Syria and the world wait, as Bashar al-Asad seeks to succeed his father
By Khalil Osman
[Crescent International, July 1-15, 2000.]
Syria’s parliament on June 25 endorsed the Ba’ath Party’s nomination of Bashar Asad as candidate for the presidency in succession to his father, late president Hafiz Asad, who died on June 10. Four days early, the ninth congress of the Ba’ath Party, its first plenary convention for 15 years, had elected Bashar party chief. The party also nominated the 34-year-old Bashar for president, making it virtually certain that he will succeed his father as leader of the country. The parliament was also due to set a date for a presidential referendum in which the junior Asad is likely to be the only candidate.
The process is following a carefully-planned script to ensure a smooth transition of the leadership mantle to Bashar – a process officially trumpeted as a guarantee of the continuity of the late president’s path. An emergency session of parliament on June 10 amended the constitution, lowering the minimum required age for the presidency from 40 to 34. The following day, vice-president ‘Abd al-Halim Khaddam promoted Bashar to the rank of field marshal and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, an important position in a country where the military establishment wields real power and influence.
Asad’s keenness to groom one of his sons to succeed him is indicative not only of a determination to establish his own family as a "republican dynasty", but also of the frailty of the regime’s institutional structure after 30 years of autocratic rule. It is a telling sign of a polity that lacks an institutional mechanism for the transition of power. In 1994, Bashar was plucked from political obscurity when his older brother, Basil, who was being groomed to succeed their father, died in an automobile accident. Bashar, who was then studying ophthalmology in London, was forced to return to Damascus and become involved in politics.
Upon his return to Syria, Bashar was appointed captain in the medical corps. He took a crash course in military training at the military academy of Homs. He climbed swiftly through the ranks until he was promoted to the rank of colonel and appointed divisional commander in the Republican Guard elite force, the position previously held by his late brother, in January 1999. In recent months, Bashar has acted as the moving spirit behind long-overdue reforms. He launched a campaign to stamp out endemic corruption and graft within government. In this regard, he was instrumental in bringing about the dismissal of former prime minister Mahmoud al-Zu’bi some three months ago. Facing corruption charges, the deposed Zu’bi committed suicide in May. A more technocracy-oriented cabinet headed by Mustafa Miro replaced the previous cabinet.
Fighting corruption in Syria is a thorny affair with obvious implications for the country’s social and political stability. Corruption has reached proportions bordering on racketeering and naked extortion. At times it has involved high-ranking officials falsifying bogus government statistics to cover up their wrongdoings. It has favoured the well-connected over the efficient, and engendered a corrosive mixture of widespread cynicism, perceptions of unfairness, and a surfeit of aborted popular aspirations. Bashar’s campaign to clean the government, which has so far included many arrests, seamy revelations in the government-controlled press and moves toward internal monitoring of administrative efficiency, could soon pit him against many in the old guard who are used to feeding voraciously at the public expense.
Corruption is also a major constraint on Syria’s backward economy. In fact, modernizing the economy, which is saddled by an antiquated, unproductive and bloated public sector, ineffective tax collection and massive defence spending, will be among Bashar Asad’s top priorities. Bashar probably has no choice but to opt for economic reform and rejuvenation. He is aware of the link between Syria’s economic weakness, exemplified by an unemployment rate of 30 percent, and its fragile strategic position. However, economic reforms under Bashar are likely to be a gradual, carefully calibrated affair so as not to open the floodgates of reform in other places, especially the political stage.
Bashar is also known for his passion for computers and information technology. He heads the Syrian scientific society for information technology, and has expressed a determination to introduce technological change into his country. That is no small task in a country where the internet and even faxes are subject to tight security regulation for fear that they might turn into tools undermining the Ba’ath party’s grip on power.
Hafiz Asad established a powerful centralized system with absolute authority vested in him as president. A cult of personality has long surrounded the late Syrian president. Pictures of Hafiz Asad have been staring out onto the streets of Syrian cities and towns since he came to power in a bloodless coup in November 1970. The message that accompanied these pictures and murals was designed to overawe every Syrian. But the late president’s longevity in office rested mainly on two foundations: firstly, a coalition between his minority Alawi sect, a potpourri of other minority groups, and provincial peasant groups who moved up on the socio-economic ladder during his reign; and secondly, a brutal security apparatus that struck terror into the hearts of most of the country’s citizens. Emblematic of the police state that Asad presided over is a Byzantine network of 15 competing intelligence agencies.
Asad reacted to threats to his regime with the same kind of furious ruthlessness that typifies reactions to dissent throughout much of the Arab world. In the late 1970s, he launched a ferocious, repressive campaign to crush a swelling, well-organized urban guerrilla insurgency spearheaded by elements in the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The campaign culminated in an attack in February 1982 on the city of Hama, in which some twenty thousand residents of Hama died.
However, it is in regional politics that Hafiz Asad’s main achievements lie. He succeeded in transforming Syria from a feeble Middle Eastern backwater into a regional power. Before him the country was politically adrift, its government much like a revolving door swung repeatedly by military putsches and coups: between 1945 and 1970 Syria had 20 changes of government. His coming to power heralded an era of relative stability and development. His political cunning and stamina in long, nerve-racking, often prolix negotiating sessions earned him the grudging respect of a stream of world officials, including a number of American presidents and secretaries of state.
His first priority as president was to attempt to erase the stain of the 1967 defeat, during which he had served as Syria’s defence minister. After coming to power, he worked to build a strong military, allocating in the process up to 70 percent of the annual budget to defence. Ultimately, Asad hoped to prepare his army for confrontation with Israel. He viewed the struggle with the Jewish state in existential, zero-sum terms. This was aptly captured by a large painting in his reception hall depicting Muslim armies under Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, the legendary leader who unified the Muslims and defeated the Crusaders in the battle of Hittin in 1187 CE. In his memoirs The Years of Upheaval, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger mentions this painting: "The symbolism was plain enough; Assad frequently pointed out that Israel would sooner or later suffer the same fate".
Counterbalancing Israel’s superior might preoccupied the late Asad throughout his time at the helm. Toward this end he sought to establish an all-Arab alliance under Syria’s leadership. In the late 1970s he developed the doctrine of strategic balance, or military parity, with Israel. Accordingly, Asad was determined to build a powerful military force in order to confront Israel without depending on neighbouring Arab countries. The humiliating defeat of the Syrian armed forces during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon strengthened this determination.
However, Asad viewed the collapse of his Soviet patron as a serious setback, depriving him of a military option vis-a-vis the Jewish state. He then set about rethinking a new Israel strategy based on diplomacy, and joined the Madrid ‘peace process’, insisting that Israel return the entire Golan Heights in return for full peace. Given that such a withdrawal entails sharing sovereignty with Israel over Lake Tiberias, something that Israeli leaders are adamant they will never do, Asad seems to have painted himself into a corner. His so-called "strategic decision" to join the peace process turned out to be a reckless gambit that took the war option off the table without offering him any guarantee for the recover of the Golan Heights. This is the most momentous foreign policy question that his successor will have to grapple with, and the west will inevitably see the change in leader as an opportunity to exploit.