Syria Facing Difficulties on Many Fronts

Asked how things are going in Syria, a Damascus businessman scooped up a government newspaper, which had given front-page coverage to an article about students from the Third World signing a petition in support of President Hafez Assad.

“When they get down to twisting the arms of kids from Sri Lanka,” the businessman said, “you know things are pretty rough.”

A Western diplomat was even more emphatic. After briefing two American reporters for an hour about Syria’s latest woes, the envoy led the visitors down the steps of the embassy and paused as he was saying goodby. “The story is Assad in trouble,” he declared.

While other Western observers of Syria believe that assessment may be an overstatement of Assad’s current predicament, the Syrian president has suffered a series of policy failures and political setbacks recently.

Until his troubles began, it appeared that Assad had succeeded in pulling Syria into the front ranks of the Arab world by frustrating Israel’s aims in Lebanon and sending such great powers as the United States scuttling from the area in full retreat. In Syria’s mass media, Assad was portrayed as the natural heir to Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser as the standard-bearer of the Arab world.

Now, virtually everywhere Syria turns, it sees trouble on the horizon. A short list includes:

--An international uproar over Syria’s alleged involvement in terrorism has deeply embarrassed Assad, according to diplomats here, and given Syria the reputation of an international pariah, on a par with Assad’s ally, Col. Moammar Kadafi of Libya.

--Assad’s long flirtation with non-Arab Iran has become a major liability in the Arab world following Iran’s occupation of Arab territory in Iraq. The revelations of Iran’s arms dealings with Israel and the United States have infuriated Assad to such an extent that virtually nothing about the scandal has appeared in the press here.

--Syria’s domestic economy continues to suffer under the load of a government budget devoting 60% of its resources to the military and security. Lines for food are not uncommon, and power cuts last six hours a day. The middle class complains openly of hardships, although by Arab standards Syria still seems relatively prosperous.

--Syria has become as bogged down in the quagmire of Lebanon as surely as Israel and the United States before it. The civil war, now its its 11th year, shows no sign of resolution, despite Syria’s intensive efforts to arrange a solution, leaving Syria little opportunity to withdraw any of the 25,000 troops it maintains in the country.

--Syria’s support for the Shia Muslim militiamen waging a war against Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon has earned it the scorn of much of the Arab world, angered the Soviet Union, alienated Palestinian groups once loyal to Damascus and helped to unite Palestinian factions behind Assad’s greatest nemesis--Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Apart from the vocal grumbling about economic problems, there is no evidence, according to Western diplomats, of any significant internal opposition to Assad’s governance. Syrians, one diplomat commented, are still mindful that Assad, who seized power in 1970, has given them 16 years of relative stability. In contrast, there were 22 coups d’etat between 1948 and 1970.

Attempt on Israeli Plane

Questions have been raised recently about Assad’s grip on power following the allegations in Britain that the Syrian Embassy in London played a direct role in an unsuccessful attempt by a Palestinian of Jordanian nationality to blow up an Israeli airliner in April.

Britain sentenced the Palestinian, Nezar Hindawi, to 45 years in prison and broke off diplomatic relations with Syria after the trial. A month later, West Germany expelled three Syrian diplomats when Hindawi’s brother and a companion were convicted of bombing the Arab-German Friendship Society in West Berlin, reportedly with the aid of Syrian diplomats.

“The Syrians responded by adopting a policy of denial, denunciation and deflection,” said one diplomat. “They said, ‘We didn’t do it; the Israelis are the real terrorists in the region.’ ”

The evidence against Syria at the two trials was based almost entirely on the confessions of the men involved, although Britain said it has corroborating information as well.

Big Risk, Small Return

Western observers are still perplexed about Syria’s motives for the attempt on the Israeli airliner, arguing that it seems uncharacteristic for a politician as crafty as Assad to take such a huge risk--a possible war with Israel--for so little possible return. Thus, the theory has evolved that Syrian intelligence services were operating without Assad’s knowledge and control.

Syria, in its official response to the allegations, has taken the line that Hindawi was an agent provocateur working for Israel in a plot engineered by the United States to embarrass the Damascus regime.

