Syria Leader Looks Set to Stay the Course

Buffeted by criticism and demands for reform, Syrian President Bashar Assad opened his party congress Monday by sidestepping all mention of political change, pledging continued devotion to pan-Arab nationalism and calling modern technology a threat to Arab identity.

The 39-year-old president had touted this week’s Baath Party gathering as a turning point for a nation under pressure. Analysts had predicted the sessions could lay the groundwork to ease emergency laws, remove obstacles to opposition parties, weed out some of Syria’s aging functionaries and extend citizenship to thousands of stateless Kurds.

Yet only a few hints of change emerged Monday. Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam -- a stalwart of the “old guard” and a key backer of Syria’s now-defunct political control over Lebanon -- reportedly announced his resignation. Assad did call for overhauling Syria’s largely state-run economy.

But on the whole, Assad’s brief speech made it plain that old Baathist principles would remain very much intact.

“We believe that the ideas and teachings of the party are still relevant and current and respond to the interests of the people and the nation,” Assad told more than 1,200 Baath regional commanders. “Where their implementation has fallen short, it is individuals who bear responsibility, not the idea or ideology.”

The three-day congress, the first of its kind in five years, is a forum for ruling party officials throughout the country to confer on Baathist policies. It comes at a time when Syria is staggering under massive international and domestic pressure.

In the last week alone, the regime has been accused of involvement in the killings of a prominent, reform-minded Kurdish imam and a celebrated Lebanese journalist. Suspicion about Syria’s role in the Feb. 14 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, along with several bombings that have rattled Beirut and its suburbs, also shadows Damascus.

Syrian officials have repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks, but Assad bowed to pressure and pulled Syrian soldiers out of Lebanon after Hariri’s death, a move that cost his country significantly in regional clout.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has been accusing Damascus of undermining stability in Iraq by allowing insurgents to use Syria as a transit point.

At home, Assad is weathering criticism from a persistent, albeit fractious, opposition movement.

“This month is make-or-break for the regime,” said Ammar Abdel Hamid, an outspoken dissident. “After the [Lebanon] pullout, the only way for the regime to retain legitimacy was to produce something internally.”

Changes from the ruling party conference won’t be immediate or drastic; the meeting doesn’t have the authority to change laws. It will provide marching orders to the Baathists who control Syria’s government institutions -- and insight to a people who have seen their leaders chastised by foreign and local critics. In a bureaucracy as slow-moving as Syria’s, the conference is about as dramatic as government gets.

Even before the withdrawal from Lebanon, Assad was quietly consolidating power by moving family members and close associates into key posts. Analysts predict he will use this week’s conference to cut back on the Baath Party’s regional command, downsizing a powerful cadre elected from the party ranks rather than appointed by Assad.

Assad, a seemingly reluctant ruler, inherited the presidency in 2000 after the death of his father, Hafez Assad. He is expected to demote some of his father’s cronies, with whom his relations are reportedly strained. His mention of corruption and individual responsibility Monday seemed to hint at a political purge.

Assad’s tirade against technology came as a surprise. The president is a founder of the Syrian Computer Society, and one of his most prominent public projects has been the modernization of Internet services. On Monday, he described the Internet revolution as an enemy force.

Computers and technology, he said, had “overwhelmed Arabs and threatened their existence and cultural identity, which has increased the doubts and skepticism in the mind of young Arabs.”

It was unclear whether Assad was heralding an impending online crackdown, but he described the Internet as nothing less than an existential threat.

“The ultimate objective of all this is the destruction of Arab identity, for the enemies of the Arab nation are opposed to our possessing any identity or upholding any creed that could protect our existence and cohesion,” Assad said. “They simply aim at transforming us into a negative reactive mass which absorbs everything that is thrown at it.”

Monday’s meeting was the first party congress since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime fell in 2003, and the second since Assad took office.

The meeting has been on the lips of Syrian officials and commentators for months; virtually all discussion of reform or modernization has been deferred with the excuse that nothing would be clear until after the ruling party met.

Some analysts and officials argued that Assad had deliberately kept his speech vague and short to avoid the appearance of dictatorship. He was reluctant to make sweeping declarations until after the week’s discussions, they said.

“He wants the Baathists and candidates here in this congress to say what they want to do and what they believe and what they are thinking,” said Imad Shuebi, a political science professor at Damascus University. “He doesn’t want to say everything. He really is a liberal man.”

Still, Assad’s speech was seen as a tone-setter for the coming months and years. “President Delivers Speech on Vital Issues,” proclaimed Monday’s state-run Syria Times.

After the speech had aired live on state television, dissidents were skeptical.

“He told us, ‘We’ll stay in power as the Baath Party, and we’ll be even more powerful,’ ” said human rights lawyer Anwar Bouni. “ ‘Nobody dream we’ll give Syrian people their human rights.’ ”

The ruling party meetings present Assad with a chance to boost morale among Syrians, who were demoralized in the wake of this spring’s withdrawal from Lebanon. The populace has been stuck between an anachronistic, repressive regime and an international community that is viewed with resentment by many here.

Now that Syria’s regional influence has been curtailed, Assad’s domain is strictly domestic. Speculation has been running rampant: Will the regime loosen up to gain in popularity, or clamp down to maintain control?

Whatever optimism might have been blooming has been severely undercut in recent weeks by a rash of arrests, disappearances and clashes.

Dissidents and activists who had been pushing for democratization have been detained in the weeks leading up to the party congress.

Tensions rose even higher last week, when the body of a prominent Kurdish imam was found, reportedly covered with scars from torture. Sheik Mohammed Mashuq Khiznaw, a prominent Muslim leader from the restive Kurdish region along the Iraqi border, had disappeared during a trip to Damascus in early May.

His family, human rights groups and Kurdish activists accused the regime in the death of the cleric, who had criticized the government.

The state-run news agency SANA denied that the government was involved in Khiznaw’s disappearance, instead blaming his death on “criminals.” The government has arrested two men responsible for the imam’s kidnapping and killing, it reported.

The death reignited rage among the Kurds of Syria’s northeastern provinces, where deadly riots erupted last spring against Syrian forces. On Sunday, Kurdish demonstrators clashed again with police in the town of Qamishli.

Some analysts read the recent crackdown as a sign that Syria, having left Lebanon, is beginning to relax -- and lapse back into old habits.

“The government had been cowering for three or four months” since Hariri’s assassination, said Joshua M. Landis, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Oklahoma who lives in Damascus. “But they can breathe now. They can go back to thuggish behavior.”