The Several Faces of Syria
KIRK, DONALD
DOWNPLAYING TERRORISM The Several Faces of Syria BY DONALD KIRK Damascus On the streets, in shops and restaurants, one encounters almost an old-world civility here that seems at times to...
...Assad even shows occasional signs of wanting to make up with Iraq, but appears to suffer an ego problem in the presence of its ruler, Saddam Hussein, if anything his equal in self-promotional paranoia...
...Wasn't he afraid of arrest...
...You cannot find anybody here who will sell or buy dollars...
...Syria's economic dilemma, of course, was the prime reason for Assad's effort to placate the United States, whose ambassador, William Eagleton, returned last fall after having been withdrawn for 10 months...
...More than 100 others have received sentences ranging from 15-20 years in prison...
...If you travel to Syria by bus from Jordan, as I did, you' re likely to find your fellow passengers carrying rolls of toilet paper, Pampers, cans of juice-items that cannot be bought locally...
...oil companies, instructed to "voluntarily" cut back on their activities as part of the State Department's set of "sanctions," are again exploring for high-grade oil near the frontier of oil-rich Iraq...
...I do not need 25 years in prison...
...The penalties for big-scale black-marketeering, though, are something else...
...For months there have been rumors that Khuli may be assigned elsewhere, possibly as an ambassador, and Said is rumored to have been dismissed or retired...
...What about Israelis, he was asked...
...Donald Kirk, a longtime NL contributor who writes for USA Today, has just returned from a tour of the Middle East...
...Look up at the hills that rim the city, though, and you see the evidence of his power...
...One diplomat pointedly commented, "Nobody does anything around here without Assad's approval.' Despite recurring reports of his ill health, the diplomat went on, " after 17 years in power he appears stronger than ever...
...hostages in Lebanon to free them...
...Syria's considerable reluctance to do a complete about-face notwithstanding, the U.S...
...One day, the Administration raises expectations that Assad might persuade his ally, Iran, to persuade whoever is holding U.S...
...Yet in the souk that dates to Biblical times, in the lobbies of hotels watched by agents and informers, nobody criticizes Assad by name...
...For American diplomats in the labyrinthine maze of the terror-proofed U.S...
...We do not know them, "he replied...
...Two U.S...
...Embassy here somehow believes Assad wants to prove his legitimacy as a level-headed leader...
...The Syrian Air Force intelligence chief, Major General Mohammed alKhuli, and a deputy, Haithem Said, are said to have masterminded the El Al episode...
...There isn't sustained firm evidence that Syria has given up on terrorism,' said one European diplomatic observer, citing the presence in Damascus of Abu Moussa, head of the Syrian-backed wing of the PLO, and Ahmed Jibral, in charge of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command...
...DOWNPLAYING TERRORISM The Several Faces of Syria BY DONALD KIRK Damascus On the streets, in shops and restaurants, one encounters almost an old-world civility here that seems at times to contradict the picture of President Hafez al-Assad as a vainglorious dictator...
...Embassy, the question is not whether Assad runs a police state, which he obviously does, but whether he is exporting terrorism despite the much-publicized expulsion last year of Abu Nidal and his entourage...
...Nobody talks about it...
...people merely raise their eyebrows in expressions of mock despair when asked how they like him...
...It is politics...
...Assad himself, to be sure, professes nothing other than vague "sympathy" regarding the hostages-and has not exhibited any misgivings about Palestinian protests against Israeli rule...
...But there is nothing concrete, no way we can tell what has happened to them," said a Western diplomat...
...A Palestinian driver from Jordan, whom I hired to drive me back to Amman, carried cartons of imported American cigarettes purchased at prices that were incredibly low as a result of the artificially high official value of the Syrian pound...
...In fact, as far as anyone here can tell, predictions that he is no longer exporting terrorism may be premature...
...Chat with Syrians long enough, and you discover that most of them view Iranians, not Americans or Europeans, as their worst enemies...
...I know nothing about dollars," he said...
