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Assad: Syria's man in hot seat

Five years since taking over with promises of reform, much seems to be reverting. But the heat he faces doesn't come from home.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published May 2, 2005

	[Times photo: Susan Taylor Martin]
	A cleaner sweeps a Damascus street near a cart of ganereks, a Syrian fruit. Once a police-state atmosphere, the city today is a relaxed, pleasant place.

DAMASCUS, Syria - When Bashar Assad became Syria's president in 2000, many wondered if he would follow the lead of his father, a ruthless dictator who once leveled much of a Syrian city to crush an uprising of Islamic extremists.

Or would the young, British-trained eye doctor renounce the policies of the past and set his country on a course of political and economic reform?

Since 2000, much has changed in the Middle East. The United States occupies Syria's neighbor, Iraq. Israelis and Palestinians have reached a detente after four years of violence. Seeds of democracy are sprouting in such unlikely places as Saudi Arabia.

But five years after he took office, the same questions remain about Bashar Assad. Is he a danger or a reformer?

"Okay, he spent time in Britain and speaks English. So did some of the 9/11 bombers," says Farid Khazen, a political scientist at American University of Beirut. "You can be young and still be like your dad."

Archbishop Isidore Battikha, patriarch of the Greek Catholic Church in Damascus, holds a different opinion.

"He has his problems, but we feel he loves Syria and loves the people and wants to make progress. He knows the way to do that, but he needs time."

Whichever view is most accurate, Assad is a man in the hot seat.

He is the target of relentless criticism from the United States, which accuses Syria of stoking the insurgency in Iraq and supporting radical groups hostile to Israel. His hasty withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, ending three decades of occupation, was seen as a national humiliation that could weaken Assad's power at home.

Few Syrians, however, expect "regime change." Many feared the United States might attack in 2003 after invading Iraq but now think American troops are too bogged down to take on another country.

And though Syrians are unhappy with the slow pace of change, they are nowhere near launching a revolution of their own for fear they could end up with something worse than they have.

"If the Assad regime collapses, there is concern you are leaving the country to chaos and fundamentalists," says Nadim Shehadi, acting head of the Middle East program at London's Chatham House.

That may be the only reassuring news for a man who never expected to enter politics.

Syria was ruled for 30 years by Hafez Assad, a flint-eyed autocrat who expected his eldest son, Bassel, to succeed him. But when Bassel died in a high-speed car crash in 1994, his brother was summoned home from medical studies in England.

Those who know the family say Bashar as a child had a frosty relationship with his father, complaining the elder Assad was never around when he needed him. Nonetheless, Bashar returned to Syria in 1995 and joined the army. When Assad died of a heart attack five years later, his son became president at 34.

"Bashar is like George Bush in that he came up late in politics," says Abdallah Bouhabib, Lebanon's former ambassador to the United States. "Being a latecomer, he doesn't have the tradition in politics to know what's right and what's wrong."

One example: During a 2001 visit by Pope John Paul II, who had apologized to Jews for the church's apathy during the Holocaust, Assad stunned listeners with a welcoming speech widely regarded as anti-Semitic. He later realized the inappropriateness of his remarks and "retired" his speech writer, Bouhabib says.

Despite such missteps, Syrians were encouraged as Assad freed hundreds of political prisoners, and promised legal and economic reforms. In what they hoped would be a precursor to true democracy, citizens discussed a variety of issues in "salons" or forums.

Those who met the new president typically described him as "modest" and "intelligent." Syrians also took to his wife, Asma, a chic, London-raised merchant banker. Clad in jeans and T-shirt, she went around the country incognito, talking to Syrians to gauge their feelings.

A new sense of energy pervaded the nation, especially here in Damascus.

Compared to the old police-state atmosphere, the capital today is a relaxed, pleasant place in which visitors - including the few Americans - can stroll with little fear of harassment or street crime. Gone are the huge, oppressive posters of Hafez Assad, replaced by smaller portraits of him and Bashar.

A luxury Four Seasons hotel is soon to open. Shady side streets are lined with shops and cafes. French and English are now mandatory in public schools.

When previous regimes tried "to Arab-ize Syria, we lost a lot of education and culture," says Father Toufic Eid, superior of St. Serge Convent. "Now they are aware of this - this step shows the way the government is thinking."

But the hoped-for "Damascus Spring" turned into the "Damascus Winter" when even young members of the ruling Baath Party began demanding reforms. The salons were quickly closed.

"The regime was okay with people talking as long as it didn't get serious," says Rime Allaf, a Syrian-born expert on the Mideast at Chatham House. "But when their own members started getting restless, that's when the regime started getting worried."

Some feel Assad was stymied by holdovers from his father's era who had grown rich and powerful under the status quo.

"Six months ago, you could have said Bashar is not a power generator, he's an intersection of power," says Dr. Samir Altaqi, an adviser to the government. "Then he began to interfere directly and decide many things."

Assad fired his chief of staff and a top defense minister. He reshuffled the army. He also took a step in Lebanon that would prove calamitous.

In the 1970s, the Lebanese government had invited Syrian troops into the country to keep peace during a long civil war. But the Syrians stayed even after fighting ended in 1990, exerting what a new U.N. report calls "heavy-handed interference" in Lebanon's politics and economy.

