Death of Syria’s Assad Complicates Peace Prospects

Hafez Assad, a giant figure in the modern Arab nationalist movement, immovable foe of Israel and ironfisted president of Syria for nearly 30 years, died Saturday at age 69. The death of the “lion of Damascus” could portend a period of political instability for Syria and Lebanon but might eventually lead to more flexibility in the pursuit of peace in the Middle East.

Assad’s passing, confirmed by Syrian state television--which in a sign of mourning broadcast readings from the Koran--came nearly two decades after his enemies first circulated rumors of his demise. Hundreds of Syrians took to the streets of Damascus and Beirut, weeping and chanting expressions of grief.

Assad died without achieving his life’s ambition, the recovery of the Golan Heights that Israel occupied in 1967. It was unclear whether the project of the most recent years of his life--paving the way for the succession of his second son, Bashar, 34--had succeeded, or whether Syria, with its history of byzantine and often-violent intrigue, could face another power struggle.

The death occurred at a particularly anxious moment in the Middle East, coming just weeks after Israel’s pullout from southern Lebanon, a move that in effect increased diplomatic pressure on all sides to help maintain calm in the region. Meanwhile, talks between Israel and the Palestinians are entering a critical final stage, even as Syria’s own aspirations for restoration of occupied territory appear frustrated.

Shops and restaurants closed in Damascus, the Syrian capital, and a hush fell over the city’s streets. At a regular session of parliament, many deputies burst into tears.

“Over the last seven years, I have met him many times and gotten to know him very well. We had our differences, but I always respected him,” President Clinton said. “Since the Madrid conference [in 1991], he made a strategic choice for peace, and we worked together to achieve that goal.”

“We have lost a great man. I could not believe that he would ever die,” said a 72-year-old central Damascus shopkeeper, who gave his name as Abu Hamdi. Customers were asking for black ribbons to show their grief, he said.

According to a Lebanese physician close to the Assad family quoted by the Associated Press, Assad had been suffering from heart problems, diabetes and lymphoma, and the cause of death was heart failure.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said he talked to Assad by telephone Saturday morning. “His last words were: ‘Our destiny is to build a better future for our countries, a safe future for our children. We have to give them something better than what we inherited.’ And then there was a sudden silence,” Lahoud said in a condolence letter to Bashar Assad.

Parliament announced a mourning period of 40 days and, before adjourning, lowered the age of eligibility for the presidency from 40 to 34. That move presumably clears the way for Bashar Assad, an ophthalmologist, to succeed his father in running the country of 15 million people when parliament reconvenes June 25.

Assad died just one week before his Baath Party had been scheduled to hold its first general conference in 15 years, a meeting called in order to anoint Bashar Assad as his heir.

Assad was among the longest-serving Arab leaders, having come to power Nov. 21, 1970. Only Moammar Kadafi of Libya and Sultan Kaboos ibn Said of Oman have headed their countries longer.

More respected than loved on the international scene, Assad was known as a stubborn negotiator but one who could be counted on to keep his word.

Israel acknowledged the grief of the Syrian people and promised to work for peace with whoever succeeds Assad.

Clinton said Assad had “made clear Syria’s continued commitment to the path of peace” and seemed to suggest that the agreement with Israel that had eluded Assad might eventually be completed by his successor.

“There will be a period of mourning in Syria, there will be a period of sorting out, and the Syrian people will make some decisions, and then we’ll see what happens,” Clinton said.

In addition to governing Syria, from 1990 onward Assad was the de facto master of neighboring Lebanon after his troops intervened to end that country’s 15-year civil war. About 35,000 Syrian troops remain stationed in Lebanon.

In recent months, there have been increased calls from intellectuals and journalists in Lebanon for Syria to leave. Although resentment of Syria is widespread in Lebanon, Damascus has rejected all such suggestions on grounds that it is in the country at the behest of the Lebanese government in Beirut.

Mourning and Glee

News of Assad’s death prompted demonstrations of mourning among the large Syrian community in Lebanon, but in some quarters, the news was greeted with glee.

At the American University of Beirut, some students said they received calls from abroad congratulating them on the good news.

“We are happy because we know how much blood was shed in Lebanon because of him,” said one student, who asked to remain anonymous.

Lean and gaunt in appearance, abstentious in his personal habits, and legendary for a long-winded negotiating style that tended to wear down interlocutors, Assad had a tumultuous political career that nonetheless gave modern Syria its most enduring period of stability.

A member of a minority religious sect, the Alawites, he was appreciated by Syria’s Christians and other minorities for protecting them from the Sunni Muslim majority. But his relations with the dominant class of Sunni merchants and landowners in Syria always were problematical.

