In recent developments the US Ambassador to Syria Robert S. Ford has been "attacked" by "pro-regime demonstrators".
Described as an act of violence and aggression by the Western media, Ambassador Robert S Ford was pelted with eggs and tomatoes in Damascus on Thursday.
“We condemn this unwarranted attack in the strongest possible terms,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement. “Ambassador Ford and his aides were conducting normal embassy business, and this attempt to intimidate our diplomats through violence is wholly unjustified.” (NYT, September 29, 2011)
Early in the week, government supporters also threw tomatoes, eggs and stones at France's ambassador to Syria Eric Chevalier.
Who is Robert Stephen Ford?
Is his mission to Damascus one of peace and reconciliation?
Ambassador Robert S. Ford is no ordinary diplomat. He was U.S. representative in January 2004 to the Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq. Najaf was the stronghold of the Mahdi army
A few months later he was appointed "Number Two Man" (Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs), at the US embassy in Baghdad at the outset of John Negroponte's tenure as US Ambassador to Iraq (June 2004- April 2005).
Since his arrival in Damascus in late January 2011, Ambassador Robert S. Ford played a central role in laying the groundwork for the development of an armed insurgency directed against as the government of Bashar al Assad.
US Ambassador Robert Ford arrived in Damascus in late January 2011 at the height of the protest movement in Egypt.
America's previous Ambassador to Syria was recalled by Washington following the 2005 assassination of former Prime minister Rafick Hariri, which was blamed, without evidence, on the government of Bashar Al Assad.
The author was in Damascus on January 27, 2011 when Washington's Envoy presented his credentials to the Al Assad government. (See photo below).
At the outset of my visit to Syria in January 2011, I reflected on the significance of this diplomatic appointment and the role it might play in a covert process of political destabilization. I did not, however, foresee that this process would be implemented within less than two months following the instatement of Robert S. Ford as US Ambassador to Syria...