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Syria Post-1982 Political Developments
In 1982 Syria neutralized nearly simultaneous foreign and
domestic challenges: it maintained its dominance in Lebanon in
the face of the Israeli invasion through strategic, if not
tactical, victory, and it crushed the internal insurrection of
Muslim Brotherhood rebels. Although the victories may have been
Pyrrhic, the regime emerged in an apparently strong position.
However, just as Syria was poised to exploit its new strength
and assert greater regional dominance, a new crisis threatened to
topple the government. In November 1983, Assad, a diabetic,
suffered a severe heart attack, complicated by phlebitis. He was
hospitalized for a protracted time, and the government was
essentially paralyzed. Then, fissures began to appear within the
regime. The president's younger brother, Rifaat, plastered public
places in Damascus with his own photograph, bearing the caption
"the commander," along with photographs of the eldest Assad
brother, Jamil, bearing the caption "the spiritual father." In
February 1984 Rifaat, in a premature attempt to succeed his
ailing brother, dispatched his Defense Companies to positions
around Damascus. The Defense Companies were confronted by other
military units loyal to the president: the Special Forces under
the command of Haydar, the army's Third Division commanded by
Fayyad, and the Republican Guard commanded by Makhluf. The two
sides engaged in skirmishes, and shots were fired near the
presidential palace.
In March the president recovered sufficiently to regain
control of the situation. He demobilized the army units, and on
March 11 he shuffled his cabinet and appointed the three vice
presidents. Syria had not had a vice president since the
resignation of Mahmud al Ayyubi in 1974, and the appointments
were clearly aimed at defusing the struggle for succession. The
vice presidents were announced in the following order: Khaddam,
former minister of foreign affairs; Rifaat; and Mashariqa, deputy
secretary of the Baath Party Regional Command. The minister of
state for foreign affairs, Faruq Sharaa, was named minister of
foreign affairs, and the governor of Damascus, Yassin Rajjuh, was
appointed minister of information to replace Ahmad Iskander
Ahmad, who had died. Tlas, who retained his portfolio as minister
of defense, was also named deputy prime minister. The president's
actions were stopgap measures designed to disperse power among
the rival contenders and to dilute his work load.
In early May, Assad suffered a relapse, and Rifaat once again
attempted to seize power, surrounding radio and television
broadcasting stations in Damascus and stationing surface-to-air
missiles atop Mount Qasiyun overlooking the capital. Fierce
street fighting broke out in the northern city of Latakia between
Rifaat's Defense Companies and the Special Forces. In a week of
combat, nine officers and and about 200 soldiers died. The
repercussions of the clash far outweighed the number of
casualties, for a miniature civil war between Alawi military
units in the Alawis' home province of Al Ladhiqiyah posed a grave
danger to the minority regime. Syrian opposition leaders, exiled
in Western Europe and the Middle East, applauded what they
believed to be the imminent downfall of the Assad regime, but,
lacking a base within Syria, they were powerless to take
advantage of the factional fighting.
Assad acted at first tentatively, and then more boldly, to
reassert his power and restore public confidence in his regime.
First, the Alawi clans held a reconciliation meeting. Then, at
the end of May, Rifaat and his two chief competitors, General
Haydar and General Fayyad, were dispatched first to Moscow and
then to Western Europe on lengthy "diplomatic missions." Around
150 lower ranking officers and officials who had played a part in
the power struggle were also sent to Western Europe. On July 1,
the day a semiannual round of military retirements and rotations
traditionally occurs, Assad transferred to administrative
positions military figures who had sided too aggressively with
either camp. Also in July, Rabitah,Rifaat's public
relations organ, was disbanded and his newspaper, Al
Fursan,was suppressed. A month later, the Baath Party's
National Command was purged of seven members loyal to Rifaat,
including Suhayl Suhayl, head of the People's Organizations
Buearu; foreign relations head Muhammad Haydar, head of the
foreign relations section; Naji Jamil, former airforce commander,
who joined Rifaat's camp in Switzerland.
The president also acted to discipline the armed forces as a
whole by conducting an anticorruption and antismuggling campaign.
The public had long been irritated by the apparent immunity from
the law of many military officers. The rampant and open smuggling
across the Lebanese border was particularly visible. Assad first
closed down the smugglers' market in downtown Damascus, where
contraband was unloaded from military trucks and sold by men in
uniform. Next, several army commanders were court-martialed.
Then, in another military reform, Assad began to organize a new
corps structure in the armed services, a move that added a
protective layer of bureaucratic insulation between the troops in
the field and national-level politics
(see The Regular Armed Forces
, ch. 5).
Internal stability remained precarious, however, and on July
10, 1984, newly appointed Vice President Khaddam narrowly escaped
an assassination attempt when a car bomb exploded near his
entourage. Khaddam publicly implied that Rifaat was to blame for
the attempt, and in a September interview Minister of Defense
Tlas claimed that Rifaat was "persona non grata forever" in
Syria, and that if he returned, he would be "shorter by a head."
Nonetheless, the president felt secure enough to invite his
prodigal brother back to Syria, ending his six-month-long
banishment. To bolster his reputation as a statesman, Rifaat, who
had moved to Paris and established an antiregime newspaper, timed
his arrival on November 26, 1984, to coincide with a visit of
French president François Mitterrand. Although Rifaat returned to
great fanfare, his wings had been clipped; he was stripped of
command of the powerful Defense Companies. In addition, Rifaat's
efforts to delegate the command to his brother-in-law, Muayyin
Nassif, were blocked by President Assad, who instead appointed
loyalist Hikmat Ibrahim to the post. Furthermore, the Defense
Companies were stripped of their organic air defense elements and
several of their commando units and were eventually absorbed into
the regular army as Unit 569
(see Special and Irregular Armed Forces
, ch. 5).
