Assad's War at Home

...It all seemed testimony to the old dictum that in the Middle East things, are never really what they appear to be...

...Hostility toward the Iraqi Baath has made Syria an ally of Iran in its war with Iraq—and practically an outcast (except for Libya) among the Arab nations...

...Indeed, when Syria marched into Lebanon in the mid-'70s, it actually saved the Christians from impending massacres by the PLO, Syria's erstwhile ally...

...The government's Socialist ideology and confused bureaucracy, particularly in the present time of economic difficulties, have been causing increased tension between the officialdom and the Syrian business community, which complains about growing harassment, blackmail and extortion...

...Assad managed to rebuild his strength, though, while Israel got sucked into the Lebanese mire that it has not been able to break out of to this day...

...Smuggling has become one of the entrenched prerogatives of the Syrian officer class, possibly helping to calm some of the non- Alawite officers angered by the privileged advancement of their Alawite counterparts...

...This, in turn, has glaringly revealed the innate weakness of highly centralized rule under stress, accelerating the infighting...

...There are several "fine points" to be noted in these elevations: The number one Vice President, and presumably the first in line to succeed the President, is not Hafez' brother Rifaat...

...The durabilty of the stalemate probably depends on the very thing that caused the crisis: Assad's health...

...During the initial 1982 phase of the war in Lebanon, Syria suffered major defeats, particularly in air battles, and Israel appeared to emerge as the new dominant power in the strife-ridden land...

...The dominant political group, the Syrian wing of the "Socialist" Baath Party, is in mortal ideological and cloak-and-dagger conflict with the Iraqi wing of the Baath Party...

...The crucial mistake of not translating the June '82 superiority into concrete arrangements on the ground—for which many here hold former U.S...

...He favors the Leftist civilian veterans of his Baath Party over the more pro-capitalist oriented officers of the various security forces, while running a country where there is a fair amount of private enterprise...

...Similarly, six years of almost complete occupation appeared to bring much closer to reality Damascus' long-time dream of de facto annexation of its smaller western neighbor, yet those years not only entangled Syria in the bottomless Lebanese morass but complicated its relations with the other Arab nations...

...He has entrusted the safety of his regime to the troops commanded by his brother Rifaat, whose greed and cruelty are a source of popular hatred, and whose personal ambitions may ultimately trigger an open war of succession...

...His less important step was the reappointment of Abdel Rauof al-Kas-sem as Prime Minister...

...Matters came to a head of sorts last February 29, producing some shooting between the Third Brigade of the Army and units of the 25,000-strong Praetorian Guard under the command of Rifaat al-Assad, Hafez' younger brother...

...Assad's recent reorganization, designed to quiet the domestic unrest, was a two-fold affair...

...It is a measure of Assad's sophistication, cunning and brutality, too, that he has managed to stay in power for more than 12 years without serious challenge—despite being fundamentally at variance with Syrian society on several levels: • The majority considers itself socially, culturally and economically superior to his "inferior-status" Alwites...

...The other is that his physical condition has perpetuated the succession struggle, compelling him to spend his limited enEliahu Salpeter, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha' aretz...

...Rifaat's luxury mansion outside Washington, his alleged "pro-Americanism," and his free-wheeling womanizing have aroused the ire of both the more conservative and the more Leftist elements among the Alawi and in the Baath...

...His is a peculiar mandate in a peculiar regime...

...If meeting a foreign representative and having to handle some urgent domestic issue results in his doing more, his doctors get very jittery...

...If and when his health forces him to step aside or assume an essentially ceremonial role, Syria may again show its other face—that of a heterogeneous country of competing ethnic, religious and economic groups...

...In any case, Assad appears to have brought about a stalemate in the current fight for succession in Damascus...

...The spot has been given to the more popular ex-Foreign Minister, who is credited with a key role in executing Syria's delicate maneuvers on the Arab scene in connection with the Iraq-Iran conflict, and in turning a military defeat in Lebanon into a political victory...

