Nuovo rapporto sulla Siria dell’International Crisis Group, dopo quello pubblicato appena il 14 dicembre scorso. Due rapporti da leggere insieme, per comprendere cosa stia succedendo di nuovo a Damasco, soprattutto in termini di riposizionamento nel quadrante mediorientale. E anche per capire cosa non stia succedendo tra Damasco e Washington, dopo le molte speranze nate dall’arrivo di Obama alla Casa Bianca.
There was nothing preordained or inevitable in Syria’s moves. Each reflected a cautious, deliberative process in which the regime carefully assessed the impact of one step before taking the next. Each involved at times starkly diverging views about how best to defend national interests. All pointed toward a more powerful, assertive President Bashar al-Assad, who must nonetheless contend with competing power centres and divergent outlooks, while suggesting the growing weight of a generation of insiders he has methodically put in place. Occasionally, there was backsliding, indicating the shift from greater militancy to more pronounced pragmatism is susceptible to negative changes in the regional landscape or to blowback from Syria’s allies and so is anything but irreversible.
Barack Obama’s election had little if anything to do with the evolution. The changes were initiated while the Bush administration was in office, when many Syrians were wagering on John McCain’s victory and for reasons almost entirely independent of the U.S. Still, the triumph of a man who had promised to make engagement a foreign policy leitmotif gave rise to hope that the bilateral relationship would more rapidly to a sounder footing and that the two sides might find ways to work together on regional policies.