Last fall, Assad extended the term of the pro-Syrian president and forced the resignation of the prime minister, Rafik Hariri. In February, the billionaire businessman was assassinated in a huge bomb blast that has been blamed on Syria despite Syrian denials and the lack of hard evidence.

Hundred of thousands of Lebanese rallied to demand Syria get out. Long before the bombing, though, Assad's regime should have realized the growing Lebanese frustration with Syrian officials in the country, especially the tactless, unpopular security chief, Allaf says:

"The regime is slow to react, and when they do react, often it is not the best reaction."

Allaf and many other Syrians thought their army should have left Lebanon in 2000, the year Israel withdrew its troops from the southern part of the country. Then Syria could have claimed the moral high ground. Instead, the five-year delay resulted in an ignominious retreat under heavy international pressure.

"Syrians were flabbergasted," Allaf says.

"Paying the price'

Bashar Assad's biggest problems with the United States stem from the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq.

During the Cold War, Syria aligned with the Soviet Union. When it collapsed, the elder Assad won U.S. favor by sending Syrian troops to join the coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait in 1991.

After the Sept.11 attacks, the younger Assad tried to continue the good relations by sharing Syria's intelligence files on the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups that once threatened the Syrians themselves. Syria also tipped off the United States to an anti-American plot in Bahrain.

In return for the cooperation, Allaf says, Syria hoped to be removed from the U.S. list of "state sponsors of terrorism," a designation resulting from Syria's support of Hezbollah and other anti-Israel groups. Assad thought the United States might help him get back the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

"They kept cooperating, thinking this would pay off on other fronts," Allaf says. "But the Bush administration was taking everything in one hand and refusing to give something in return.

"What the Syrians and Arabs didn't understand was what Sept.11 did to the U.S. and how it changed public policy in the U.S., which was to adopt with open arms any country that was fighting quote-unquote terrorists. Unlike Israel, Arabs did not present their case in Washington. Syrians work very well behind the scenes, but they don't know how to do PR."

In the runup to the Iraq war, whatever goodwill was left between Syria and the United States vanished altogether. Syria knew its neighbor had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, Allaf says, because Iraq had been crippled by years of economic sanctions. Every Arab country opposed the war, but Syria was the shrillest in its criticism.

"I think it was a mistake to voice so publicly a Syrian wish that the invaders be defeated," Allaf says. "Nobody needed to go out being so openly anti-American and anti-British, and we're paying the price now."

Last week, Syria was at least partially vindicated by U.S. inspectors, who said they found no stockpiles of weapons in Iraq and no evidence any had been hidden in Syria before the war.

The Bush administration continues to accuse Assad of abetting the insurgency in Iraq by sheltering top officials of Hussein's regime and allowing terrorists to cross the border.

Several weeks ago, Syria turned over Hussein's brother-in-law, alleged to have been financing the insurgency. The violence, however, continues.

With British help, the Syrians have built huge sand berms along the 375-mile border with Iraq in an effort to halt illegal crossings. But experts say it's unrealistic to think all movement can be stopped, given the close family and tribal ties between people on both sides of the border, many of them Sunnis who oppose the U.S. occupation.

"I believe the Syrians when they say they cannot completely shut that border," says Shehadi of Chatham House. "The Bedouin tribes that are common in that area don't recognize this border."

Assad, a member of the minority Alawites, also must be careful not to anger Sunnis, who are a majority of Syria's 18-million people. For decades, the country's many Christian and Muslim factions have lived peacefully together, a fact often overlooked by Syria's critics.

"I'm Christian, one of my partners is Shiite and the other is Sunni," says Fouad Al Bouz, 25, a law student in the import-export business. "I think this says a lot about Syria."

Like many young Syrians, Bouz likes Americans, though not American policies.

"The U.S. is so aggressive in the name of international democracy. Democracy doesn't come through guns and tanks and airplanes. This is a fake democracy."

Although they no longer worry about attack, many Syrians fear being hit with the kind of draconian U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq for 12 years. "Nothing happened to the regime, but the people paid dearly," Allaf says.

Last year, the United States began enforcing its own sanctions under the Syrian Accountability Act, which bans U.S. companies from doing business here. Altaqi, a general surgeon, was unable to import some German X-ray equipment because it contained American software.

"It wasn't a big deal" he says. "Sanctions would be important if the economy was in a phase of growth, but it isn't growing now."

Syria's economy has long been in bad shape, largely because of outmoded Soviet-era policies. The already high unemployment rate will be exacerbated by the thousands of Syrians laborers who worked in Lebanon but returned home after at least 30 were killed in anti-Syrian violence.

Corruption and cronyism reach to the highest levels of government - contracts for mobile phones, duty-free stores and other lucrative ventures have gone to some of Assad's closest relatives.

But Syria is not without prospects. It has natural gas and some oil. With its Mediterranean coastline and myriad religious and archaeological sites, analysts say it also has great tourism potential - Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the world's fifth-richest man, was in Damascus last week for a tourism forum aimed at drumming up international investment.

"There is a lot of money to be made in this country," Allaf says.

Syrians are eagerly looking to June, when the ruling Baath Party meets in its first congress since Assad became president.

He may announce plans for municipal elections, Allaf says, as well some "cosmetic changes" designed to create the impression the party is less all-controlling than it really is.

"The regime realizes it needs to do some reforms," Allaf says, "but any change in the Syrian regime has one objective - to remain in power."

--Susan Taylor Martin can be reaced at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 2, 2005, 14:24:13]