Syria Is Forced to Adapt to a New Power Next Door
nytimes.com
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
April 22, 2003
DAMASCUS, Syria, April 21 -- Riad al-Turk, Syria's most outspoken dissident, ticks off the roughly one-third of his life spent as a political prisoner: 13 months under the current president, Bashar al-Assad, a whopping 18 years in solitary confinement under Mr. Assad's late father and sundry years or months stretching almost back to independence in 1946.
Now, like everyone in the Middle East, he has a new political factor to consider: the United States military, setting up next door in Iraq as the latest occupying power.
Like many Syrians, he is horrified, yet he -- like other government critics -- also recognizes that the welcome toppling of Saddam Hussein, if handled right, may push the kind of political and economic opening that they have sought for decades.
"Iraq had a bloodier system -- when we compare the number of victims here to the number in Iraq, it had many, many more," said Mr. Turk, 73. "But in substance they are the same."
After Mr. Hussein's swift collapse, President Bush and senior administration officials sought to capitalize on the new American presence in the region by warning other Middle Eastern governments that Washington seeks change.
Syria rapidly attracted Washington's ire. The Bush administration was angered by the prospect that Damascus would grant safe haven to Mr. Hussein or his fleeing aides, right after it let hundreds of Arab volunteers pour into Iraq to fight the Americans and supposedly helped Baghdad acquire banned items like night vision goggles.
The initial tension appears to have eased, with Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa emphasizing today that the Syrian-Iraqi border was sealed and that Iraqis without visas would be turned away. He also welcomed renewed dialogue beginning with an impending visit by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Sharaa's remarks came a day after soothing statements by President Bush about Syria's cooperation.
However, even Syrians much closer to the establishment than Mr. Turk is seem certain that this country, and the region, will adapt -- even if the American action in Iraq smacks of the kind of external control from which the Arabs have been trying to free themselves for the better part of a century.
"We don't know what will happen to us after the Iraq war," said Haitham Kilani, a retired diplomat and general. "But it is certain there will be change."
Syria in some ways feels like the Iraq of old, and will probably be prominent on Washington's list of despotic states needing evolution.
Like Mr. Hussein's Iraq, Syria stands accused of developing chemical weapons and aiding groups that Washington considers terrorists -- in Syria's case, Hezbollah, which dominates southern Lebanon and threatens Israel from that base. Syria also allows most Palestinian groups to maintain what it insists are information offices here, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In the post-Hussein sweepstakes for the title of most repressive Middle Eastern nation, Syria's powerful secret police agencies, its shadowy governing party and the lack of free expression will also probably pull Syria -- at least in American eyes -- ahead of competitors like Libya or American allies including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Both Iraq and Syria have been ruled for decades by bitterly opposed branches of the Baath Party, founded in Syria in 1947 on the ideals of defeating colonialism, fostering Arab unity and socialism. Both Mr. Hussein and the late President Hafez al-Assad basically first used the party's secular creed to help establish the dominance of their respective religious minorities -- Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, in Syria.
Once ensconced, both carried out one-man rule. In Syria, emergency laws giving the police sweeping powers have been in effect since 1963.
Last year, nine dissidents were sentenced to up to 10 years in jail for attacking one-party rule. Ibrahim Hamidi, the Damascus bureau chief for the London-based newspaper Al Hayat, was arrested in December for violating the press law by publishing articles about what might have been said in presidential meetings. His court hearings have been secret.
Syrian television broadcast a documentary on Islamic architecture during the toppling of Mr. Hussein's statue on April 9, but most Syrians saw the startling scene in Baghdad on satellite stations.
In Damascus, although the younger Mr. Assad has sought to play down displays of personal power, statues of his father are everywhere. One such statue, 20 feet high, with Mr. Assad's arm outstretched, dominates a park in Damascus. A group of young men wondered one recent night whether the statue would budge if pushed.
In a month spent here, by far the most frequent complaint -- voiced by teachers, restaurant owners or doctors with private clinics -- centers on the pervasive bribes demanded by the security services.
"The most important problem here is corruption," said a 42-year-old Baath Party member from the provinces, bemoaning what he said was a "river of money" into party coffers. "The party is fragile because of this corruption."
The man, like many Syrians, blamed the ruling clique rather than the president himself. There is, however, widespread grumbling that presidential relatives own a piece of most major businesses.
President Assad, 37, promised to fight corruption when he inherited the job from his father nearly three years ago. Syrians were prepared to overlook the fact that he was simply handed the reins of the country because they thought a young, computer-savvy British-trained ophthalmologist would improve their standard of living.
Instead, with the Palestinian uprising against Israel and the American war on Iraq, the younger Mr. Assad has sought to burnish Syria's treasured position as the conscience of the Arabs, lashing out at Western attempts to dominate them.
Promised reforms stalled, including the introduction of private banks and private universities. Introduced piecemeal by presidential order, most change founders on the shoals of bureaucratic red tape.
For example, Baath Party apparatchiks kept private universities at bay by trying to push them outside major cities. "It's an art form, they pretend to implement reform, but all they do is create obstacles," one Damascus University professor said.
The minister of higher education, Hassan Risheh, found himself battling for support for a virtual university accessible throughout Syria because the word in Arabic for virtual translates as "supposed."
"There are a lot of people who don't like these things because they think in a conventional way and they don't understand them," he said.
Economic reform has not fared well, either, and the economy is expected to plunge with the loss of 200,000 barrels a day of subsidized Iraqi oil and some $2 billion in exports to Iraq.
"We don't have a program as to what kind of economic reform we want," said Nabil Sukkar, a business consultant and former World Bank economist. "There is no priority, no defined steps."
Much speculation focuses on whether Mr. Assad will try to dump the Baath Party because it is thwarting any change, and Alawites have begun to worry it might sink them. But no one is sure who advises him. Both the president and his wife, Azma Akhras, a Sunni Muslim and former investment banker in London, remain largely aloof. They have one son, Hafez, age 16 months.
Almost nothing is more sensitive then the question of Alawite dominance in Syria. Although official figures do not exist, Syria's 17 million people are believed to be about 75 percent Sunni Muslim, about 13 percent Alawite, and around 10 percent Christian.
Government officials generally dismiss any question about Alawite dominance either by saying Syria benefits from secular rule or noting the number of Sunni Muslims in top positions.
Asked about American hints on change in the Middle East, Buthaina Shaaban, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, was adamant that it was none of Washington's business.
"Internal change will be decided by Syrians at the pace that Syrians want for the purposes that Syrians desire to achieve," she said last week. She also rejected absolutely any similarity to Iraq, saying, "They simply cannot be compared."
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