Eminentoes/Syria's Howling Jackals

...Rifaat has many rivals, and not a few allies, in the murky world of Syrian military politics...

...I f Assad is as ill as reports indicate, it is perhaps the Russians who will mourn his passing most of all...

...In this instance, the Syrians, the remnants of the PLO in Lebanon, the Lebanese Druse, and Shi'ite militias all briefly united against the American forces...

...Other reports say Douba is head of Military Intelligence...

...After Anwar Sadat made his separate peace with Israel, a move that shocked and outraged the Arab world, Assad put Syria into a leading position of uncompromising enmity against the Jewish state...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 29...

...In 1963 the Military Committee helped topple the Syrian government and the Ba'ath took over...

...Historically," he said in a Radio Damascus interview, "Syria and Lebanon are one country...

...The Israelis, curiously enough, may briefly rue his demise, working on the theory that the devil you know is better than the one you don't...

...As Professor Mordechai Nissan of the Hebrew University has noted, Assad forced Damascus's chief religious leader to issue a statement saying Assad was a "true Moslem...

...The Defense Companies answer only to Rifaat, who is viewed by most Syrians, including many in the top circle of power, as a hopelessly corrupt figure...

...oAdnan Assad, an Assad cousin, commander of the Struggle Companies protecting government buildings in Damascus...

...In addition, the Russians maintain about 7,000 "advisers" in the Syrian armed forces and have laid extensive arms depots...

...Assad further consolidated his power and prestige when Syria took a hard-line position on nonnegotiations with Israel...

...As leader of Syria's military forces, Assad saw his personal and political standing dealt a near fatal blow in the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel...

...Yet Karameh is already having troubles holding his cabinet together, and the Syrian success in Lebanon is only a military one...

...Russian economic and military aid brought a period of mild prosperity to the country...

...At the moment of his greatest success--central Lebanon a puppet state under his control, superpower America and its European allies driven from Beirut, the U.S.-backed Lebanese-Israeli peace treaty demolished at his bidding, billions of dollars worth of the most advanced Soviet weaponry pouring into his country, his star rising in the Arab worldmat this moment, his body falls him...

...move to force an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, which Israel considers a vital strategic interest guarding its eastern flank, would run counter to IsraeliAmerican strategic cooperation...

...Missile bases in northern Syria have a range extending over the main NATO base in eastern Turkey, and missiles based in other parts of Syria and Lebanon can reach Israel's major cities...

...The period of coups and counter-coups ended as his security forces began a purge of real and imagined enemies which has lasted fourteen years...

...Syria also claims that Lebanon was unfairly expanded to its present borders by France in 1920, taking four provinces out of Damascus's control...

...Only the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon keeps Assad from dominating all of the Land of the Cedars...

...They are already plotting to succeed him, new purges and battles are in the making...

...With the recent establishment of Rasheed Karameh as prime minister of Lebanon, Damascus now calls all the shots in Beirut...

...oWazid Knaan, an Assad cousin, head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon...

...with Assad gone, his enemies in Lebanon may sense a weakening of Syria's Lebanese allies, and escalate the civil war again...

...In practical terms, the Greater Syria concept is an ideological vehicle for Assad's expansionist aims...

...Fortunately for the infidel Alawites, after the French grant of independence in 1946 the majority Sunnis were so busy fighting among themselves that they did not give serious thought to 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 slaughtering the Alawites...

...If he has any sense of history, perhaps he sees history repeating itself, sees Syria beginning to slide back to the chaos of coup and counter-coup that existed before he seized power fourteen years ago and instituted a quiet and very effective reign of terror...

...And since that embarrassing day early in the Lebanon war when Israeli jets destroyed almost a hundred Sovietsupplied Syrian MiG fighter planes, Russia has put an estimated $2.5 billion worth of arms into Syria, including top-line surface-to-air missiles, a sophisticated air defense system, radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns, tanks, helicopters, and advanced MiGs...

...In 1982 it was the Defense Companies that crushed an uprising of the Moslem Brotherhood, a Sunni Moslem fundamentalist movement opposed to Assad's rule, in the city of Hama...

...The organization, and the invasion, were in fact based on Assad's designs for a "Greater Syria," a historical delusion of megalomaniacal proportions, rooted in the legends of the Umayyad Dynasty and combined in this century with Ba'ath and Nasserist notions of pan-Arab unity...

...Combined, the "advisers," the arms depots, and the air and port facilities could serve as a forward base for the Soviet Union, should it decide to intervene directly in any future Middle East conflict...

...The Lebanese will not mourn him, although with his passing they will fear for the future of their country...

