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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 June 2000 Issue No. 487 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 June 2000 Issue No. 487
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Focus Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Settling for weakness
By Medhat El-Zahed *
We should not read too much into the presence of Iraqi Vice-President Mohieddin Ma'rouf at the funeral of Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. The vice-presidency in Iraq has more to do with matters of protocol than with power configurations or constitutional provisions for succession.
Baghdad showed little grief at Assad's death. No official mourning was declared and the streets of the capital were devoid of the tokens of commiseration displayed in other Arab capitals. Indeed, the state media barely gave the passing coverage to the event. Of all the Iraqi newspapers, only Babel accorded Assad's death some measure of the importance it merits. But, even the newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is Udayy Saddam Hussein, zoomed onto the question of succession, as though the speedy amendments passed by the People's Palace had fired the imagination of the denizens of the Republican Palace in Baghdad.
It is not difficult to understand Iraq's nonchalance. Damascus and Baghdad have more in common than the rise of Bashar in the former and of Udayy in the latter. In both countries, the ruling elite assumed power under the banner of the Baath Party, founded by Michel Aflaq, and it is this very common denominator that gave rise to the bitter antagonism between the Syrian and Iraqi regimes.
It is ironic that relations between the two countries should have deteriorated so drastically. When the Baath came to power in Baghdad in the wake of the party's rise to power in Syria, it was expected that the two countries would fuse under a single flag, unifying, in turn, the two branches of the Baath Party. After all, the party creed was "One nation from the Atlantic to the Gulf. One nation with an eternal mission" -- under a single Baath leadership, of course. The conflicting interests of the ruling elites in the two countries, however, were destined to create waters too stormy for the ships to sail under a single Baathist banner. Beneath a fusillade of mutual accusations of treason, the pan-Arab leadership headed by Aflaq fled from Damascus to Baghdad, while Damascus proclaimed a new pan-Arab leadership and the Baath branches in other Arab capitals faced off across the battle lines of allegiance to Damascus and Baghdad. Paradoxically, this deterioration occurred as the result of the dual victory of the Baath in Syria and Iraq. Had the Baath risen to power in only one of the two countries, relations between them would probably have fared far better.
Since the Baath's meteoric rise, Syrian-Iraqi relations have had few moments of serenity. During the October 1973 war, Iraqi tanks helped the Syrian army to halt the advance of Israeli forces into Syrian territory. Another warming occurred in the wake of Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. Indeed, they were so drawn together in their opposition to the Egyptian president's overture that they opened their joint borders to permit the free movement of citizens between the two countries, and worked towards unifying their educational curricula and certain party formations. Following his coup d'état in 1979, Saddam Hussein put a swift end to this détente when he executed a number of Iraqi Baathist leaders loyal to his predecessor, President Hassan Al-Bakr, on the pretext that Syria was using these leaders to overthrow the new regime in Baghdad.
International and regional conflicts fueled the latent hostilities between Syria and Iraq. When the Iran-Iraq hostilities erupted, Damascus attacked Baghdad for its haste in going to war against Iran. In so doing, it charged, Baghdad was falling into the trap of the US plan to create a second arena of conflict, thereby distracting the Arabs from the Arab-Israeli conflict and drawing Gulf support away from Syria under the pretext of protecting the eastern front. Also, according to Damascus, Iraq was depriving the Arabs of a potential ally in the Iranian revolution, which had delivered a stunning blow to US and Israeli interests in Tehran. Throughout the Iran-Iraq war, Syria, within certain limits, supported Tehran. In response, Baghdad furnished military assistance to the factions opposed to the Syrian presence in Lebanon, supplying arms to the Maronite and PLO militias while the Iraqi Baath Party's branch in Lebanon launched the call for the evacuation of Syrian forces.
Following the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Syrian-Iraqi relations witnessed another brief bout of cordiality. To Israeli threats against Baghdad, provoked by Saddam's pledge to "burn half of Israel" if it contemplated attacking Iraq, Syria responded that it would support Iraq against any Israeli menace. Iraq then announced that it would embrace all of Syrian territory under its deterrent umbrella. Once again, Damascus and Baghdad began to contemplate a Syrian-Iraqi alliance to revive the front with Israel.
The Gulf War put a hasty end to this momentary honeymoon. In August 1990, instead of marching on the occupied Golan, Iraqi forces advanced against Kuwait, precipitating the astoundingly rapid formation of the international alliance against Iraq. High on the agenda of this war was to strip Iraq of the powerful arsenal it had amassed during its war against Iran. Western strategy had encouraged Iraq's military build-up, on the principle that Iraq was the better of two evils, and that the only way to spare it from almost certain defeat was to ensure its qualitative military superiority over Iran's superior military power, manpower and morale, fired by the zeal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. The secret to redressing this imbalance was a host of long-range fighter planes and missiles, besides other advanced weaponry.
Assad knew that the outcome of Saddam's reckless adventure in Kuwait would be the destruction of the powerful arsenal, the only solid element upon which the hope of reviving the front with Israel could be pinned. The Syrian president was thus forced to weigh that doomed prospect against throwing in his lot with the new front that was coalescing. Assad opted for the latter course, having little else to fall back on in view of the collapse of his former allies in the Soviet Union. Along with President Mubarak, he appealed to Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait in order to avert a military confrontation.
Following the Gulf War and the imposition of international sanctions on Iraq, the animosity eased up once again when, in November 1994, Iraq announced its recognition of international borders and Kuwait's sovereignty. Assad also took part in the Alexandria summit of December 1994, which welcomed Iraq's conciliatory position and called for a comprehensive Arab reconciliation on the basis of the respect for the independence and sovereignty of all nations. In a subsequent development, Egypt and Syria jointly objected to US threats to carry out military strikes against Iraq in the summer of 1995. Cairo and Damascus also joined forces in denouncing Jordan's attempt to rally international hostility against Iraq, based on the allegation that Iraq intended to invade Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It transpired that this campaign was prelude to the flight of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, to Amman.
Although Baghdad welcomed the positions taken by Cairo and Damascus, Syria's change in attitude was motivated by other causes. Damascus was particularly apprehensive of the Turkish-Israeli alliance and the possibility that Turkey mediate in the normalisation of relations between Iraq and Israel, to Syria's detriment. Thus, when Damascus, with UN consent, opened a border station as part of the food-for-oil agreement, its purpose was not just to establish a transit point for Syrian commodities into Iraq, but also to outmanoeuvre Ankara in serving as Iraq's sole gateway to the world.
This is pretty much where things stood when Assad died, raising the possibility of a further warming in Syrian-Iraqi relations. The most likely scenario is that the current state of relations between the two countries will remain static. The fact that Assad is gone is no reason in itself for the two countries to draw closer. The differences between them transcended the clash between their presidents' personalities. Moreover, the new Syrian president belongs to the same party, political establishment and ruling elite, not to mention family, as his predecessor.
The tensions between the two "branches" of the Baath Party could subside, however, particularly if it appears likely that a Syrian-Israeli settlement is in the offing under Bashar. Such a treaty, should it come about, would represent another nail in the coffin of Baathist ideology, just as did the Iraqi retreat before the allied forces in the war to liberate Kuwait. When one is being railroaded into peace settlements with "historical enemies," pragmatism prevails, and there is little point in mutual accusations of treachery and clientelism between two countries of relatively small stature.
It is impossible to tell whether future wars will shatter the peace imposed on the weak. What is certain is that dreams of "unity" and "the fight against imperialism and Zionism" have faded, at least for some time, from the agendas of Damascus and Baghdad.
*The writer is a journalist at Al-Ahali.
