, the British returned to drive out the Vichy French.

The first Arab-Israel war quickly followed Syrian independence in 1946. In October 1973, she could hear the roar of the battle for the Golan.
Many hearts have been broken during Jemileh's long lifetime. But not hers.

History has happened more in Syria than in practically any other place on earth. But the human spirit endures, as it must everywhere. May God bless Jemileh's. And good luck to Jimmy Carter.