The Early Presidency of Bashar al-Asad

“The New Lion of Damascus” is a very sympathetic biography of Bashar al-Asad by US academic  David Lesch from 2005. The book is based primarily on extensive interviews with Asad, as well as with family members and other insiders. A few prominent civil society critics from the 2000 “Damascus Spring” get a brief look in, but none of the well established regime figures and long time officials of the military and security apparatus do – an interesting gap. As will be seen Lesch identifies this group as the internal opposition to Asad, and given their absence I wonder how much of his analysis of their role was based on ignorance of their views, or if they were consciously excluded. Lesch admits to being charmed by Asad and having a strong personal liking for him. This comes across in the careful and painstaking way Asad is depicted to make him acceptable to Americans (remember 2005 was the height of the “Syria the next target” rhetoric from the US neo cons); a family man, modest, keen on modern music (apparently Phil Collins was his favourite – might explain a lot!), on sports and keeping fit, tech savvy, a hobbyist photographer, married to a beautiful and intelligent former Wall Street investment banker. My suspicion is that Lesch was played to some extent in his interviews and access and did not even notice it.

But what can the book tell us about Asad five years into his Presidency? Well quite a lot. Firstly it is clear that Asad wanted to modernise Syria economically and technologically. He was committed to opening up a free market economy and also fee based education. His model was China, Singapore and he admired Putin. In short Asad wanted a modern economy, Syria integrated into global exchange, wide spread familiarity and access to IT, but not democracy or civil freedom. Asad’s mantra was ‘stability’. In his narrative – and Lesch largely endorses this – Syria is a sectarian and fragmented society – like Lebanon and Iraq – and could fly apart into instability, civil war and chaos very easily if change happened too fast. (Certainly from the perspective of 2016 this looks prescient.) Democracy ‘too soon’ meant instability. Citizens in Asad’s terms , were not mature enough to handle freedom yet.

Asad’s program faced a number of challenges. For one his power base, Lesch argues, was narrow. The old guard, the old Ba’ath party officials and operatives from the 1970s and 1980s who predominated especially in the military and security organs, and had control of networks of corruption and nepotism and had used the state as a vehicle for the accumulation of wealth and power, were none too pleased. They had been struck a blow by the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, where many of them had entrenched themselves, and were being gradually phased out through mandatory retirements and in some cases corruption charges, but they remained powerful and  a threat to Asad. The second point Lesch argues is that Asad was in many ways the front man for the Alawite minority, which he admits had used the Ba’ath party to basically take over the military and security apparatus. That of course means that the very ‘old guard’ Lesch criticises are also Asad's co-religionists, the minority he fronts. Lesch interestingly does not connect these dots, but it suggests that it is more than a personal stake of members of a corrupt, entrenched old guard that slows Asad down, but also that they are the very people he represents. I think this is an important point, which Lesch overlooks and I will return to it below.

Then  there is the challenge of the geopolitical environment. Syria at the time of writing (and still) remains formally at war with Israel and committed to recovering the occupied Golan heights. Lesch is of the view (as am I) that Asad senior and junior were both serious about desiring a peace with Israel, and that while part of the failure to achieve that (as of 2005) was due to their own cautious and careful style of non public diplomacy, much of the failure was also due to Israeli intransigence, arrogance and the ‘on again, off again’ approach to negotiations. In such a strategic climate, Syria as a poor country had to spend an inordinate amount on the armed forces which acted not only as a further block to development financially, but also empowered and provided a power base for the very people that Asad has to be wary of politically. This strategic climate was of course exacerbated by the American occupation of Iraq, which added a further unstable border to the east.

Syria’s main supporter was the USSR in the Cold War and remains Russia. However this support has not come gratis. A large burden on Syria economically is a debt of US$12 billion to Russia, for military equipment supplied during the Soviet period. Apparently Russia insists on repayment, not accepting the Syrian argument that with the demise of the USSR as political entity, the debt should die too. The size of this liability (which of course from Moscow’s perspective remains an asset) also provides a very real material context for the support for Asad displayed by Russia in the recent civil war.

Lesch is totally condemning of the neo conservative anti Syrian lobby and arguments that prevailed in the US at the time of writing. He acknowledges that some cross border incursions and supplies were coming to the Iraqi insurgents from Syria and that some of the Hussein regime's officials had taken sanctuary there, and that this provided a basis for American anger. But he emphasises that American politicians misread the amount of power Asad had; and like the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Harari, these actions in all likelihood occurred without Asad’s approval. These were he suggests, the actions of the ‘old guard’ and Asad could not do anything about them. He was compelled by the limitations of his internal power base, to turn a blind eye. Indeed the limitations of Asad’s power are tellingly illustrated by the account of the extradition of Hussein’s half brother Sabawi al-Hassan. Told by the US that he was in hiding in Syria it took six months to trace him. He had taken sanctuary with an Arab tribe and had to bought by the central government from that tribe to be extradited.

Lesch emphasises the demographic powder keg which constituted Syria as of 2005. Population was growing faster than GDP; the 14 – 25 year old cohort was the biggest single population segment in the country. For them jobs were critical. Lesch, being  a good American liberal, puts his faith in the free market and is critical of the slowness of opening the Syrian economy. Asad wanted to grow a free market sector alongside the state sector however moribund,  to provide stability and avoid social dislocation and mass unemployment. If either strategy failed to produce the employment opportunities required then the future for Syria looked grim. Again from the standpoint of 2016 this looks prescient.

But here we hit the major shortfall in Lesch’s account. He acknowledges that the secular constitution has been used by the minorities to entrench themselves in the state apparatus. He asserts that Syria is fragmented and sectarian. What he never openly admits is that unlike Lebanon and Iraq, the population split is much less extreme in Syria – 75% of the population are Sunni Arabs and 25% are comprised of all the other minorities. The people who are excluded from the state apparatus – who are effectively colonised in their own country – are the majority. And given the birth rate trends cited above, that means it is this majority population which is facing the biggest problem in terms of a viable future being available for their growing young population. When we add this to the fact that the old guard and their clients largely come from the same minority group as Asad, that their power base lies in a bloated military and brutal and all pervasive security apparatus, and that is in their interest to maintain their numbers and power base by perpetuating a state of formal war with Israel, then the possibility of Asad in 2005 having any hope of realising his modernisation plans and plans for peace appeared limited. The current tragic civil war starts to appear as more likely than not, as a structural breakdown of the particular post colonial state that is Syria.