There was resentment among many Sunnis that their country was ruled by an Alawite, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam. Alawites account for only 13% of the population, and some Sunnis look down upon them.

Political tensions flared in 1982 when members of the Sunni-dominated Muslim Brotherhood in the central city of Hama rebelled, calling for an Islamic government. That episode firmly established Assad’s reputation for ruthlessness. Acting through his brother Rifaat, the commander on the ground, Assad ordered the Hama city center destroyed, killing an estimated 10,000 people.

A socialist during his youth and then leader of the Syrian section of the Arab nationalist Baath Party, Assad aligned Syria with the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s.

But in 1990, with the Soviet power structure waning, Assad made a strategic switch and turned toward Washington, lining up in the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein after Baghdad invaded Kuwait. Personally, Assad loathed Hussein, who led the rival Iraqi version of the Baath Party.

After the successful conclusion of war with Iraq, Assad for the first time publicly declared his goal of peace with Israel but conditioned on the full restoration of the Golan, a strategic patch of land that overlooks the ancient Syrian capital, Damascus, barely 25 miles away.

Syria took part in the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and embarked on bilateral negotiations with Israel between 1992 and 1996. But then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in November 1995, harbored doubt about the sincerity of Assad’s quest for peace and preferred to concentrate on the Palestinian peace track. Nevertheless, toward the end of the process the two sides appeared to be nearing an accord in which Israel would fully withdraw from the Golan in exchange for Syria’s recognition of Israel, normalization of relations and security guarantees on both sides.

Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, halted the talks in 1996 during a wave of terrorist attacks against Israel, gambling on winning early elections. Instead, he was defeated by hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu.

When Ehud Barak succeeded Netanyahu last year, there initially were hints from both sides that renewal of negotiations could lead to a speedy breakthrough.

Three brief negotiating sessions were held in the United States. But they never got past the main obstacle: Syria’s insistence that Israel leave all of the land it took in 1967--and Israel’s equally strong conviction that it should be allowed to retain a sliver of that territory, the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, in order to secure its main source of fresh water.

Assad was willing to compromise on anything but territory. At a crucial meeting March 27 in Geneva with Clinton, his last trip outside Syria, Assad learned to his disappointment that Barak was bent on retaining that piece of shoreline. Assad’s response was immediate: There can be no deal.

The loss of the Golan in 1967 had been a crushing blow for Assad. According to his biographer, Patrick Seale, Assad fainted with fatigue at the Defense Ministry, and after the fighting stopped he retired to his home and for three days refused to see anyone.

“Without a doubt,” Seale wrote in his 1988 biography, “the defeat was the decisive turning point of his life, jolting him into political maturity and spurring the ambition to rule Syria free from the constraints of colleagues and rivals who he felt had led the country to disaster.”

An Obsession With the Golan

Getting the Golan back became Assad’s guiding obsession. As armed forces commander during the 1967 Middle East War, Assad considered himself responsible for the loss of the territory and went to war in 1973, having plotted a coordinated attack with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, to recover the Golan.

The 1973 attack, which took place during the solemn Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, caught Israel by surprise and Syrian forces managed to push the Israelis off most of the Golan. But the United States poured in military aid to Israel, and Assad was further undermined when Sadat agreed to a cease-fire in the Sinai, allowing Israel a free hand to regain most of what it had lost in the Golan.

For most of his time as Syria’s leader, Assad was trying to do his best to maintain his country’s position despite having few military or political assets. With the exception of the 1973 war with Israel, his essential weakness often forced him to react to events.

Assad considered all of current-day Israel, Jordan and Lebanon to be part of a historic Greater Syria, which he contended had been unnaturally whittled down by the British and French colonial powers after World War I.

This sense of historical injustice and organic connection was especially true with regard to Lebanon. Assad battled Palestinians, Israelis and Lebanese to ensure that Syria, not Israel or the United States, would dominate Lebanon.

To this day, Syrian troops control checkpoints on major highways in Lebanon, and the Syrian leader’s portrait is seen almost as frequently displayed as that of Lebanese President Lahoud (who was chosen by Assad).

Assad was born Oct. 6, 1930, the son and grandson of peasant chiefs in the village of Qurdaha, in the mountains of northwestern Syria.

Seale wrote that Assad’s grandfather was an accomplished wrestler who was called “al-Wahhish,” or “the beast,” because of his strength and courage. His son, Assad’s father, in 1927 improved the family name to al-Assad, which in Arabic means “the lion.”

