A perfect
storm of Syrian irrelevance
By Michael
Young
Daily Star
staff
It was surely no coincidence
that the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, issued his stern
rebuke of Syria amid mounting speculation
that the United Nations inquiry into the assassination
of Rafik Hariri might bring down the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Speaking to reporters at the State Department
in Washington on Monday, Khalilzad declared: "It simply is not tolerable
that they, with impunity, can allow terrorists
to come from other countries in the region, get training or pass through [to Iraq]. ... Our
patience is running out, the
patience of Iraqis [is] running
out. The time for decision ...
has arrived for Damascus."
When asked whether the Bush administration might contemplate military action against Syria, he replied:
"All options are on the table."
Detlev Mehlis may make
such a raucous alternative unnecessary, as numerous reports
have suggested that the four Lebanese intelligence chiefs are talking. That doesn't quite
square with information this
week that they are suffering from various forms
of psychological and physical breakdown, making imminent suicide probable (though
one of the prisoners did bang his head
against a wall). One
suspects they're mostly fine, if a bit startled at having
fallen so far so quickly; alligators all, it would take
more than a few days in the slammer to make them forget
the advantages of opportunism and betrayal.
If Syrian responsibility and that of the four generals (and reportedly
a handful of politicians) is confirmed in Hariri's murder, then many
of us would have to revive our
initial assessment that the crime was the
work of a small group. Rather, the organizers'
approach may have been more
ambitious - if also far
more difficult to conceal -
whereby silence was to be enforced by implicating everybody. This may prove a dramatic
error if the lightweights save themselves by pushing the burden of guilt
upward in the decision-making hierarchy, perhaps toward Damascus.
The real
question Assad must be considering now is, What do I do now? His labyrinth
has no exit: In Iraq, the Syrians
cannot give the Americans what
they want - namely a complete cutoff of passage for foreign Islamist combatants - because
once that happens Syria will be
without any leverage whatsoever to defend itself. It will be
utterly irrelevant regionally, so that the Bush administration will gain nothing by negotiating with it, let alone convincing
the Israelis to do so. Syria's marginalization will also be,
domestically, Assad's, as he
faces an angry Syrian political-military elite surveying what a shambles he has created for them.
In Lebanon, the Mehlis inquiry
will help dismantle many of the intelligence networks
the Syrians had set up, though Assad, or a regime succeeding his, will probably be
able to rely on its Hizbullah allies for the foreseeable future. In his March
speech announcing a military
withdrawal from Lebanon, Assad had reassured his
compatriots: "A Syrian
withdrawal from Lebanon will not mean a disappearance of Syria's role in Lebanon. This role is imposed
by several factors, including geography, politics and others."
In absolute terms he may
be right, and most successors would no doubt echo the sentiment; but today Assad must contemplate that his role in this
is on the verge of being terminated, and that blame
will be entirely
his to suffer.
So, minus the possibility of an advantageous policy in Iraq (with Syria caught
between a likely military conflict with the United
States and the insignificance ensuing from absolute concession), minus
a constructive role in Lebanon,
minus an Israeli incentive
to negotiate the return of the Golan Heights, and minus any tangible gains in domestic Syrian reform, Assad everywhere
finds himself politically vulnerable. Everywhere, he sees only disillusioned
graders: the European Union
has lost all faith in him; the Arab
powerhouses, particularly Saudi Arabia, see
no advantage in propping up
his regime; the U.S. fears
little that Assad's departure will lead to an Islamist government; and Syria's neighbors, with the possible exception of Turkey,
feel that his is a regime
inviting punishment.
That prompts
a necessarily skeptical answer to the notion that the Baath regime is worth
saving. Some observers, such as former U.S. official Flynt Leverett and Syria
scholar Joshua Landis, have
confused hopefulness and credulity by suggesting that Assad must be given
more time to introduce reforms,
though it's not clear that he has the
ability or the intention of
doing so, as his performance at the Baath Party conference earlier this year made clear; hailed as an important step in the reform
process, it was no more than a means for the Syrian
president to consolidate his power, while leaving the Paleolithic
party structure in place.
Assad is caught in a deadly dilemma: true reform can
only weaken and diffuse his handle on power at a time when he needs
to strengthen and centralize it. This is why he has tightened
his grip on the Baath and the intelligence services. The problem is
that both are unyielding obstacles to change. Now,
Assad must also contend with a Mehlis inquiry that may decapitate
the top leadership of his
intelligence apparat if Syrian guilt
is proven. The president has no blueprint for genuine change, is a prisoner of the most rigid
levers of his power, and may see one of these destabilized by an
international investigation over which
he has no control.
Even if the U.S. and
Europe wanted to cut a deal
with Assad - and they don't
- it is not at all clear that
they would get something worthwhile
in exchange. Assad has created
a perfect storm of Syrian irrelevance.
Some have criticized the fact that the
U.S. has no clear post-Assad strategy. That may be
true, and reports that two former Syrian officials, Abdel-Halim Khaddam and Hikmat Shihabi,
met in Paris last week with
the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Turki Al-Faisal, as well as Saad
Hariri, all under French-Saudi
auspices, merit considerable
notice. But the implications of such
meetings - that old Sunni Baathists can be used
to reach out to their disgruntled Alawite comrades still in Syria - are in some ways disturbing:
a peaceful transition is of
course desirable, but if the
objective is merely to reconstitute the Baathist ruling class without the Assads,
then Syria will almost surely
suffer subsequent
convulsions.
Hafez Assad was a master illusionist: he presided over
a socialist basket case of a country, transformed one of the Arab world's most
promising societies into a bargain basement dictatorship, but he also somehow
kept alive the impression that Syria was indispensable to regional stability, and often lived
up to that boast. His son is cut
from a different cloth, having squandered
all the advantages of post-mortem
stability that his father ceded
him in his inheritance. The illusion has now evaporated, and now Bashar
Assad must face the nightmare of Syria's awakening.
Michael Young is
opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.