In the wake of these chaotic events, in 1985 President Assad
acted decisively to restore public faith in his government, to
reassert his personal leadership, and to dispel the popular
perception that he was an ailing figurehead. For example, Assad
raised his public profile with a series of inspirational speeches
to various university, military, and Baath Party audiences.
Whereas Syria had pursued a policy of attempting to match
unilaterally Israel's military capability since the 1978 Camp
David Agreements between Israel and Egypt, Assad ambitiously
expanded the concept of strategic parity with Israel to include
the political, demographic, social, educational, economic, and
military spheres.
Simultaneously, for the first time in his presidency, Assad
began to promote a personality cult. Praise and panegyric for his
presidency dominated the media, which compared him to President
Nasser and called Assad the "new Saladin." Also, the government
organized massive demonstrations in Assad's support. In one such
rally, enthusiastic crowds carried his limousine through the
streets of Damascus. Assad's twenty-six-year-old son, Basil, who
had previously been hidden from the public spotlight, suddenly
was given a higher public profile and started training to become
an air force officer, leading to speculation that he was being
groomed to inherit the presidency and that an Assad dynasty would
be established.
To prove to Syrian citizens that the government was
functioning normally, in January 1985 (after a two-year delay),
the Baath Party convened its first congress since 1980. The most
important item on the agenda was the election of a new Regional
Command. Assad retained his position at the helm of the party,
party Assistant Secretary General Abdallah al Ahmar and Vice
President for Party Affairs Zuhayr Mashariqa kept the second and
third slots in the hierarchy, and Vice President Abd al Halim
Khaddam was put in the fourth position. Rifaat al Assad was put
in the fifth position; however, three of his principal allies--
one-time Interior Minister Nasir ad Din Nasir, Security Chief
Ahmad Diab, and party official Ilyas al Lati--were banished from
the inner circle of power; in fact, these men were the only
Regional Command members not re-elected. Armed Forces Chief of
Staff Hikmat Shihabi, the front man in the military's
confrontation with Rifaat in 1984, remained in sixteenth place.
At the congress, Assad's keynote speech set the tone when he
adhered to a hard line on Syria's regional aspirations, the
Palestinian issue, the military balance with Israel, and the
Lebanese situation. Assad's emphasis on foreign affairs deflected
attention from the still-turbulent domestic situation, focusing
instead on undeniable Syrian successes in using its military
power to attain regional political goals
(see National Security Doctrine and Concerns
, ch. 5). Syria's ascendant regional power
was underlined by visits by regional clients, proxies, and
allies, who came to Damascus to pay homage to President Assad. At
the congress, George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, and Khalid al Fahoum of the Palestine
National Council represented the pro-Syria Palestinians. Lebanese
leaders Walid Jumblatt, Nabih Berri, and Mahdi Shams ad Din were
also in attendance, as was Libyan vice premier Abdul Salam
Jallud.
The delegates to the congress endorsed Syria's continued
military buildup, but in doing so, they faced the classic choice
between guns and butter. Syria's economy was faltering under a
staggering burden of military expenditure that consumed at least
one-third of the budget
(see Budget
, ch. 3). To deal with the
problem, the delegates rubber-stamped Assad's controversial
initiative to modify Syria's statist approach to economic
planning and liberalize the private sector. Taking their cue from
Assad's crackdown on military smuggling, the delegates also
voiced blunt criticism of the widespread high-level government
corruption, patronage, and bribery, which hampered economic
development. Such corruption was so pervasive that the Syrian
government was described as a "kleptocracy." Many delegates
confessed to being guilty of corruption, and a number of
officials were dismissed from their posts.
There had been speculation that Assad would withdraw his
candidacy or postpone his re-election when his second seven-year
term expired in March. However, Assad felt enough confidence in
his position to hold a referendum on February 10, 1985. Assad won
approval in the yes-or-no vote by the predictable nearly
unanimous total of over 99.97 percent.
In a further display of confidence, Assad announced that as a
result of contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood's "vanguard
organization" in Western Europe, the government had decided to
pardon and grant amnesty to former members of the opposition.
Accordingly, over 500 Muslim Brotherhood members were freed from
Syrian prisons.
On April 8, Assad formed a new cabinet. Perhaps the most
significant appointment was that of Muhammad Imadi as minister of
economy and foreign trade. Because Imadi was a recognized
proponent of free market economics, the Syrian private sector
regarded his appointment as heralding a liberalization of Syria's
planned socialist economy.
As a whole, Assad's shake-up of the Syrian power elite and
his rearrangement of the military and the Baath Party effected
significant changes in Syria's domestic political apparatus. Some
editorials exuberantly referred to the new changes as
representing a revolutionary "second corrective movement," a
sequel to the Corrective Movement in 1970 when Assad first took
power.
The government tried to conduct business as usual in 1986.
Elections were held for the People's Council, with approximately
2 million of the 5.3 million eligible voters participating. The
Baath Party won 129 of the 195 seats. The other parties in the
NPF won fifty-seven seats. The SCP, which had not been
represented in the previous People's Council, won nine seats. The
number of women in the assembly grew from twelve to eighteen.
However, in March and April 1986, terrorist bombings in Syria
shattered the tranquillity that the Assad regime had been trying
to restore. These attacks, and other recurrent internal and
external threats, revealed the permeability of Syria's borders
and the inextricable link between Syria's internal security and
its foreign policy. The relative stability in Damascus in early
1987 appeared to many Syrians to be no more than the calm at the
eye of the storm.
Data as of April 1987
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