...In 1973 Assad won a psychological victory over Israel in the Yom Kippur War...

...He commands the 25,000-strong Defense Companies guarding the capital...

...The assorted jackals that have fed off his power for years smell blood and deploy their militias at strategic points in the city...

...The other two new vice-presidents, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam and a functionary of the governing Ba'ath party, Zuhair Musharqa, do not command troops and can be counted out of the running for real power...

...For the Alawites, rural and poor, military service was practically the only way to get off the farm and move up in Sunni-dominated society...

...Michel Aflag's rhetorical skills are said to have stirred many a young Syrian heart...

...If Assad dies suddenly, there may be an outbreak of fighting in Damascus...

...By the restrained but forceful demonstration of an American military presence, such as improved defense ties with Israel, and by the intelligent use of economic aid, such as programs that would build links between Israel and moderate Arab countries, the United States can regain some of the influence it lost due to miscalculations in Lebanon...

...But the Israeli experience with Assad has been a bitter one...

...Nor will Syria's Sunni majority mourn him...

...In Egypt Assad became the leader of a clandestine group of Syrian officers known as the Military Committee...

...They have the most to lose...

...Ba'ath theories of social unity were fine in principle, but in reality Assad knew he could trust only his kinsmen, and even they were not always dependable...

...But for how long...

...pushed the Arab empire into North Africa, Spain, and Afghanistan...

...His army behaved poorly, two-thirds of the Syrian Air Force was destroyed on the ground, Israel took the Golan Heights, and Assad, humiliated, later said he held himself "personaly responsible" for the defeat...

...One might detect a bit of a persecution complex, or at least a healthy dose of historical paranoia, among the ruling minority Alawites who, according to a landmark legal judgment passed down by a fourteenth-century Islamic jurist, are to be regarded as "more infidel than the Jews or the Christ i a n s . . , more infidel than most idolators...

...Again Assad was on the winning side...

...Moscow has big plans for Syria...

...According to some reports, as many as ten thousand civilians were killed...

...The Israelis learned a new respect for the Syrian forces, which did not panic and run as in earlier wars...

...Rifaat, for instance, is said by some Western political observers to "tilt to the Saudis" and thus be "pro-American...

...Shots are heard near the presidential palace...

...They are Sunni Moslems and have little influence within the Alawite inner circle...

...oAli Saleh, chief of the Air Force...

...The Soviet use of Syria and Syriancontrolled Lebanon as a training ground for political terrorism is not a new development...

...The dictator summons the jackals--most of them are his relatives--and calms the situation...

...Seventeen years of instability and continual coups had taught Assad not to place too much trust in anybody, to make sure one's allies had power, but not too much power...

...The Moslem Brotherhood, the chief target of Assad's terror, will certainly not mourn him, and may rise up in revolt...

...The provincial Alawite was now a major player in the Syrian power game...

...The Syrians rallied around their leader, and the government-controlled media extolled Assad and the Syrian troops, concealing the magnitude of Israel's final victories in the war...

...As Sunni power declined, Alawite influence rose...

...Assad later went to a military air academy, was sent to the Soviet Union in 1958 for special training in night combat, and the following year was posted to Cairo as a squadron leader in the air force of the United Arab Republic, a short-lived merger of Egypt and Syria under the strong hand of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser...

...In 1970, aided by his Alawite brethren and allies from the Military Committee, he overthrew President Nurudin Atassi and took control of the country...

...This was the time of the Umayyad Dynasty, which from 661 to 750 A.D...

...Shortly after the 1976 invasion, Assad made his thoughts on Lebanese sovereignty clear...

...After independence, civil power rested largely with the Sunnis...

...Any U.S...

...Assad was given command of the Syrian Air Force and a division of troops...

...The Islamic Jihad terror group, said to be behind last October's attack on U.S...

...Yet Assad survived, and prospered...

...Ba'ath rhetoric called for a secular socialism, the unity of the Arabs as "one nation," and recalled a time when Damascus dominated the Arab world...

...In Syria, Assad's death is likely to cause chaos...

...Adnan Makhluf, brother-in-law of Hafez Assad, commander of the Presidential Guard...

...Love, O young man, before everything," Aflag wrote in his 1940 essay "Toward the Ba'ath," a flowery hunk of writing that equated love with nationalism and alluded to times of Umayyadgreatness...

...The fighting continues in Beirut, the sniping and the bombing, and by keeping the Lebanese people off balance and exhausted by war, the Syrians ensure their dominance...

...Long ago the dictator made sure that no one man commanded enough force to overthrow him...

