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Britain's decade-long optimism that Syria's autocratic regime in Damascus would relax has turned to dust
The story of Britain's relationship with Syria over the last decade has been the repeated triumph of hope over experience. The web of personal links created by Bashar al-Assad's British education and his marriage to a British-born woman created a familiarity that ultimately proved deceptive.
The hope that Assad would one day relax his autocratic regime, distance himself from Iran, make peace with Israel – and along the way open Syria's sclerotic markets to British business – waned over the years but never quite died until the bloody events of the past few days.
As recently as January, William Hague met Assad in Damascus to discuss British aspirations for Syrian policy. Hague went with his "eyes wide open", expecting little, his aides insisted, but underlying the trip was the faint hope that the spread of Arab revolt might unnerve the Syrian president into giving ground and reassessing his priorities.
As has happened time and again over years of such bilateral encounters, Bashar gave absolutely nothing away. As the foreign secretary recalled in parliament on Tuesday, the Syrian president had insisted that his regime was immune to popular unrest "because of Syria's clear ideology, the continuing resistance to Israel and the popular support for the government in Syria".
The hardline response to British overtures was familiar. When Tony Blair made a groundbreaking trip to Damascus in October 2001, the initial impression was that his charm appeared to be doing the trick.
"It was an extremely congenial meeting and they seemed to be getting on very well," said Henry Hogger, the British ambassador at the time. But at the press conference afterwards, Assad went on the attack. Differences over the war in Afghanistan and relations with Israel that were politely aired in private were transformed into public condemnation by Assad. Blair's attempt to portray a breakthrough in relations was left looking hollow.
Hogger had arrived in Damascus in 2000 just two days after the president's father, Hafez al-Assad, died. Bashar had not been the first choice as his successor. He had been training and working as an ophthalmologist in London when the heir to the leadership, his elder brother Basil, died in a car crash. Bashar was seen as lacking his steel – he appeared a gentler Assad and a technocrat, whose marriage to Asma Fawaz al-Akhras, a merchant banker born in Acton, west London, deepened the expectation that British officials might have privileged access to a westernising leader who spoke their language.
"The atmosphere was one of expectation, that there would be a Damascus spring," Hogger said. "There was an expectation of a new dawn in terms of the internal politics … but it didn't happen."
The expectations were stoked by the general belief that Syria and Israel had come very close to a peace deal brokered by Bill Clinton, and with a young leadership in Damascus, the remaining gaps could be bridged. Furthermore, on taking office, Bashar al-Assad delivered a speech filled with hints of coming reforms.
It remains unclear how much Assad was genuinely willing or able to deliver. By the time he returned to London, in December 2002, the war in Iraq was looming and disagreements over the invasion overshadowed the occasion and future relations.
"We kept talking to each other but the war put paid to hopes of a sensible relationship," said Hogger, who left Damascus in 2003. The relationship worsened further as London followed Washington's lead in accusing Syria of conniving in the flow of jihadists over its border with Iraq to join the fight against US and British troops there. But when the assassination of the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in 2005, and the widespread suspicion that Syria had organised the killing to maintain its political dominance in Lebanon, led to the severing of US diplomatic ties with Damascus, Britain did not follow suit.
Blair believed that Syria could be the key to Middle East peace through its influence on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah. In 2006, he dispatched his chief foreign policy adviser, Nigel Sheinwald, for talks with Assad and his foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, but the talks led nowhere.
Still British hope of creating a Syrian opening to peace did not die.
"There has always been an extraordinarily curiosity in government about Syria," said Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding. "Eyes that glaze over when you talk about the Israel-Palestinian situation light up when you talk about Syria. It's seen as the great game, trying to divine who is winning in the internal struggles in Damascus. There was a desperate hope that there would be change in internal and foreign policy. The prize is seen as so great that with Syrian co-operation Lebanon and the Palestinian question become suddenly much easier, that it was thought worth the risk although it was well known the country didn't have a good human rights record."
The tenacious optimism was fuelled in part by organisations such as the British Syrian Society, funded by Syrian businessmen and founded by Asma Assad's father, President Assad's father-in-law, Fawaz Akhras. The society has financed business conferences attempting to lure British investment into Damascus on the strength of legal and financial reforms. It also paid for visits by British MPs who met the president and his top advisers.
In the light of the bloody crackdown on Syrian protesters, the long history of British overtures to Damascus is now an embarrassment. But Doyle, a critic of much of Britain's policy in the regions, still believes that it was worth the gamble: "If we hadn't tried we would always have been wondering: What if?"