Robert Ford’s trip to Hama in July 2011 was a seminal moment in Syria policy
But there had been virtually no discussion of its policy ramifications
Political stunt? Until then, Senate Republicans had refused to confirm Ford
A policeman walks in front of the damaged U.S. embassy after pro-government protesters attacked the building and raised a Syrian flag on the compound in Damascus, Syria, July 11, 2011. A U.S. official says the Obama administration will formally protest the attack on the embassy in Syria and may seek compensation for damage caused when a mob breached the wall of the compound before being dispersed by Marine guards. The Arabic writing on the wall reads: “The people want to remove the dog,” and “It’s Syria, you dog.”
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians protest in front the U.S. embassy in Damascus against the visit of the U.S. Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who visited the city of Hama, Syria, on July 7, 2011. The Arabic words on the shoes read: “The dirty ambassador,” right, and “the U.S. ambassador,” left. Muzaffar Salman AP
Robert Ford, U.S. ambassador to Syria
Nearly four months into the uprising against Bashar Assad’s regime, U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford took a drive from Damascus to the rebellious city of Hama, where cheering residents greeted him with roses and olive branches.
At the time, the trip was portrayed as a courageous act of solidarity with anti-Assad protesters. Officials in Washington quickly seized upon the popular narrative of an audacious, Arabic-speaking U.S. diplomat taking a jab at Assad on his own turf.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians protest in front the U.S. embassy in Damascus against the visit of the U.S. Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, who visited the city of Hama, Syria, on July 7, 2011.
In retrospect, however, Ford’s headline-making trip was the beginning of a string of U.S. actions in Syria that were hastily planned, based on the incorrect assumption that Assad would soon fall. The move, like many others that would follow, gave Syrian protesters the false sense that a superpower was in their corner, when in fact the Obama administration was deeply divided over their rebellion and what role, if any, the United States should play.
The largely untold back story of Ford’s visit to Hama, a symbolic moment in the administration’s early Syria response, encapsulates what former officials now view as a crucial misstep: the Obama administration giving little thought to the possibility of Assad remaining in power, and to the potential ramifications of that scenario should the United States throw in with the opposition.
LIKE MANY OF THE ADMINISTRATION’S EARLY STEPS IN SYRIA, LITTLE THOUGHT HAD BEEN GIVEN TO THE POTENTIAL RAMIFICATIONS OF ROBERT FORD’S VISIT TO HAMA OR TO THE POSSIBILITY THAT ASSAD WOULD REMAIN IN POWER.
“Ford went to Hama because Ford wanted to go to Hama. Nobody in the government felt strongly enough to stop him. Nobody even really knew he was going,” said a former senior official, one of three who spoke on condition of anonymity so as to freely describe Syria policy debates. “People were willing to allow those sorts of demonstrations because it was assumed that the outcome was already preordained, so we might as well look good as part of the outcome.”
Ford had sent only a heads-up email to a superior at the State Department, and had yet to receive a reply, when he climbed into the back seat of a beige Land Cruiser on July 7, 2011, and rolled through government checkpoints to a hero’s welcome inside Syria’s fourth-largest city.
One seldom-mentioned aspect of the Hama trip is the personal benefit it brought Ford at a critical time. Although he was a veteran Arabist who had spent two years at the U.S. embassy in wartime Iraq and earlier had served in Algeria and Bahrain, Ford had failed to win Senate confirmation when he was nominated in early 2010 as the first American ambassador to Syria in five years.
Filed under: Warmongers Tagged: al qaeda, Al-Nusra, Hilary Clinton, ISIL, ISIS, Obama, Robert Ford, syria, USA