...Although Assad has lately become more circumspect in regard to Greater Syria delusions of grandeur, he did slip 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 up on one notable occasion in 1974 when, referring chiefly to Israel but also to parts of Jordan, he declared that "Palestine is none other than the principal part of southern Syria...

...by Micah Morrison ning, and terrorism...

...For the jackals are beginning to howl in Damascus, and when Hafez Assad goes to his dubious reward Rifaat may not be far behind...

...He was rewarded with the Ministry of Defense, and retained direct control of the Air Force...

...Israeli prisoners of war have been tortured, mutilated, and killed by Syrian troops...

...in the man himself, these qualities are thinly lacquered with a veneer of disingenuous simplicity...

...The United States, which never got much succor from Hafez al-Assad, should not mourn his demise, and it should not look for much in the way of cooperation and moderation from whoever claws his way to the top of the Syrian heap...

...The Alawites form about eleven percent of the Syrian population...

...Also a brother-in-law of Rifaat...

...In 1976 he ordered the invasion of Lebanon, ostensibly to end a civil war in that unfortunate country...

...Although the Sunnis did have some support in the army, their military and political power was decimated by infighting, factional purges, and the numerous coups that shook Syria between 1946 and 1963...

...There is Rifaat al-Assad, the president's brother, a graduate of Moscow University, one of the three new vicepresidents recently appointed by Assad in an effort to ease his workload and placate the jackals...

...And even if the reports of his imminent demise are true, the news is not necessarily good: Whoever replaces him will probably be worse...

...Before leaving Syria the French had brought many Alawites into the army...

...Yet Assad remains something of an enigma, turning a stern but kindly Janus face to the occasional media star graced with an interview while the jailing, torture, and assassination of thousands of his opponents goes for the most part unreported...

...Israel, always a bone in the Arab throat, now choked his own THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1984 27 future...

...Recent reports in the Lebanese press say that the Red Brigades, the Red Army, Baader Meinhoff, the Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, and other unidentified terror groups are currently being trained in Bekaa Valley bases under the instruction of Soviet, East German, and Cuban teachers...

...Within the Ba'ath leadership another power struggle was taking shape, and this probably worked to Assad's benefit by deflecting attention from his 1967 failure...

...The Umayyad legend would later play a part in Assad's plans for Syrian rule over Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel...

...Hafez Assad and most of his cohorts are Alawite Moslems...

...After studying science at the Latakia Secondary School, Assad enrolled in the Horns Military College...

...Assad's military success in Lebanon has clearly pleased the Russians, who depend on Syria to advance Moscow's aims in the region...

...the Sunnis seventy percent...

...The Military Committee was allied with a growing force in Syrian politics, the Ba' ath (Arab Socialist Renaissance) party, founded in 1940 by a Damascus intellectual, Michel Aflag...

...now his lieutenants are gearing up for a bloody succession battle...

...Strategic cooperation intensified after the signing of a friendship treaty in 1980 which, according to some intelligence reports, includes secret clauses giving the Soviet Union the option to use the Mediterranean port of Latakia and two Syrian air bases...

...later, Assad would have the head of Shi'a Islam in Lebanon declare him a "full Shi'ite...

...As his health fades, power slips from his grasp...

...He is briefly hospitalized for heart trouble and, according to sources in the capital, his health continues to decline...

...Nor will the relatives of the thousands killed at Hama in 1982...

...Contrary to some wishful reports in the American and Western media, Assad has no desire to bring stability to Lebanon, if stability means political independence for the Lebanese...

...Nor will the countless thousands who, according to sketchy reports obtained by Amnesty International, have been tortured in soundproof rooms, had their fingernails ripped out, were whipped with braided copper cables and caned and beaten, had electric skewers jammed into their rectums, and were forced to watch while their relatives were sexually assaulted...

...He was finished unless he could avenge the defeat...

...He has been a loyal friend of the Soviet Union...

...Internal battles in Arab countries usually work to Israel's benefit because they distract attention away from Israel...

...Syria is one Middle East arena where America has little influence, and it should recognize this fact and bide its time...

...The Associated Press reported from Damascus at the time of the invasion that the "organization has never been heard of b e f o r e . . . There is no indication of its size, who its leaders are or where it is based...

...oJamil Assad, brother of Hafez and Rifaat, commander of some troops in the Damascus area...

...oDefense Minister Mustafa Tlas...

...Israel retook the Heights, but Assad's personal humiliation was to a large degree erased, at the cost of 3,500 Syrian lives...

...Love is the soil in which your nationalism is nourished...

