Who Are We Dealing With?

WHEN WAR breaks out, participants always scramble for allies. The Bush Administration's behavior in assembling a worldwide anti-Iraq coalition has been no exception to this rule.

Perhaps in times of war, a more Machiavellian approach toward alliances can be justified. Perhaps the U.S. cannot afford to be so choosy in picking its friends as it can be during peacetime. But President Bush has lowered America's standards to an unacceptable depth.

We should be embarrassed and ashamed by the United States' new friends in the Gulf, several of whom are among the world's worst human rights abusers.

THE STATE Department's annual report on human rights, released late last month, not only criticized the record of Iraq, but of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Syria as well. Accounts of torture, arbitrary arrest, denial of civil liberties and respect for women's rights, and little if any political freedoms are the order of the day in all of these countries, our coalition partners.

Perhaps the strategic importance of maintaining the relatively pro-Western Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian regimes outweighed their poor treatment of their citizens. But in light of the abysmal human rights record Hafez el-Assad, America's warming relations with Syria are totally unacceptable. To cut off the hand of the Butcher of Baghdad, we have fallen into the arms of the Devil of Damascus.

In 1980, Assad had nearly 1000 political prisoners machine-gunned in Damascus after a failed coup attempt. In 1982, he levelled the old quarter of the northern Syrian town of Hama, killing an estimated 20,000 civilians. This is how Assad deals with Syrians.

In his dealings outside his borders, Assad's conduct has been equally ruthless. In 1986, for instance, pro-Syrian militiamen (using grenades and poison gas) killed more than 200 Sunni Moslem fundamentalists in Tripoli, Lebanon.

Assad's regime is also known to be the world's principal sponsor of terrorism. Attacks that have been linked to Syrian groups include the 1980 killing of the Jordanian prime minister, the 1982 assasination of President Gemayel of Lebanon, the 1983 attacks on the U.S. Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1986 attempt to blow up an E1 A1 airliner in London and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Not to be ignored are the 35 forms of torture used in Syrian prisons that have been documented by Amnesty International. Methods such as the Black Slave, the Washing Machine and the Syrian Chair are among the most horrific techniques known to man.

IT IS unbelievable that America has bent over backwards to prevent the Syrians from leaving the coalition. How can we value a regime like Assad's as an ally, even in time of war?

Assad's contibution to the war effort has been minimal at best, and there is little likelihood that Syrian troops will see significant combat against the Iraqis.

Israel's participation with the coalition forces--something the Syrians now say would not cause them to leave the alliance anyway--would certainly be of greater military value than Syria's. Israel's air force has been training for months for specific raids on Iraqi targets and would aid the coalition's cause a good deal more than Syria's meager donation of tanks and ground troops. And Isreal's intelligence-gathering abilities are unparalleled in the Middle East.

Once the war is over. we must remember who our true friends are and cease catering to regimes that fail to recognize basic human freedoms.

As noted by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Syria's record on human rights this past year was "barely distinguishable from that of Iraq". Continued appeasement of Assad will bring upon the region and the world the same tragic results of the U.S.'s warming of relations with Saddam Hussein during the 1980s.

Allan S. Galper '93, a Crimson writer, is co-chair of the Harvard Hillel Oppressed Jewry Committee.