Everyone seems to be a moderniser these days. Look around the globe and what do you see? Young leaders anxious to bring a breath of fresh air to their nations, eager to explore new economic opportunities, energetic in their pursuit of the benefits new technology can bring. Take Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, who is visiting his fellow moderniser Tony Blair this week.

The Prime Minister tells us, in the Financial Times, that young Bashar is “determined to bring about real change in Syria and there are encouraging signs. There is new legislation to enable foreign banks to operate and moves to reform public administration.” Why, we’re told he even picked up a taste for Western music while working in London. Bashar, he’s my baby, no sir, don’t mean maybe.

The energetic young Syrian President has, indeed, been making changes to his country since assuming power on his father’s death in June 2000. In fact, he has done what many might have considered impossible. Bashar has turned Syria into an even viler terrorist state.

Since September 2000 Syria has stepped up its financial, military and political support for groups such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah. Although the Syrian state’s ruling ideology is secular Arab nationalism, Bashar has been happy to fund Islamic fundamentalist groups, provide them with weaponry and train their activists. The bombs which killed 21 civilians in the attack on a Tel Aviv disco in June 2001 were manufactured by a Syrian-trained killer working for Hamas, Tarek Akesh. The Islamic Jihad murderer, Ali Saffuri, responsible for co-ordinating a series of at least ten suicide bomb attacks, took his orders from Damascus.

Syria has also, under Bashar’s go-ahead leadership, formed an ever-closer alliance with the Lebanese fundamentalist terror group Hezbollah. Bashar’s father annexed Lebanon, once the Middle East’s freest Arab nation, and reduced it to a militarised colony. His son has gone even further, in alliance with the Shia mass murderers of Hezbollah. On April 4 last year, to help to support Bashar’s illegal occupation of Lebanon, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, declared the presence of Syrian forces in the state “a regional and internal necessity for Lebanon” and a “national obligation for Syria”.

Bashar, he fund crazies, yes sir, they kill babies. Bashar, who’s your honey now?

Britain, apparently. For Mr Blair’s response to the Syrian President’s illegal occupation of sovereign nations, sponsorship of terror and continued repression of his own people, has been fawning. As well as laying on tea with the Queen, the Prime Minister has been laying it on with a trowel, offering advice on “economic reform” and providing a consultant to “author Syria’s information technology strategy”. The rationale for this tickling of terror’s tummy is the old principle of “engagement”. Britain, in Mr Blair’s words, “is doing what it can to help” Syria to “play a fuller role in the international community”. Putting to one side the obvious point that Bashar’s idea, so far, of playing a fuller role in the international community is getting Islamic murderers to blow bits of it up, the Prime Minister should pause to consider just where Western “engagement” with terrorist states has led in the past.

Two years ago another “modernising” young leader was on the receiving end of a Western charm offensive. He too was anxious to open his country up, bring it out from under his father’s shadow, solicit Western economic aid and explore the opportunities new technology might bring. He enjoyed a visit from the US Secretary of State, who promised to open “new avenues of communication, commerce and contacts”.

And the result of this proactive engagement with a modernising young leader eager for Western knowhow? The leader in question, Kim Jong Il of North Korea, used foreign aid to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to threaten his neighbours. He ignored international agreements, pioneering a ballistic missile programme which menaced the nations who had poured funds into his country. And he flouted rules on arms proliferation to supply other terror states with the fruits of his labours. As we were all reminded just last week when a secret consignment of his Scuds was intercepted en route to Yemen.

Kim Jong Il has reacted to “engagement” as any good tyrant would, using it as an opportunity to screw appeasers in the West for resources and expertise with which to strengthen his oppressive rule. The West should have known what it was getting into. Kim Jong Il has been responsible for the abduction of scores of foreign nationals, a bomb in Burma which killed several members of a South Korean delegation and the downing of a South Korean airliner in which 115 people died. Yet still Western leaders thought he could be “engaged”. To the extent of building nuclear reactors for him. Only to find he was building nuclear bombs for use against them. But hey, how were they to know, he claimed he wanted to learn from the West? He said he even liked jazz.

Kim Jong, he’s amazing, yes sir, proliferating. Kim Jong, who’s your baby now? Bashar al-Assad, as it happens. The Syrian President has come to appreciate the Korean leader’s example, to the extent of acquiring Scud missiles from him, as well as developing his own little tranche of chemical and biological weapons to help to fill that awkward space in the rocket between the propulsion mechanism and the shell casing.

Having benefited so much from North Korean expertise already, we can confidently expect that Bashar knows just how to make engagement with the West work. As women soon to become widows across the Middle East will shortly find out.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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