...the danger is that the internal forces may trigger a war with Israel in an effort to unify their country against the hated Jews And in the Syrian scenario, there is the danger that one or another internal faction may call on the Russians to aid them, drawing the Middle East closer to a superpower conflict...

...He grew up on a farm near the Mediterranean port of Latakia, a provincial youth from a minority religious sect...

...Consider the alternatives...

...execution or assassination are the favored forms of retirement...

...oHikmat Shehabi, Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army...

...Marine headquarters in Beirut that killed 241 Americans, trained on bases in Lebanon's Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley under the command of Rifaat's men...

...Nationalism is racial in the sense we hold sacred this Arab race which has, since the earliest historical epochs, carried within it a vitality and n o b i l i t y . . . " Dreams of dynasty aside, the Ba'ath and the Syrian Communist party were the only two parties in Syria with efficient organizations, and their power grew fast...

...Assad's longevity is not due only to his control of the military: He came to be an effective politician, too...

...Rifaat is the chief contender for power...

...oMuhammed Khuli, chief adviser to Hafez Assad on intelligence and security...

...By the time the Marines pulled out, a nasty little local conflict had been turned into a major military and propaganda victory for Syria and the Soviet Union...

...Officials in Damascus justified the invasion by saying Syria had been "invited" in by an organization called "'the Vanguard of the Lebanese Army...

...Syria frequently hosts visits from such Soviet allies as Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, North Korea, and North Yemen...

...He also made an attempt to reduce his stigma as an heretical Alawite...

...But Rifaat has recently been strengthening his personal ties with the Soviet leadership, and America would be wise not to place too much hope in a man so hated in Syria...

...The American withdrawal from Beirut might be seen as a textbook case of the Soviet Union's use of surrogate forces to increase instability and weaken American influence...

...This gave the Syrian people a sense of being at the forefront of the Arab struggle and won Assad much support at home and in the Soviet Union...

...Today's rival may be tomorrow's ally, or, as the Arab saying has it, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend...

...Brutality and xenophobia are the distinguishing features of Hafez Assad's rule...

...The harm they have done the religion of Muhammed is greater than that done by belligerent infidels, Turks, Franks, and others...

...In a surprise attack his troops pushed the Israelis off most of the Golan Heights for a few days...

...Even Rifaat al-Assad and the other contenders for power will not mourn Hafez al-Assad for long...

...oAli Asian, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Syrian Army, more powerful than Hikmat Shehabi because of clan ties to the Assad family...

...The relatives of the hundreds of prisoners massacred at Palmyra Prison in 1980 will not mourn him...

...oShafiq Fayyad, commander of the Third Armored Division...

...Disputes soon developed among the Ba'ath rulers and another successful coup was staged in 1966...

...He is reportedly involved in hashish and heroin deals stretching from Pakistan to Europe, extortion, gun runMicah Morrison is a free-lance writer based in Jerusalem...

...For with a modicum of political independence the Lebanese would turn on their Syrian masters...

...Among the soldiers who will decide Syria's future are: oAli Haidar, Rifaat's brother-in-law and leader of the elite Special Forces...

...Many of the terrorist training bases destroyed by Israel during the Lebanon war have been restored in Syrian-controlled territory...

...There are close ties between Damascus and Sovietsupported groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Somalia, and the Marxist Tamil United Liberation Front (Sri Lanka)--all of which are trying to overthrow pro-West governments...

...A virulent anti-American propaganda campaign is sure to accompany any Syrian power struggle...

...While Russian power is respected and feared by the peoples of the area, it is American culture and technology that is making inroads...

...But the Reagan Administration, which seems to have been badly scarred by its Lebanese misadventure, should also recognize that a strong American presence in the Middle East is in the long run the only hope for peace...

...He installed Sunnis in prominent though politically weak positions in government, fostering the image of a broad base of support...

...President Hafez al-Assad, the ailing dictator of Syria, described by various journalists and diplomats as taciturn, reclusive, a lover of military pomp, a career soldier in presidential clothes, a prudent manager, a "details man" immersed in every aspect of power, cunning, cruel, self-reliant and shrewd, austere and unforgiving...

...He began to ease more Alawites into key positions in the armed forces...

...Hafez al-Assad was sixteen when the French left Syria...

...oAli Douba, head of the Department of Internal Security, a main prop of the Assad regime...

...The surface-to-air missile bases, which are manned by Russian crews, are an especially worrisome point to Western and Israeli military planners...

...Most disgraced Syrian politicians are not allowed to fade quietly away...

...Only two of the twelve key figures noted above are not Alawites: Tlas and Shehabi...

...His successors will probably not have time for such dissembling...