“World public opinion is well aware that what has been planned by America and executed by Britain against Syria under the false pretext of combatting terrorism consisted of mere lies and false allegations,” one newspaper editorial said.

So far, only one Syrian official is known to have been punished over the terrorism scandal. Labib Shamas, the deputy chief of protocol at the Foreign Ministry, who had telephoned the British Embassy in Damascus to help Hindawi obtain an official visa for Britain, was unceremoniously fired.

No Action Taken

Assad has taken no action against Gen. Mohammed Khouli, head of Syrian air force intelligence, or Col. Haytham Saed, a deputy to Khouli who was accused of running the Hindawi operation.

Diplomats foresee no effort at this stage to punish the intelligence officials for the fiasco, because such disciplinary action would inevitably be viewed as an admission of guilt by Syria.

One diplomat suggested that the Syrians were privately relieved that the foreign reaction to the terrorism allegations has so far been limited to diplomatic moves and rhetoric.

“They view the screaming and shouting as a substitute for the bombs which fell on Tripoli in April,” the diplomat said, referring to the American bombing raid on the Libyan mainland after U.S. charges of Libyan involvement in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen. “The Syrians understand that the Israelis could have done anything in the current climate and nobody would have said anything.”

Terror-Related Trials

Syria’s problems are far from over in this regard. Terrorism-related trials in Turkey--where a Syrian diplomat has been indicted for murder--and in Italy, Austria and Pakistan are all expected to point an accusatory finger at Damascus. What is unclear is whether the outpouring of negative publicity will force Assad to alter policy significantly.

In contrast to the uproar in the Syrian press about the terrorism issue, there has been a virtual blackout on reporting about revelations that Iran received arms from the United States and Israel. So far, the only officially sanctioned news coverage has dealt with personnel changes in the White House without saying what brought them about.

Always a nation of contradictions, Syria recently has been in a quandary about its relationship with Iran, which has been locked in a war with Iraq since 1980. The Iraqi regime of President Saddam Hussein is a rival of Syria for leadership of the Arab nationalist movement known as the Baath party, and Hussein and Assad have been bitter enemies since 1979.

Criticism on Rise

Syria has been criticized before for its support of Iran, but the attacks have increased since Iran occupied part of Iraq’s Faw Peninsula in February. The occupation of “sacred” Arab land by a non-Arab power like Iran has touched sensitive nerves throughout the Persian Gulf among oil-rich states like Kuwait, which have helped Syria economically in the past.

The Assad government has tried to turn its relationship with Iran to advantage by telling the gulf nations that it is only Syria’s intercession that has prevented Iranian forces from overrunning other Arab nations in the area.

Iran and Syria have been continually at odds in Lebanon, where Syria’s moderate Shia Muslim allies are struggling against fundamentalist groups supported by Iran’s clerical leadership.

Generally, Syria supports a multiparty solution in Lebanon that preserves the religious mixture and ensures a sectarian state, while Tehran appears to favor the creation of an Islamic nation along Iranian lines. At one point, relations were strained almost to the breaking point when members of the fundamentalist group Hezbollah, or Party of God, kidnaped two Syrian soldiers in Baalbek in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

Hungering for Publicity

According to diplomats, the Syrians were infuriated when the Iranian-backed group holding American hostages released one of them, David P. Jacobsen, to the U.S. Embassy instead of turning him over to the Syrians, who were keen to have some favorable publicity while they were being criticized for backing terrorism.

When two French hostages were about to be released in the same manner, Syrian security men in Beirut swooped in and transported them to Damascus.

Many diplomats in Damascus believe that Assad was so furious at the Iranians that he helped arrange the leak of the Iranian arms deals to a pro-Syrian magazine in West Beirut, although the editor of the magazine claims to have received the information from Iranian opponents of the deals.

The Syrian-Iranian relationship endures, however, in part because of Iranian economic assistance to Damascus--a million tons of free oil each year and 5 million tons at discount prices--but also because of the old notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” In this case, Assad’s antipathy toward Iraqi President Hussein has apparently led him to befriend the Iranian government even if he does not embrace their fundamentalist religious principles.

