Syrian regime's biggest challenge; reformers call for change

Posted on Tue, Mar. 16, 2004
Syrian regime faces biggest challenge as reformers call for change
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers

DAMASCUS, Syria - A year after Saddam Hussein's Baath Party regime was toppled next door in Iraq, Syria's Baathist regime is facing the greatest challenge to its power since it took over 41 years ago this month. Economic reform has stalled. Reformers are pressing for democracy. Washington is applying new pressure. And conservative Islam is making a comeback - outside of politics - in this once staunchly secular Arab nation.

In interviews, more than a dozen professionals and activists, some of them with close ties to the government of President Bashar Assad, said Assad and his ruling Baath Party must make fundamental changes to Syria's ossified economy and politics or risk losing power in the years ahead.

"The party has to reform itself. If it doesn't want to reform itself, it is in big trouble. ... They have no choice," said Nabil Sukkar, a former World Bank economist who runs a consulting firm in Damascus and sometimes advises the government.

Syrians who favor change say that pressure from the United States, including new sanctions and President Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative for reform in Arab countries, is backfiring. The regime immediately tags proponents of change as agents of Washington and the West.

"The pressure from outside is an obstacle to reform," said lawyer Fayez Sameet, a Baath Party member, who engaged a visitor in nearly two hours of discussion and debate over coffee and tea in his office in a commercial section of downtown Damascus.

Any change in Syria could reverberate across the region. The country has borders with U.S. allies Israel, Jordan and Turkey as well as with Iraq, and keeps troops stationed in neighboring Lebanon.

Some members of the Bush administration want to oust Assad's regime, which he inherited four years ago from his father, longtime strongman Hafez Assad. They cite Syria's ties to terrorism, particularly to Lebanese and Palestinian groups, and its weapons programs, particularly chemical weapons and missile development. But as it has in Iraq, sudden change in Syria could prove unpredictable. The country's 17 million people are a melange of ethnic and religious groups, and it isn't clear whether Islamists, secular liberals or a new group of generals would get the upper hand if Assad's regime fell.

The regime appears fully in control for now. But the potential for violent instability was demonstrated last week when Syrian Kurds in the country's northeast rioted after a dispute at a soccer match, attacking government offices in two days of confrontation that left at least 14 dead. The rare unrest spread briefly to Damascus before government security forces imposed calm, reportedly rounding up hundreds. Syrian Kurds, who number about a million, apparently were spurred by the escalating political demands of fellow Kurds in Iraq.

A few days earlier, human rights activists were arrested and held briefly as they tried to conduct a peaceful demonstration in the capital requesting an end to the four-decade-old emergency laws, which suspend the constitution and permit the use of secret military courts.

At Damascus' historic Omayyad Mosque last Friday, the imam's sermon dwelt on the theme of national unity and recalled the more predictable days under Hafez Assad's authoritarian police state. The unity theme is echoed in the state-controlled press.

The untested Bashar took over after his father died in 2000. Bashar Assad, a British-trained ophthalmologist, pledged to modernize Syria and allow more political and economic freedom. There have been piecemeal economic reforms, including the establishment of private banks and an end to some elements of government control over the economy. But most changes have been stymied by those referred to here as the "old guard."

"The problem is not three or four guys. ... It's thousands of people in government and the private sector" who profit from the old system, as well as Islamists who oppose modernization, said Ayman Abdel-Nour, an economist and activist who's close to the president.

Assad sincerely wants reform, but "faces this coalition, which is so hard to break. ... He can't break it. He needs time," said Abdel-Nour, who runs one of Syria's most daring Web sites. He happens to live across the street from a station of the Mukhabarat, the secret police.

The fear that Hafez Assad's police state once put in Syrians' hearts is melting away, but the media remain rigidly state-controlled, and true opposition political parties are still banned. However, Damascenes openly crack jokes at the regime's expense, civil society and human rights groups have begun to blossom and Syrians seem willing to test the limits of freedom.

"The fear from the regime is gone. Nobody is afraid anymore. ... This (was) an era, and it is over," said Michel Kilo, a Syrian Christian and government critic whose writings are officially banned here.

Against this background, members of the ruling Baath Party are divided on what to do. The party's old pan-Arab socialist ideology long ago lost its punch, and even many Baathists acknowledge that some party leaders are using their positions only for financial gain.

Asked whether the party should abandon its leading role in society, veteran Baathist Mounzer Mously, who holds party card No. 168, replied, "Never!" Reform should be aimed at improving the party and allowing free market elements into a socialist state, "like China," Mously said.

The Baath Party recently sent its members a questionnaire asking them how far reforms should go. Adding to the regime's worries is the resurgence of conservative Islam, mirroring a region-wide trend, Syrians and foreign diplomats say.

Women with covered heads are a more common sight than they used to be, although they still mingle on Damascus streets with young women outfitted with trendy fashions, mobile phones and cigarettes. The emphasis is on piety, not radicalism. But a few imams, particularly in northern cities such as Aleppo, are preaching a fiery brand of Islam that stops just short of criticizing the government.

The trend is remarkable because the elder Assad wiped out all traces of political Islam in Syria after a bloody six-year conflict with the hard-line Islamic movement Muslim Brotherhood that culminated in the regime's near-destruction of the city of Hama, which left an estimated 10,000 people dead.

In a free election today, the Baath Party would receive 5 percent to 10 percent of the vote, Islamists about 30 percent and independents the rest, one Damascus intellectual estimated.

Syrians across the spectrum say the Islamists are profiting politically from U.S. policy, including the war in Iraq, the failure to tamp down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and heavy-handed demands for Arab reform. Syrians and Westerners say the regime is exaggerating the challenge from Islamic radicals to fend off American pressure for rapid change.

Indeed, Syrian officials make that argument. "If the controls were released, Syria may turn into a Saudi Arabia or Pakistan," said Mahdi Dakhlala, the editor-in-chief of al Baath, the party's newspaper.

Said Kilo, the Damascus writer: "Syria is going through a process to a different type of regime. ... If it is not democratic, it is Islamic."