...So it must have come as a bitter pill to the ailing Syrian President that almost simultaneously the media began to report a "power crisis" and a "war of inheritance" in Damascus...

...ergies on organizational matters and on settling feuds previously requiring marginal attention...

...the majority of the rest are Sunni, the biggest branch of Islam...

...He used to work 12-14hours a day, supervising personally the implementation of every important security, foreign policy, economic, and political decision...

...Far worse, they strained the country's economy, causing fairly open dissension at home for the first time...

...Then came Assad's serious heart attack last November...

...That is one side of Assad's problem...

...And if Rifaat refuses to accept whatever Hafez and I or the Baath leadership decide about the succession, Damascus could become the capital of one of the most unstable regimes in the Arab world—just as it was before Hafez al-Assad seized power...

...Nevertheless, Assad has shrewdly converted resentment of him by the oil-rich conservative Arab rulers into fear, and thus an additional instrument for extorting hundreds of millions of dollars from them...

...AFTER LEBANON Assad's War at Home BY ELIAHU SALPETER Tel Aviv President Amin Gemayel's accession last month to Syria's demand that Beriut cancel its May 17 troop withdrawal agreement with Jerusalem, and the reconvening of the Lebanese Concilation Conference in Lausanne under effective Syrian control, stunningly confirmed Hafez al-Assad as the real victor in Lebanon...

...After two months in the hospital he was left with a greatly reduced work capacity, and soon the precarious power equilibrium in Damascus was shattered...

...Now his normal work period is restricted to 3-5 hours...

...Assad's rule had been a highly centralized one...

...This makes it all the more attractive to import "directly" from Lebanon, whose frontiers are open to Syrian military vehicles...

...It is probably not entirely irrelevant that Khaddam's wife is an Alawite...

...He is content to carry out the decisions taken by the Regional Command Council, the top governing body of the Syrian Baath...

...Significantly, two of the new Vice Presidents, Khaddam and Masharka, are Sunni Moslems...

...As long as he is able to bridge the gaps and restrain the ambitions, an open fight for his office will probaby not take place...

...He has not, however, resolved the split that divides the Baath Party, the Alawite community and even the Assad family...

...Neither Israel nor the United States capitalized on the situation, however, mainly because both failed to see their opportunity even once its implications became evident...

...More important was Assad's appointment of three Vice Presidents: former Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khad-dam, the controversial Rifaat, and Zu-heir Masharka, representative of the Regional Command Council—apparently in that order of precedence...

...The Alawites constitute only about 15 per cent of Syria's population...

...And this forced the President to announce a reorganization he apparently would have preferred to avoid...

...special envoy Philip Habib and his State Department colleagues responsible—was repeated in November-December 1983 when Washington was frightened into withdrawing the Marines, instead of using the disarray in Damascus to compel the Syrians to back off...

...So the Damascus regime is, in fact, in the hands of a minority within a minority...

...It is said that even after import licenses are finally issued, it takes up to a year to get arrangements for a letter of credit completed...

...On the other hand, Mustafa Tlas, Rifaat's major enemy in the Armed Forces, was reappointed Minister of Defense and so remains in a position to support who ever would challenge Rifaat's grab for power...

...Rifaat Assad is VP number two, but he is in charge of security matters and therefore is still well situated to contest the succession should this become amat-ter of using force...

...Although al-Kassem is not highly regarded by most Syrians, his retention, with relatively minor portfolio changes in the Cabinet, was seen as reassurance for the Baath apparatus: The Prime Minister seldom, if ever, has tried to push policies of his own...

...In addition, most of the top posts are controlled by officers who are members of Assad's own Ala-wi sect—belonging to the Shiite branch of Islam, but viewed as bordering on the heretical by the truly orthodox Shi-ites...

...He has sided with traditionally anti-Arab Iran and the fanatically zealous Ayatollah Khomeini against both Arab solidarity and Sunni (and Shiite) conservatism...