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ext week, India will play host to the head of one of the most secretive states in the world. Syrian president Basher al-Assad arrives in Delhi on June 17. The visit has raised eyebrows in the drawing rooms of Delhi. Isn't Syria the Baathist state that's been funnelling Iranian arms to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, allowing Al Qaeda terrorists to pass into Iraq, and hosting the military leaders of Hamas in Damascus? Why is our government needlessly endangering its relations not only with the US, but also our most steadfast military ally, Israel?Some observers will dismiss al-Assad's visit as ceremonial. Cynics will conclude that inviting him is a part of the ruling Congress' efforts to repair the damage done to its relations with Indian Muslims by its support of the US against Iran at the iaea, and by the Indo-US nuclear treaty. But Delhi's invitation to al-Assad is neither ceremonial nor self-serving. It is the renewal of a tie that had been vigorous in the anti-colonial Bandung era (1955-65). Pt Nehru visited Syria twice in 1957 and '60. Rajiv Gandhi did so in '88. Damascus has a street named after Panditji—not a minor street but a four-lane boulevard that links one of the wealthiest parts of the city to its centre.
But the India-Syria relationship languished later during the long decline of non-alignment, and became perfunctory after the end of the Cold War. It is being revived now because Delhi recognises that Syria is perhaps the most unaffectedly secular country in the Muslim world, and that far from being a 'state sponsor of terrorism' it could hold the key to peace in the Middle East.
Syria's secularism is visible in its politics, its life and its culture. Unlike Turkey, Egypt, Algeria or Morocco, Syria's secularism has not been pushed on the defensive by the rise of fundamentalism. Despite four decades of funding by Saudi Arabia's religious establishment, Wahabi Islam has gained a toehold only in the villages, and has been unable to dent the drive towards modernisation in the country. Approximately half the women in the streets wear a hijab but it is a sign of conservatism and not fundamentalism. After office hours restaurants fill up with large groups of bare-headed and hijab-clad women, who sit together, order a coffee and smoke the narghileh (hookah). Burqa-clad women are rare. Like Iraq before it was invaded, female participation in the work force is very high. Unlike Turkey, beer, arak and wine are served routinely in restaurants and cafes.
Ironically, Syria is everything the Bush regime wants the Muslim world to be, but it is so only because of its staunch opposition to the US and to Israel. After four-and-a-half decades in power, the Baath party has lost its socialist ideology but remains Arab nationalist to the core. Arab nationalism was nothing if not pluralistic. Thus, in a country that is nine-tenths Sunni, power has been held for the last 38 years by the Assad family who are Alawites, a version of Shia Islam.
All of this has been hidden from public view by the relentless demonisation of Syria by the Bush regime after it invaded Iraq. The sudden announcement from Damascus on May 21 that it had been holding peace talks with Israel for the previous year, therefore, took the world by surprise. Syria made it hours after talks brokered by Qatar, between feuding Lebanese factions that had brought Lebanon to the verge of civil war, had yielded an agreement that formally recognised the Hezbollah as a key political force in Lebanon, and gave it and its allies a veto power on any parliamentary enactment by a future Lebanese government that could impose a 'tyranny of the majority' upon them.
Its timing was not fortuitous: the Doha agreement marked the end of a five-year bid by the US to 'detach' modern, affluent and 'largely Christian' Lebanon from the Arab coalition against Israel, and make it either disarm the Hezbollah or create the legal grounds for a UN-sanctioned intervention to do so. It was also a vindication of Syria's support of the Hezbollah. Not surprisingly, therefore, it aroused considerable misgiving in Washington and Tel Aviv.
The next months are going to be crucial for the Middle East. Hezbollah, after its success in resisting the Israeli invasion of south Lebanon in 2006, has turned its attention increasingly from combat to governance. The acknowledgement it has received in Doha should strengthen this trend. If Syria uses its influence to encourage this transformation, it could make a signal contribution to bringing peace to the Israel-Lebanon border. This could be the first step towards a wider peace that involves a release of Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah, and of its cadres in Israeli jails, the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, and an exchange of prisoners and easing of the Israeli blockade on Gaza. It is hard to see beyond that point, but peace, like war, tends to build its own momentum. Today, Syria, Hezbollah and Israel hold the key.