FWD: Syria: If someone had said 20 years ago that the Assad regime in Syria and its formidable defenses would fall like ripe fruit
Cornelius Hamelberg
Updated yesterday 19:26 Published yesterday 17:25
An anti-regime fighter places his foot on the decapitated bust of Hafez Assad, Syria's president from 1971 to 2000. Photo: Hussein Malla/AP
JERUSALEM. If someone had said 20 years ago that the Assad regime in Syria and its formidable defenses would fall like ripe fruit—that its leaders would abandon Damascus without a fight and run for their lives away from some guerilla units in all-terrain vehicles—she would not have been believed.
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The Assad regime, the world's oldest dictatorship after China, North Korea and Cuba, was once regarded as unshakable, both by its subjects and by its neighbours. What happened in Damascus is yet another splendid example of how world politics goes its own way, unmoved by the words of wisdom of experts.
Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7 last year was on paper impossible, but it succeeded beyond all expectations. Iran owed billions to its architect, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar - but it was Hamas's attack that marked the beginning and end of Iran's superpower dreams, when one after another of its allies disappeared or collapsed.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad read the signs just as badly: just a month ago, he signaled to Iran and Hezbollah, in a message picked up by Israeli intelligence services, "Don't drag me into your conflict with Israel!". And then the death blow came from a completely unexpected direction.
Syria's overthrown dictator Bashar al-Assad. Photo: TT
A regime that favors a small minority and does not create wealth must compensate for this in other ways: it must have powerful foreign friends and an extremely cold-blooded and wise leader. The regime's creator, Alawite air force officer Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country from 1970 to 2000, had those qualities. The Syria that disappeared overnight Sunday was the last remnants of his central state. So stable and so solid was his creation that it took a quarter of a century and several wars before his inept relatives squandered the inheritance.
In 1963, the Baath Party took power in a military coup. Baath - "Renaissance" - was a mixture of pan-Arabism, secularism and socialism. The first Baath leaders, intellectuals and young officers, crushed the old landowning upper class. Land was distributed to the poor and a new economy was created, based on state-controlled, tariff-protected industries. Soon enough came the typical concerns: hyperinflation, shortages and black market trading.
Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in a coup in 1970, was a pragmatist. He understood that this could not continue. The regime, a coalition of Alawites, Shiites, Druze, Christians and other minorities, would never be tolerated in the long run by Syria's Sunni Muslim majority unless it could offer a minimum of work and food. Nor would it be possible to maintain and equip the country's army - created to withstand a war with Israel - with Soviet assistance alone.
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President Hafez al-Assad in Paris in 1998. Photo: AFP
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Hafez al-Assad meets Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Damascus in 1973. Photo: AFP
al-Assad ignored the advice of Soviet economists and turned instead to the business-savvy Syrians: the (mostly) Sunni merchants in the bazaars of the big cities. Thus came the new economy, an alliance between the state and the small businesses, first in Damascus, and then, after a while, in Aleppo and other cities.
At the same time , the Baath regime and all its institutions were turned into empty backdrops. Behind the facade of progressive, democratic slogans hid the real power structure: Hafez al-Assad, his secret police and his trusted, mostly Alawites. Everyone saw this and everyone understood it, but precisely because of this the mere word "Alawite" was banned: no one wrote it and no one uttered it in the open street.
Sunni politicians were given prominent but unimportant posts such as vice presidents and foreign ministers. The press constantly published photos of Hafez al-Assad visiting factories and in warm embraces with Sunni businessmen – all to cultivate the image of an ethnically neutral society.
But when Hafez al-Assad died in 2000 and was replaced by his son Bashar, the scheme began to crack at the joints. Bashar was an emergency solution, after the given crown prince, the hardline brother Basel, drove himself to death with his sports car.
Hafez al-Assad and the regime's older veterans had experienced hardship and poverty. For many of them and their parents, service in the French colonial army had been a way out of sheer starvation. But their children and grandchildren, raised in luxury, were not satisfied with the model created by Hafez al-Assad, where Alawites monopolized politics while the urban Sunni Muslim middle class ran business and finance. Bashar al-Assad's cousins and other young favorites in the new inner circle took their life of luxury for granted and wanted more. They were not, like Hafez al-Assad, cruel but cautious. They were predatory and reckless.
Rami Makhlouf, cousin of Bashar al-Assad, in a picture from 2010. Photo: AP
Ordinary Syrians had learned to stay away from young, privileged Alawites. They knew that if someone was run over by their fast cars, or shot in a night club, nothing could be done about it.
Under the shy and reticent Bashar, this elite, the "awlad al-sulta" - the children of the regime - was completely outed. His cousin Rami Makhlouf, who would come to own a large part of the country, was the worst. His business method was this: he saw a thriving business, built with hard work, and demanded it. If the owners lacked political connections, Makhlouf took over.
In 2002, Makhlouf wanted to become the general agent for Mercedes. The agency belonged to the Sanqer family, precisely the kind of Sunni Muslim entrepreneurs favored by Hafez al-Assad. Mercedes of Stuttgart, supported by the German government, announced that it did not do business with anyone other than Sanqer. In that situation, of course, Bashar al-Assad should have intervened. But instead the regime launched a trade war against Sanqer – it was too late to assassinate him now that the German government was involved – and banned wealthy Syrians from buying Mercedes cars. It is not difficult to understand how such methods affected the investment climate and entrepreneurial spirit.
But the system took a lot of beating. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, Hafez al-Assad had provided Syria with a new sponsor: Iran. Since 1990, Syria had had the last word in Lebanon. al-Assad the Elder helped Iran arm its Lebanese bulwark Hezbollah, and in return Iran - then not yet sanctioned - let its oil money rain on Syria.
In the first decade of the century, Syrian population growth exploded, simultaneously with drought and stunted growth for several years in a row. The accidents put the ruling family's ravages and misrule into increasingly sharp relief. But when the "Arab Spring" swept away the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya at the beginning of 2011, Bashar al-Assad firmly declared that "it can never happen here".
When that happened, and democratic and peaceful protests started in Syria, they were met with extreme violence by al-shabiha, plainclothes, armed regime loyalists. Gradually, the protests turned into a full-fledged civil war, the bloodiest of our time. Hundreds of thousands were killed, of them only a few in regular combat; millions fled the country and the economy collapsed. But the regime survived, against all odds, after massive rescue operations from Iran, Russia and Hezbollah – the same actors who this time did not have time to rally to action before it was all over.
Facts. Sunni Muslims see Alawites as pagans● The Assad clan's hometown of Qardaha in the mountains above the Mediterranean coast is home to the Alawite minority, where they enjoyed considerable autonomy under French rule.
● In Qardaha there is a lavish monument to the honor of the state founder Hafez al-Assad. If this is spared, it means that the rebels are set on coexistence rather than revenge.
● The Alawite branch of Islam is a distant offshoot of Shiism – they drink alcohol and celebrate Christmas – and pure Sunni Muslims see them as pagans. Hafez Assad forced the country's Sunni imams to recognize Alawism as a proper Muslim variant.
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Cornelius Hamelberg
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