Never Say Die: Obama Holds Out Another Carrot To Syria

Here we go again--the more repressive the regime, the more carrots the Obama administration will offer:

The State Department has dispatched a high-level diplomatic and trade mission to Syria, according to senior U.S. officials, marking the latest bid by the Obama administration to woo President Bashar al-Assad away from his strategic alliance with Iran.

The U.S. delegation comprises senior executives from some of America's top technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp., according to the U.S. officials. All these companies' businesses in Syria are constrained by U.S. sanctions.

The mission is controversial, given recent U.S. allegations that Syria transferred missiles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Syria, Hezbollah and Lebanon deny the allegations.

While visiting the regime that Freedom House considers one of the most repressive in the world, the US delegation plans to meet with businessmen and with Syrians in general--no word on whether they will be accompanied by Syria 'tour guides'.

One of the focuses of the trip:

Mr. Assad has previously expressed to the Obama administration his desire to develop Syria's telecommunications infrastructure, which has been imperiled by U.S. sanctions since 2004, according to American officials involved in the trip.

The State Department views the mission as a test of Mr. Assad's desire for better ties with Washington and to potentially pave the way for a more open political environment inside Syria.

"We're going into this open-minded. This has never been done before with a country of this nature," said a senior U.S. official. "We're hopeful and optimistic that this will lead to collaborations. But that's something we can't be sure about until the trip is done."

Open-minded? And why doesn't anyone spell out just what "a country of this nature" means? This is the attitude towards a country that is suspected of assassinating Rafic Hariri, former Prime Minister of Lebanon in 2005.

Making telecommunications equipment available to Syria is part of the Obama administration's policy to ease restrictions on certain kinds of telecommunications equipment and antifiltering software--but there was a reason for the ban: to prevent them from being used by repressive regimes against their people.

According to a Freedom House report last year:

Close to 10 percent of Syrians accessed the internet in 2008. Critical journalists have increasingly used the medium to voice their dissent. However, the government has stepped up its online censorship and monitoring. Filtering of internet traffic significantly increased in 2008, as did the harassment and arrest of bloggers and online journalists. In April, access to the popular news site Syrianews.com was blocked for 10 days. At the end of the year roughly 200 websites were blocked by order of the government. Several bloggers were arrested during the year, including Tareq Bayasi, who was sentenced to six years in prison for publishing online communications that were critical of the government. While Syria does not have internet-specific laws, charges can be filed against internet users under the Press Law, the Emergency Law, and the penal code.

Does this sound like the kind of regime that whats to build up its telecommunication infrastructure to benefit its citizens?

Is Obama doing this for any of our less developed allies?
Don't bet on it.

Technorati Tag: Syria.