Similar Sentiments

“While most Syrians agree with most of the government’s policies on Israel and Lebanon, 99% are opposed to the country’s relationship with Iran,” one Western diplomat said. Similar sentiments echo throughout Damascus when questions are raised about Iranian visitors in the country.

Speaking to average Syrians, a reporter on a recent two-week visit found that the most common complaint was over the shaky economy, which has appeared to hover on the verge of bankruptcy for several years.

In September, the government imposed stringent currency controls that provided for 25-year jail sentences for black-market money changing and the export of Syrian currency. Jokesters in the bazaar talk about the latest value of the Syrian pound being “25 years.”

The fact that the government had to take such Draconian measures--the penalty for currency violation is harsher than for rape--is a sign of how desperate the financial picture has become. There also has been a crackdown on smuggling from Lebanon, which has created severe shortages at times.

Lines Not Uncommon

Lines are not uncommon for food, and items such as coffee disappear for weeks at a time. Yet restaurants offer caviar, mussels and chateaubriand along with imported wine--a vast improvement over the situation in such decrepit economies as Egypt, where virtually nothing foreign is available.

As a Western economic study of Syria recently reported: “The economic picture that confronts the visitor to Syria appears filled with inconsistencies. There are spot bread shortages, yet smuggled luxury items can be found. People complain about not being able to afford decent housing, but modern apartment houses and office buildings are springing up around the country. Syrian bank authorities declaim their inability to cover foreign exchange obligations, while, on the streets outside, there seem to be more shiny new Mercedes automobiles than in Germany.”

The merchant class is so afraid of government intervention that Western envoys estimate that about $45 billion has been taken out of the country in recent years.

Speaking of Assad’s promise to give Syria a form of “strategic parity” with Israel, a Western diplomat noted the disparity between the two countries’ developments.

Turning Out Teddy Bears

“Israel is producing its own warplanes and is a contractor on President Reagan’s sophisticated ‘Star Wars’ program,” he said. “Syria has just one factory producing electronic products--the Syrionics television factory, which because of spare parts shortages has been turned into a producer of teddy bears. The two countries are generations apart.”

Despite the country’s chronic economic problems, there have been few signs that the government is seriously attempting to change the system, in large measure because the bulk of government expenditure is devoted to arms, the military and security. The president’s Alawite Muslim religious minority is particularly strong in the military, while the business class is largely made up of Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims.

“Everything I have seen in the past year leads me to believe that Assad will not change anything,” said one diplomat.

Judging by the comments of Syrian officials, the official view in Damascus is that Assad’s biggest headache continues to be Lebanon, where Syria became embroiled in 1976 with the dispatch of army troops to help the Christians hold off a Muslim onslaught.

Ties Formed, Broken

Alliances have been formed and broken repeatedly in the past few years, and yesterday’s enemies are often today’s allies.

Assad appeared close to triumph in Lebanon last December, when the country’s three largest militia leaders signed an agreement to stop fighting.

But Syria misjudged the Christian community’s sentiment so completely that the Christian militia leader, Elie Hobeika, was ousted from his position two weeks after he signed the agreement with the Muslims. Hobeika now commutes from the eastern Lebanese town of Zarka, where he lives under Syrian army protection, to the hotel lobbies of Damascus, where he discusses his plans to regain power.

Syria’s other alliances in Lebanon are coming under considerable strain--the Shia Muslim militia, Amal, is up against opposition from the fundamentalist Hezbollah group and has been battered recently in combat with Palestinian groups at three refugee camps in southern Lebanon.

Lip Service to Syria

Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze community, Syria’s other major ally, pays lip service to the Syrian position but continues to pursue an independent course between the Palestinians and Amal.

The fighting in the Palestinian camps has brought Syria under pressure from virtually the entire Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia, Libya and Algeria, to stop the conflict.

In addition, the Palestinian groups based in Damascus that had seemed like captive allies of the Syrians are now in open defiance of Assad. There is much talk of a possible reconciliation with the mainstream PLO led by Arafat, whom the Syrians have been fighting for three years.

“I don’t think pulling out of Lebanon is a viable option for Assad,” said a diplomat in Damascus. “He’ll just have to try something else.”