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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The legacy and the legatee
By Graham UsherOne of the very few definite outcomes of the death of Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad is that his successor will be his second eldest son, the 34 year-old Bashar. Groomed for the job ever since the death of his father's chosen heir apparent, his oldest son Basil, in 1994, Bashar has had one of the most difficult briefs in the Arab world thrust upon him. It is an open question whether he can continue the domestic, regional and international legacies he has inherited from his father, particularly during what all agree is an extraordinarily complex moment in the Middle East.
But he has been prepared -- almost. The last obstacles to Bashar's accession were removed on Saturday within an hour or so of his father's demise. A grief-stricken Syrian parliament hastily formed a committee to amend the Syrian constitution to remove clauses stipulating that the president must be at least 40 years old and a member of the Regional Command of Syria's ruling Baathist party. The criteria now are that the president must be 34 and a "Syrian Arab." The Regional Command then nominated Bashar as its chosen presidential candidate. Finally, he was appointed Commander of Syria's armed forces, swiftly moving rank from colonel to lieutenant general.
Bashar's succession is thus already embedded in the Syrian political and military establishment and -- as the mass fealty expressed at his father's funeral showed -- the central motif of the post-Assad Syria. But there is less harmony about whether he can meet the truly daunting challenges his country now faces, domestically and beyond.
The first is what his father's biographer, Patrick Seale, once described as "the consuming passion of Assad's life" -- the long war of attrition he waged with Israel to recover the land he lost as Syria's defence minister in the 1967 war, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Last December -- for the first time in four years -- negotiations between Israel and Syria resumed in Washington. They broke up first in January and then again two months later in Geneva at a meeting between Assad and US President Bill Clinton. The snag was Assad's consistent demand that although peace with Israel was a "strategic choice" for Syria, it would require Israel's full withdrawal from the Golan Heights to the 4 June 1967 lines, up to and including the east shore of the Sea of Galilee.
There are some -- in Israel but not only there -- who hope that the young Bashar will turn out to be flexible on the 1967 borders where his father was rigid. It is almost certainly wishful thinking, says Seale. "Bashar will not deviate in any way from Assad's political legacy. This was based on Syria's independence vis-à-vis Israel and the US and the recovery of every inch of Syrian territory lost in 1967." On the contrary, Bashar is likely to have even less room for manoeuvre than his predecessor -- for there is no way that anytime soon such a young, untried leader could be seen agreeing to a deal his father refused.
The second challenge is Syria's presence in Lebanon, acutely highlighted by Israel's withdrawal last month after 22-years of occupation. It is no secret that Ehud Barak's great gamble of a pull out from Lebanon without an agreement with Syria alarmed Assad. The low-intensity war practised there by Hizbullah guerrillas had been his main leverage in the struggle to return the Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty.
Assad's strategic alliance with Iran and logistical support to Hizbullah enabled him to control the war with an astute mix of restraint and escalation. It remains to be seen whether Bashar will be anywhere near as adroit. He inherits control in Lebanon in a situation where the Israeli army is on one side of the border, Hizbullah and Palestinian armed groups are on the other, and amid Israeli threats of massive retribution against both Syria and Lebanon should there be any future cross-border hostilities. In such a mix, one spark could start a fire.
Israel's withdrawal has also prompted increased calls from within Lebanon for ending Syria's 24-year old military and political presence in their country. Christian clerics and intellectuals have already appealed to Bashar to turn over a new page in Syrian-Lebanese relations based on equality and independence rather than what many Lebanese see privately as hegemony and control. It is unclear whether Bashar will be sympathetic to such calls. It is clear that any move to relax Syria's military, political and economic grip on Lebanon will run afoul of many in the Baathist party who see Syria's de facto rule suzerainty over Lebanon as one of the great achievements of Assad's reign.
The final challenge is that of the chronic economic situation in Syria, one of the less "successful" legacies of Assad's autocratic and centralised style of government. Syria has seen its economic growth slump from seven to less than two per cent in the last ten years and its unemployment soar to 30 per cent. Bashar has championed the cause of economic reform and modernisation. He has become associated in the public eye with several high-profile government anti-corruption campaigns. But without the legitimacy and protection afforded by his father this emphasis too may come in conflict with the entrenched economic and military interests that have grown fat from a closed and unaccountable regime.
Through a mixture of guile and force, Assad forged a modern Syria based on a precarious balance of regional alignments and domestic coalitions made up of various minorities against the Sunni majority. Those alignments and coalitions remain intact but all are now coming under strain in the face of new regional realities. This is the legacy Assad left to a son he never believed would be his heir. It remains to be seen whether Bashar can maintain -- as the official Bath slogan has it -- "change through continuity," or whether his father died too soon and the son assumed his mantle too young.
