{"id":965,"date":"2019-03-10T15:26:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T15:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=965"},"modified":"2019-10-21T00:41:53","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T23:41:53","slug":"new-times-for-syria","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/new-times-for-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"New times for Syria?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard<\/em> (July\n2000), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Rarely are constitutions changed so quickly. On 10 June 2000, the \ncorpse of President Hafez al-Assad had hardly cooled when the powers \nthat be in Syria changed the age at which ministers are allowed to hold \noffice from 40 to 34, thus enabling his son Bashar to be named as \nperhaps the sole presidential candidate in a referendum to be held \nwithin 90 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAs is the norm when a president dies, the condolences and tributes flow \nin. Whilst Israel newspaper Yedioth Aponoth could announce they were \n“not too sorry over Assad’s death . . . we are happy”, the Western line \nwas that he had been “a great statesman”, and whilst Hafez al-Assad was \nremembered as “the Lion of Damascus”, the obstinate stance he maintained\n in the Middle East peace process and the missed opportunities he \nnotched up over thirty years of autocratic rule were enough to earn \nhimself the title “the Donkey of Damascus”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAll things considered, Hassad was no first-rate statesman. Never \ndemocratically elected, he came to power during a bloodless coup d’\u00e9tat \nin 1970, was the leader of a quasi-military dictatorship, with a corrupt\n Ba’athist political faction\u2014religiously an Alawite minority elite who \ndominated all aspects of Syrian society\u2014whilst overseeing a parlous \ncommand economy and a country noted for internal repression and scant \ncivil rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIn the perennial game of Middle Eastern politics, Hassad upset as many \nArab states as he won friends, whilst siding with both superpowers as \nneeds dictated. As well as Israel, neighbouring Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, \nIran, Egypt and Turkey came to view Hassad’s Syria as a thorn in the \nside of Middle Eastern peace. His implacable position on the US pokered \nround of talks resulted in constant hold-ups with the present round of \ndiscussions having been on the back burner since January, with Syria \ndemanding land at the foot of Golan and access to Lake Galilee. Whilst \nIsrael might have contemplated such a move, it was widely viewed in \nIsrael to be part of a wider Syrian game plan to get Israel to withdraw \nbeyond the 1967 borders, and in this respect Israel could no more sell \nthe idea of a Golan withdrawal to its people than Hassad could coerce \nthe Alawite elite into accepting they had no hopes of retrieving this \nstrategic gem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nWhat path Bashar heads down remains to be seen. Up until now he has held\n no official party post, though he has been delegated policy piefs such \nas Lebanon and the rooting out of high-ranking corruption. Whilst he can\n generally depend upon the support of the military, it is probable his \nanti-corruption drive against those in power\u2014the chief culprits being \nthose loyal to his father\u2014will make him enemies. Studying ophthalmology \nin pitain before he was called back to Syria to begin his grooming for \nleadership, he is said to be “modest, considerate and intelligent”, keen\n on new technology and with ideas on reform and political change, such \nas more representative forms of government, that will undoubtedly sicken\n Syria’s old guard\u2014an elite made up of the security services, the army \nand the Ba’athist party hierarchy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAnd it remains to be seen just how much of his father’s baggage Bashar \nwill inherit. Hafez was after all a staunch anti-zionist, still \nmaintaining 35,000 troops in Lebanon\u2014in which he held sway over the \nguerrilla movement Hizbullah\u2014after the Israeli withdrawal, reluctant to \nconcede Israel an inch, cautious about investing in new civil and \nmilitary technology or to reform the country’s clannish hierarchy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBashar, though, comes with the full backing of pitish Foreign Minister \nPeter Hain\u2014which perhaps amounts to little, bearing in mind pitain’s \ntrack record on giving its support to bloodstained dictators for 30 \nyears\u2014and with hopes in Washington that he can make some headway in the \nMiddle East peace process and in time for the United States Presidential\n elections in which the Clinton clique will be aiming to present some \nforeign policy success to United States voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nWaiting in the wings\u2014though at a distance\u2014is uncle Rifaat, younger \npother to Hafez and the former vice-president; the same disgraced \nvice-president who once ordered the bombardment of the town of Hama (a \nSunni Muslim potherhood haven) killing 40,000 inhabitants and who \nattempted a coup d’\u00e9tat when Hafez was ill in 1983. Presently in exile \nin France with an entourage of 30 bodyguards and threatened with arrest \nthe moment he enters Syria with presidential ambitions, Rifaat has a \nfortune of $2\u2014$4 billion, looks after 100 companies, controls two \nnewspapers and is therefore more than capable of buying many \nstrategically placed allies. Rifaat maintains that Bashar’s ascension to\n the throne of Syrian power will be “illegal” and many anticipate he \nwill mount some challenge. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Safeguarding interests<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\nThe chances are, however, that Bashar will be the sole presidential \ncandidate, if for no other reason than his father’s Alawite cronies will\n close ranks to ease his political ascendancy and safeguard their own \ninterests. And whilst some equate his reformist ambitions with an \nIsraeli\/Syrian peace, it does seem unlikely that in the foreseeable \nfuture he will advocate the concessions that Middle Eastern peace is \nclaimed to necessitate. If politics is difficult to predict in the West,\n then it is nigh on impossible to make any forecast as to how events \nwill unfold in this part of the world, where the number of competing \nfactions is only matched by the number of religions, where there are \nnumerous strategic and mineral interests to be fought over and in which \nthe West continue to manoeuvre their pawns as if playing on a gigantic \nchess board. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAuthor: Papillon <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Back to the Politics Index<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Back to the World Socialist Movement home page<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article has been reproduced from the Socialist Standard (July 2000), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain Rarely are constitutions changed so quickly. On 10 June 2000, the corpse of President Hafez al-Assad had hardly cooled when the powers that be in Syria changed the age at which ministers are allowed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-965","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2608,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/965\/revisions\/2608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}