When Syrian President Hafez Assad was a child in an impoverished village 60 years ago, his family was so poor that even fellow Alawites–themselves despised by the majority Sunni Muslims–looked down on them. Worse, since they were so desperately poor that they had no name, the neighbors named them “Wahsh,” which means “beast” or “monster” in Arabic.
When Assad became an adult, inwardly seething although outwardly calm and controlled, he went to court and officially changed the family “name” to Assad, which means “lion.” Between those two names, one can chart the truth about the personality and the intentions of the Syrian president, whose death Saturday in Damascus is shaking many of the old certainties in the Middle East.
Much is being said and written about Assad, who ruled his country for three decades. He was ruthless, yes, but he brought “stability” to a historically fractured country. He always stuck to his “Arab honor,” particularly in the war against Israel–and against change. He was pragmatic enough to send an armored division to fight with the allies in the Gulf War. He even began to open the country economically in the ’80s.
But Assad always was a man who was never really going to change in his lifetime and most probably never make peace with Israel or transform Syria from within. It was too threatening to his power.
This was the man whose Alawite faith believed in “dissimulation” or lying to protect the faith. So when he took power in l970, he immediately “converted” to the majority Sunni Muslim, standing before a Kurdish mufti and saying, “I swear by God that I am a Sunni Muslim.” (One Syrian who was raised with him comments: “You can’t tell, of course, when he goes to mosque whether he is praying Sunni or not.”)
This was a man who liked to regale visiting diplomats with a favorite story about the peasant boy who fell in love with the sultan’s daughter. “The boy went to his parents,” Assad would begin, “and they said, no, no, he could never marry the sultan’s daughter. But after long persuasion, his parents relented. The peasant boy ran out into the streets and announced to everyone that he was going to marry the sultan’s daughter.”
As so often with Assad, the story could be read so many ways that the visitors often hesitated to say anything. But then, as they were leaving, the Syrian president would say to one of them with a curious smile: “Don’t worry about the peasant boy.”
Hafez Assad was a cunning fox who understood brilliantly how to manipulate the innocence of many Western diplomats. He had been a “friend” of the Russians, who supplied him with mountains of arms during the ’70s and ’80s–but Syria always paid for them, and many Russians were assassinated there. Assad’s reign of three decades was marked by ruthless oppression (25,000 “religious dissidents” of the Moslem Brotherhood killed in the northern city of Hama in l983 alone).
He was officially the leader of the Baath Party, which in its founding dreamed of a united Arab world composed of separate Baathist states, but, in truth, he was a man whose life was characterized always by the Syrians. Economic growth last year was 0 percent. Syria is falling behind the other Arab countries, with their modern, forward-looking leaders. With power centered in him–and carefully rigged security centers, spying agencies and military units reporting directly to him–Hafez Assad precluded any real progress that can come to countries with some degree of personal and economic freedom.
Can Bashar do it? Can he control his father’s military sufficiently for them to back him while he slowly liberalizes the country? Will there be a coup against him by security groups who will now think that their time has come?
Even if he controls the security forces, will he have the courage to move forward to peace with Syria’s long-hated enemy, Israel? Can it be that his father had the capacity but not the interest in making peace, while Bashar has the interest but not the capacity?
Those are the questions that will surely be answered within the next six months.
But one thing we know: Bashar Assad and his generation are long removed from the village and its “beasts.”
———-
More Top Picks Best Canes For Seniors
E-mail: [email protected]