Syria: Inheritance and fatal mistakes

IT is quite evident that former Syrian President Hafiz Assad succeeded in building a strong security force to support the regime he re-established in the autumn of 1970. The number of those killed, maimed and arrested under that security system testified to the late president's "achievement."
The Syrian regime has failed in everything else and the most noticeable feature of that failure is the outbreak of a civil war, which it could not subdue over the past nearly 16 months. The regime has lost control over the situation. Although it still possesses unlimited potential to kill and demolish, it no longer has the power to prevent its own downfall.
President Assad proposed to Kofi Annan a phased pullout from sensitive areas by forces of both the regime and the opposition. And as per the proposal, Assad woulld also be assured a safe passage. Even if the proposal involved any ruse, it indicated the regime’s realization of its inability to defuse the crisis.
The two pertinent questions are, how Hafiz Assad succeeded in crushing the Hama uprising in 1982 in three weeks in such a way that its ripples never crossed the town’s borders. The other question is why, on the other hand, his son not just failed to quell the uprising in Deraa but also could not stop it from spreading to other regions.
Deraa is a rural town smaller than Hama and far away from big cities. The massacre in Hama was the culmination of confrontations between the regime and “the Muslim Brotherhood” since 1978. What happened in Deraa was some children’s attempt to emulate scenes of the Arab Spring that used to appear daily on television channels.
The situation could have been controlled if handled with care. But the brutality of the regime reinforced by the fear of the ongoing Arab Spring reaching Syria worsened the situation.
There were three reasons why Assad senior succeed in rooting out the Hama uprising. It was confined to the Hama town and it happened 30 years before the outbreak of the Arab Spring, and that he enjoyed Arab and international support and so they tolerated his brutal action. He also forced a total media ban on Hama incidents.
On the other hand, Bashar Assad did not enjoy any of these advantages. His treatment of the Deraa youths was not different from his father’s treatment of the residents of Hama. The revolt in Hama did not develop into a countrywide revolution while the Deraa uprising snowballed into a popular revolt involving majority of the country’s population although the regime’s policy was same in both the situations. But the difference in the outcome of the two events was due to the difference in the nature of the two uprisings and the circumstances surrounding them.
One, however, wonders how Bashar Assad failed to identify the basic differences in the two situations. If he could have identified them he could have averted a revolution seeking his ouster.
In fact, the cause of the problem the young president is facing can be attributed to his mistakes on the succession issue. The procedure that brought him to the top post was extremely secretive. An amendment to a constitutional clause related to the age of the president was made to suit the age of Assad junior in half an hour and the People’s Council ratified it immediately. After that a referendum was held under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior to give the appointment of the new president a semblance of general election. In fact the regime at that time contradicted itself because it confirmed the succession of Bashar but it could not openly admit a succession by inheritance, nor give it official and constitutional cover. The system of a son inheriting the father’s presidency required a constitutional amendment that would change the very nature and basic principles of the republic. In other words the inheritance issue put the new president in a vulnerable position constitutionally. This also resulted in bypassing senior political and military leaders who participated in the building of the nation. Some of them were sent on retirement. The situation also led to a clash between the old guard and newcomers who came along with the new president. That was the reason why Bashar Assad faced some threats during the initial period of his presidency.
It was around that time that the American invasion of Iraq took place. In those days the new Syrian regime confronted regional and international challenges for which it was not at all prepared. The US forces were at the Syrian borders and there were rumors that the next American target would be Damascus. There were also talk in Lebanon against the Syrian forces' meddling in the political affairs of the country.
Some threats faced by the young president were domestic and others from outside. He believed that it was imperative to keep Syria's control over Lebanon at all costs so that it could be used as a bargaining chip in future. He made this decision under fear and weakness and not on the basis of any balanced political considerations. He also realized that the only way to keep Lebanon under control was to support the old Syrian ally President Emile Lahoud with the cooperation of Hezbollah. Some time after extending the term of Lahoud with Syrian pressure, Rafik Hariri was assassinated. A question that came up at that time was about the link between the extension to Lahoud and the assassination. The Lahoud’s extension was engineered by Syria and the assassinations started after the extension. Such accusations were disturbing to the Syrian regime. The Syrian leadership did not have any clear idea of how to counter the situation. It also lost all its regional and international influence. The regime still considered that Lebanon was the most important political card for it and Hezbollah was the most important element for Syria in Lebanon because of its military prowess. The Syrian stand betrayed the regime’s internal weakness. Its priority of the alliance with Hezbollah also underscored its alliance with Iran. While the concerns and fears of the new president were about the outside world, the real threat came from inside in the form of a popular revolution demanding the elimination of the president and his government.
Confronted by the domestic uprising, he isolated himself internally. Unlike his father in 1982, Bashar does not have any regional or international supporter except from Tehran and Moscow. But Tehran is groaning under international sanctions and isolation. The past record of Moscow as an ally is that it did not help its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, South America and Eastern Europe.
The present situation is the direct result of the huge blunders committed by Assad senior when he made the arrangement for his son to succeed him.
This mistake changed Damascus’ regional priorities and prompted his son (Bashar Assad) to commit serious mistakes, which Assad senior had warned him to be cautious about. Bashar Assad's first mistake was entering into a regional alliance that deprived it of options and upset the regional balances besides endangering its stability. The second error was that the regime alienating itself with Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries and Egypt while keeping its relations with Iraq intact as it had been during Saddam’s time. This isolated the regime regionally and internationally. The third mistake was that its strengthened its relations with Iran instead of doing so with the Arab countries. The fourth mistake was its betting on only one group in Lebanon which resulted in narrowing down its options regionally and in Lebanon.
Bashar committed all these errors at the same time and he is paying the price these days. He is also paying the price of neglecting internal issues. The internal negligence has finally led to the present revolution against him.

- Courtesy: Al-Hayat newspaper