ANALYSIS:Will Syria be the next Middle East country plunged into turmoil?
SOME YEARS ago, the Syrian visa office in London displayed a notice: “This office will be closed next week for the election of the president, Bashar al Assad.”
Under the rules of western democracy, you usually wait for the votes to be counted before announcing a winner but this was Syria where the dominance of the Baath Party is enshrined in the constitution. With this week’s cabinet resignation, it looked initially as if that imbalance might finally be shifting.
The Baath Party, demonised by its association with Saddam Hussein, was founded in 1947 by two Sorbonne-educated Syrians dispirited by, among other things, the displacement of Arabs in Palestine. Its original idealism was focused on unity among Arab states, freedom (from outside interference) and socialism.
It is this suspicion of outside powers that has formed Syria. Admonished by the west, surrounded by pro-American countries including Jordan, Israel, Iraq and Turkey, its perceived vulnerability has led its government to use strong-arm tactics. While the vast majority of Syria’s population of 22 million are Sunni, it is the Alawites, closely related to Shia Islam, who have held control since the iron-fisted Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970. Eleven years ago, the reins passed to his son, Bashar al-Assad.
One factor that sets Syria apart from its neighbours is that it is a secular state. It is not characterised by religion – which is why the Muslim Brotherhood, leaning towards Islamism, is seen as a threat. In 1982, the brotherhood organised an uprising in Hama and was put down with ferocity.
“We knew how to deal with those people,” a government official in Damascus told me: some 20,000 people were brutally killed with many incarcerated in the underground prison in the desert town of Tadmor. That was in the days of the president’s father and few want the current demonstrations in Damascus, Aleppo, Deraa and Qamishli to be dealt with the same way.
There is ample room for concern, however. While Bashar’s arrival from London was thought to herald a new era – he was young and reformist and his friendly, English-born wife and children gave a pleasing face to the presidency – his public persona, with his stern face, clenched hands and stiff posture, suggested he was influenced by his father’s old guard.
Consequently, the US was ridiculed for the election of George Bush. Tony Blair got short shrift when he visited, and Zionist Israel is declared an avowed enemy. When neighbouring Iraq was invaded, many young Syrians expressed their intention to die fighting rather than have their own country invaded.
“A death wish?” I asked Bouthaina Shabaan, at that time charged with travelling abroad to persuade emigrant Syrians to return. “No, they are thinking of the terrible things done to their brothers in Abu Ghraib,” she said. Now, Shabaan is the media-savvy adviser to the president. With a doctorate from Warwick University, Shabann, a reformist herself, has reached out to Syrians, displaying a compassion the president lacks.
Were there to be free and fair elections, Shabaan would be in line for his job: she is the messenger promising to repeal the state of emergency and give more money to the workers
But is this enough? The hated secret police, the mukhabarat, is still active. The Kurds are still marginalised and the man appointed to be caretaker until a new cabinet is formed is a stalwart of the Baath party.
Syrians are not daft: like the rest of us, they want jobs and a life, action not promises. They want to open the doors to tourists and investors. The country is steeped in ancient history and littered with archaeological sites.
Syria is often associated with terrorism and extreme Islamism. Few in the west realise it is a secular country, that its diverse population is comprised of Arabs and Kurds, of Muslims and Christians; that it has offered refuge to one million Palestinians and one million Iraqis. Some will know, because they have watched Lawrence of Arabia, that a secret agreement, in 1920, resulted in its being carved up with France getting Damascus and Beirut, and Britain Jerusalem and Baghdad.
In Tadmor, a tourist operator told me: “Betrayal is written on every page of our history book.”
Yesterday’s speech by Assad will have done little to reassure reformists changes are imminent. Intent on showing that to react to last week’s demonstrations would be a show of weakness and acknowledging that reforms are needed, he gave no hint as to when these might be expected. Nor did he give a date for the lifting of the 48-year-old state of emergency.
Those who expected more may feel betrayed again and see action on the streets as their only option. Civil unrest may erupt, bringing with it the threat of outside interference. What develops after Friday prayers tomorrow will give some indication of what reformists in Syria think.
MARY RUSSELLis a travel writer. Her next book is on Syria