Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
There’s a lot in a handshake — and a lot in its absence too.
Remember the awkwardness when a tense President Donald Trump and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel seemingly ignored the press corp’s request to shake hands in 2017? It certainly foretold how bumpy the relationship between the two leaders would be.
Or during Covid-19, when those ideologically opposed to lockdowns and restrictions, or simply irritated about being counseled to forgo a custom, used vigorous handshakes to communicate dissent? Visitors to the U.S. Congress at the time noted a sharp political divide between Republican lawmakers insisting on shaking hands and Democrats mostly offering fist bumps or distant waves.
So then what conclusion can we draw from Syria’s new leader Ahmed Hussein al-Shar’a’s refusal to offer his hand to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock upon her arrival in Damascus with French counterpart Jean-Noël Barrot?
Their trip to the capital, the first by top European diplomats in years, was part of an EU effort to encourage an inclusive, peaceful transition of power in Syria. France and Germany have been more forward leaning in engaging with the Syrian opposition group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — the main insurgent Islamist faction that marched into Damascus last month, ending the Assad dynasty’s 54-year autocracy.
Other Western countries have been more circumspect as they piece together the clues about who Syria’s new de facto ruler really is, and what HTS and its leaders are planning for a post-Assad future: An inclusive one embracing the country’s diversity, religious sects and ethnic minorities, or an Islamist state that oppresses, imposes conservative governance and elevates the Sunni majority? Or might it be somewhere in-between?
So far, Shar’a has talked about pluralism and his wish for inclusivity, but his hands-off diplomacy with Baerbock has raised eyebrows — if nothing else, for raising questions about how women are likely to be treated in post-Assad Syria.
Shar’a, who once pledged his allegiance — or made the bay’ah — to al Qaeda and fought Western forces in Iraq, has only recently dropped his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani. He broke with al Qaeda in 2016 and has sought to distance himself from his extremist past.
The Damascus med-school dropout has also had somewhat of a sartorial makeover in recent years, swapping the Osama bin Laden-look for a neatly trimmed beard and green fatigues à la Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, or corporate blazers and chinos. “A person in their twenties will have a different personality than someone in their thirties or forties, and certainly someone in their fifties. This is human nature,” he assured CNN on the eve of Assad’s fall.
But withholding his hand suggests something about where exactly Shar’a might be on the spectrum of radical political Islam, as well as the limits of his recent modernization. It may also indicate the restrictions he has to observe in order to keep his Islamist fighters on board.
Baerbock, for her part, has sought to make light of the incident, telling broadcasters: “As I traveled here, it was clear to me that there would obviously be no ordinary handshakes.”
But reporting on political Islam over the years, observing how radical Islamists (or jihadists) interact with women when claiming to have become more moderate has been somewhat of a litmus test for this columnist. And a refusal to engage, to look a woman squarely in the eyes or shake their hand tends to be ominous when it comes to inclusivity.
Aside from indicating how truly moderate they’ve become, a handshake — or lack thereof — speaks volumes about how pragmatic a leader is prepared to be.
Of course, many conservative Muslims believe unrelated men and women should never touch, and yet exceptions have been made. For example, when conducting diplomacy, a handshake — the modern standard greeting for global politicians and businessmen — is something traditional Saudi and Emirati rulers have been ready to entertain. In 1987, Saudi’s King Fahd had no problems shaking then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s hand, understanding that the gesture conveys trust, or at least a readiness to engage.
Meanwhile, Friday’s incident has sparked a fierce debate on Syrian social media. Does it show Shar’a isn’t as moderate as he would like to suggest? Certainly some of the country’s women’s rights advocates believe so — and are worried that when he talks about “inclusion,” he doesn’t mean them. HTS rule in Idlib, the enclave the group ran for eight years, certainly wasn’t noted for its acceptance of female politicians — none were appointed to the government.
Pro-democracy activists are also alarmed by Shar’a’s appointment of Shadi al-Waisi as the country’s interim justice minister. Recently unearthed videos of al-Waisi sentencing women to death for adultery and prostitution in Idlib and overseeing their executions have prompted uproar and demands he be fired.
But another possible and more nuanced interpretation is that Shar’a himself faces a dilemma. “He has a tough balancing act to pull off between reassuring the international community, Europe and the U.S. on the one hand, and placating more hardcore, Qaeda-inclined HTS fighters,” Syrian journalist Lina Chawaf hazarded.
Chawaf was a prominent television personality in Damascus until she fled in 2011, after siding with the popular revolt against the now-ousted Assad. According to her, “HTS loyalists don’t like the change in Shar’a’s public narrative. Recently, he demanded a local reporter wear a headscarf to interview him. He could hardly do that and then the next moment shake Baerbock’s hand, could he?”
Maybe so. But either way, as Baerbock acknowledged Friday: “This will be a rocky road.”
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