Assad was the fourth child of his father’s second marriage, but the first among his siblings to receive a formal education.

When Assad was 9, his father sent him from his rustic mountain home to the relatively sophisticated coastal town of Latakia, 10 miles away. It was in Latakia, according to Seale, that Assad experienced firsthand the prejudiced attitudes of Syrian Sunnis against Alawites.

That may explain why, in his teens, Assad turned away from his sectarian background and joined the leftist Baath Party, which espoused militant pan-Arabism without regard to religion or nationality.

For a boy of his poor background, the military offered the best chance for advancement, and in the fall of 1952 Assad joined the Homs Military Academy. The next year, he was accepted in the Aleppo Military Flying School.

Syria’s air force was tiny and its fleet of aircraft backward and unsafe, but Assad was known for his airborne daring, becoming the academy’s aerobatics champion. As part of his training, Assad did stints in Egypt and the Soviet Union that sharpened his skills and afforded him a wider view of the world.

In the late 1950s, Syria had entered into a political union with Cairo, and Assad’s squadron was posted to Egypt. While in Cairo, he and four of his colleagues founded a secret committee of officers aimed at protecting the Baath Party and defending the Syrian-Egyptian state.

Syria eventually seceded from the union and in 1962 Assad’s group staged an unsuccessful coup against the secessionist government. As a result he was briefly imprisoned. The next coup attempt, on March 8, 1963, succeeded and Assad became the youngest member of a new five-member Baath Party junta.

Seven years of political jockeying within the junta followed. Assad’s “correctionist movement” ousted the prime minister and installed Assad to that post Nov. 21, 1970. He became president in a referendum on March 12, 1971.

At first Assad was seen as a liberalizer, but after the disappointing outcome of the 1973 war and the Hama rebellion of 1982, Syria became increasingly autocratic under Assad. Newspapers and television broadcasts were controlled, and competing intelligence services kept close watch over the society and dealt out harsh penalties to anyone daring to criticize Assad’s rule.

The economy stagnated. Syria’s dwindling productivity and rising population has meant a bleak outlook for most families, contributing to an exodus of young people.

Fax machines were long illegal, and mobile telephones and credit cards are only now being introduced. The sense that Syria has been falling behind the rest of the world has seized the younger generation, and Bashar Assad has sought to present himself as a modernizer who will take Syria into the 21st century.

Assad’s greatest personal tragedy occurred in January 1994, when the car his eldest son Basil was driving overturned while traveling at high speed near Damascus Airport.

Basil, 31, an equestrian and military commander, was the dashing young prince and heir apparent of the Syrian regime; he posthumously became the subject of a personality cult in his own right.

Almost immediately after Basil’s death, the elder Assad focused his attention on grooming Bashar as his successor.

Assad married Anissa Makhloof, a daughter of a prominent Alawite clan, in 1958. He is survived by three sons and a daughter.

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Changing Mideast Leadership

With the death of Syrian President Hafez Assad, Mideast leadership continues the transition to a new generation. Whether the transition leads to stability or bloodshed remains to be seen.

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Syria

* Hafez Assad, in power since 1970, died Saturday at age 69. Son Bashar Assad is expected to succeed him.

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Israel

Prime Minister Ehud Barak, 58, elected in May 1999 with a mandate to move the peace process forward.

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PLO

Yasser Arafat, 70, has led Palestinian struggle for statehood for four decades. No clear successor, but speculation centers on Arafat deputy Mahmoud Abbas.

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Jordan

King Abdullah II, 38, took power in February 1999 after the death of his father, King Hussein, 63. He has followed his father’s policy in continuing friendly relations with Israel.

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Iraq

Saddam Hussein, 63, took power after 1968 coup. He has consistently opposed peace with Israel. His two sons rival one another to succeed him.

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Libya

Moammar Kadafi, 58, took leading role in coup that ended monarchy in 1969. His sons have assumed larger public roles, standing in for him at some public events.

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Egypt

President Hosni Mubarak, 72, in power since 1981, recently named his younger son a member of the general secretariat of his ruling National Democratic Party.

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Morocco

King Mohammed VI, 36, took power in July 1999 after the death of his father, King Hassan II, 70, who ruled for 38 years.

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Source: Staff reports, Associated Press Researched by JULIE SHEER

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More Inside * THE HEIR--Bashar Assad, left, his father’s likely successor, could face challenges in his own family, and almost certainly from Lebanese who resent Syria’s dominance of their nation. A16

* U.S. RELATIONS--Hafez Assad proved a challenge for six American presidents, but his death should not greatly affect White House foreign policy. A17