Twilight for Assad?
Syria's strongman is in trouble, but Washington may not like the alternatives
It has been a long time since a Syrian leader has looked as vulnerable as Bashar Assad appears today. Already under pressure from Washington for failing to clamp down hard enough on insurgents moving in and out of Iraq, Assad is also reeling from a moribund economy and the fallout from caving in to international pressure to withdraw Syrian military forces from Lebanon earlier this year. President Bush last week blasted Syria and Iran as "allies of convenience" for terrorists. "They deserve no patience from the victims of terror," he said in a speech on the war on terrorism. Even Syria's key allies in the Arab world, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been distancing themselves from Damascus recently.
Most threatening to Assad, however, is the pending United Nations investigative report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, due by October 25, which threatens to implicate his government--and perhaps even Assad himself--in the plot. In particular, investigators have found one person "they regard as a stellar witness" who has implicated at least one senior Syrian official, says a European diplomat.
Making changes. You can almost taste the anticipation in Washington. Officially, the Bush administration's policy is to seek a "change of behavior" in Syria, but privately many officials are hoping the report might prompt a change of regime. Still, beneath the froth, there is some concern that the U.N. report might not go high enough to threaten Assad, leaving him firmly in power. Even worse, if the report does somehow trigger Assad's ouster, it might only produce an even more hard-line successor--or result in a power struggle leading to chaos.
Five years ago, when longtime dictator Hafez Assad died, there was some hope in western capitals that his son would prove to be a more moderate reformer. French President Jacques Chirac risked real political capital in reaching out to Bashar. But the 40-year-old British-educated ophthalmologist has largely been a disappointment in Washington and Europe--and also at home in Syria. If anything, he has been weaker than expected, dependent on--and often at the mercy of--his brutal security services. "It's a thug-ocracy," says a U.S. official. "The best way to understand them is to watch The Sopranos. "
So perhaps it was natural for U.S. officials to get excited after Syria was forced to withdraw its military forces from neighboring Lebanon, ending three decades of occupation. The news got even better when the U.N. Security Council agreed to appoint a tough German prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis, to investigate who was behind the truck bomb that killed Hariri in February. Mehlis took his probe to Lebanon, where he interviewed security officials and examined the bombing site, as well as Syria. Lebanon is already holding four pro-Syrian generals in connection with the assassination. "We haven't seen this sort of thing in the Arab world before," says one western diplomat.
Mehlis's two visits to Damascus fueled speculation that he might be able to trace the plot to Syria. He is believed to have spoken with several defectors from Syrian intelligence agencies. All this has left U.S. officials hoping that Mehlis, known for his dogged independence, will go after Assad. "How long has it been since we had a foreign leader implicated in an assassination?" asks one State Department official. "It's a throwback to the '70s and '80s."
Mehlis is currently ensconced in Vienna, where the physical security and distance from Lebanese and Syrian political pressure are presumably conducive to producing a final document. U.S. News has learned that Mehlis asked the U.S. government for satellite imagery of several specific sites in Lebanon on specific days and that U.S. officials furnished him with the corresponding commercial satellite photos.
There are indications that Mehlis may ask for a delay, perhaps until December, to nail down his findings. Some U.N. watchers, however, still doubt that he will be able to bring the blame to Assad's doorstep. That could be tough for Washington to accept. "Unless you have an outcome with this report that really pins it to Bashar, I think Bashar really does have some options to get beyond this," says Flynt Leverett, a former Bush White House expert on Syria.
A reinvigorated Assad might feel even more immune from the Bush administration's exhortations to crack down on Hezbollah or the traffic of insurgents between Syria and Iraq. Syria already claims that it has been working to stop insurgents from entering Iraq by building an earthen border barrier in some places and arresting some 2,000 jihadists. So far, Washington has been unimpressed, frustrating Damascus. "The Syrians say that no matter what we do, it's not going to satisfy the U.S.," says Murhaf Jouejati, the Syrian-born director of Middle East studies at George Washington University.
At the same time, it is not clear how much more the Syrian regime can do. For one thing, it is hard for Assad, a secular leader and part of Syria's minority Alawite sect, to launch a crackdown on the religious Sunni majority. In addition, U.S. military officials are starting to conclude that the Syrian government may have weakened so much that it is no longer able to restrict who passes through the Damascus airport. "They may be incapable of controlling" the flow of visitors, says one U.S. military official, including insurgents in transit to Iraq.
On edge. If the Mehlis report implicates Assad or his top aides, it could threaten his rule. He is already under intense international pressure, including from inside the Arab world, to turn over any high-level officials who are named, a move that would enrage the security forces.
Assad's departure would cause entirely different problems for Washington. For one thing, there really are no good alternatives. "The regime has been very effective at eliminating the bulk of the political class," says Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian writer who is a visiting fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy in Washington. "The opposition is equally as intellectually bankrupt as the regime and cut off from what is happening on the streets."
There is also a strong likelihood that whoever might replace Assad would be distinctly worse. "If the regime starts to implode, I think the alternative to this regime is a political order that is heavily Islamist and even more anti-American," says Leverett. "I personally don't see what American interests are advanced by that outcome." U.S. officials have been scouting out the Syrian opposition, meeting with some of the more prominent figures, and so far have not been finding much. "There really isn't any opposition," says one U.S. diplomat. In one sign of caution, some U.S. officials are consulting with foreign counterparts about the potential negative consequences of an Assad fall.
Jouejati offers this lineup of the ostensible opposition: First, there is a smattering of liberal intellectuals who he says are "very, very weak." Second, there is the Reform Party of Syria, expatriates led by Farid Ghadry, a Syrian-American who met recently with a top White House official. "They have no credibility with Syrians," says Jouejati. Next is Rifaat Assad, the president's uncle who recently returned after years of exile. Blamed for the massacre of thousands of Sunnis in the Syrian city of Hama two decades ago, he is deeply unpopular. The two remaining forces: the banned Muslim Brotherhood, a well-organized hard-line Islamist party, and an even more radical al Qaeda-linked group called the Army of Greater Syria.
Perhaps the greatest threat to Assad comes from his own security forces. "The guys who would have a shot at doing this are going to be guys with guns," says Leverett. "It's not going to be some much more reformist, western-oriented, English-speaking type who's been trying to advise Bashar on economic reform."
With Julian E. Barnes
This story appears in the October 17, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.