...Lately they have become so severe that entrepreneurs inside Syria are afraid to risk black market transactions once as routine in Damascus as in Amman or Kuwait...
...Five Syrian businessmen convicted of smuggling have received death sentences-and are waiting in prison for Assad to decide whether he will make examples of them by ordering their executions...
...Please do not ask who lives there, " says a government clerk far below...
...And Damascus officials, civilian as well as military, have little if any contact with the Iransponsored Hezbollah (Party of God), thought to hold most of the foreign hostages in Lebanon...
...Apparently the break was only prevented by the State Department's insistence that someday, somehow, somewhere Assad might play a significant role in putting together the pieces of the Middle East puzzle...
...That still seems to be the prevailing view in Washington...
...Everyone knows it...
...We do not need them," he said...
...Smuggling across the border with Jordan goes on under the eyes of seemingly pervasive Syrian security police and custom officials, most of them assumed to be on the take...
...Indeed, Whitehall officials say there is no chance of Britain resuming diplomatic relations with Syria so long as Assad fails to demonstrate conclusively that he has cracked down on the export of terrorism by lower-ranking operatives...
...Britain broke off relations with Syria after the conviction of Nizar Hindawi, charged with planting the bomb discovered before takeoff in a suitcase carried by his pregnant Irish girlfriend, and appears in no mood for second thoughts...
...He refused to consider violating the harsh restrictions on money-changing, a time-honored profession in the twisting alleys of the swarming souk opposite the Omayyad mosque, one of Islam's oldest, most revered places of worship...
...For some time now he has evinced disillusionment with Iran, largely as a result of Teheran's refusal to cooperate in Lebanon...
...There, against the distant skyline, is "Assad's house"-a remote mansion that symbolizes his omnipotence...
...It is a joke,' said the driver, who daily brings in Syrian pounds purchased from "free market" money changers in Amman...
...They are dirty...
...They are empty in the head...
...Syria's frustration in Lebanon is matched only by its agonies in attempting to cope with fastworsening domestic economic difficulties...
...The next, it expresses hopes that the Syrian President might encourage the "process" for bringing peace to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, possibly through the radical PLO leaders whom he arms and finances against Yasir Arafat, his sworn enemy since the PLO chief refused to bow to him after being forced out of Lebanon in late 1982...
...Syria's 20,000 troops in Lebanon cannot seem to get along with the several thousand Iranian Revolutionary Guards stationed during the past few years-initially with Assad's enthusiastic cooperation-in the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border...
...In the meantime, on the streets of Damascus, Americans encounter no sign of hostility-and frequent friendliness -among Syrians who clearly do not share Assad's outlook...
...A shopkeeper looked with contempt on a busload of Iranian men and women, the latter veiled in black, as they were whisked off to a mosque at dusk...
...Assad's tolerance of terrorists goes considerably further than support for the PLO-or those PLO leaders who pledge fealty to him...
...But I think Iranians are worse...
...For all their fears, shopkeepers complain querulously that no one is buying, that their currency is losing value, that products are running low...
...Great Britain remains outraged by his failure to act against the Syrian intelligence chiefs held responsible for attempting nearly two years ago to blow up an El Al plane bound from London for Tel Aviv...
...The feeling is growing, in fact, that nothing much has happened to them at all, that they are merely keeping their heads down at Assad's behest while exercising the same influence on policy and planning...
...But the shopkeeper was easily intimidated by Assad's legendary toughness...
...Nobody likes them...
...Diplomatic sources say both Abu Moussa and Ahmed Jibral sponsor periodic raids into northern Israel, and note that Assad has not shown the slightest propensity for getting rid of either of them...
...Iranian tourists are filling up our hotels," said a taxi driver, pointing to huge pictures of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the windows of a downtown hostel designated solely for Iranian tour groups...
...It was Syria's role in harboring Nidal, architect of the Rome/ Vienna airport massacres of December 1985 and one of the PLO's most feared practitioners of terror, that brought Washington quite close to severing ties with Damascus two years ago...
Vol. 71 • March 1988 • No. 4
