Assad Heir Is Weaving His Own Web for Syria

When Dr. Bashar Assad was summoned home to Syria to be the new heir apparent after his dashing older brother’s death in 1994, the pencil-necked 28-year-old was so shy and unsure of himself that he waved off a Syrian journalist’s request for a meeting with the plea, “Please, no, I am not allowed.”

Within a few years, the young ophthalmologist was stepping out with more confidence, urging the regime to allow satellite TV dishes, ordering thousands of computers for Syrian schools and becoming the government’s “Mr. Fix-It,” untangling red tape for business executives.

This week, the transformation of Dr. Bashar, as he is widely known in Syria, was complete. Beside the coffin of his formidable father, President Hafez Assad, he graciously received assorted heads of state, Arab royalty and the imprimatur of the U.S. administration.

Blessed by the Sunni Muslim clergy and flanked by his father’s Syrian lieutenants and Lebanese vassals, the young Assad assumed the mantle of authority in a process so swift and well choreographed that no one could challenge it.

Already designated commander in chief of the armed forces, Bashar Assad is expected to be named secretary-general of the ruling Baath Party at its first congress in 15 years, which begins today. The rubber-stamp parliament is expected to follow with its seal of approval June 25. From beyond the grave, Hafez Assad has assured that the nation he ruled for 30 years remains, as billboards here say, “Assad’s Syria.”

But will it? Although Bashar has stepped into his father’s position, serious questions remain about whether the untested young man can hold on to the power he has been given. Does he possess the attributes that helped his father dominate Syria: ruthlessness, political acumen and an ability to forge essential loyalties?

An Agent of Change to Meet Need for Reform

Ordinary Syrians are eager to see changes in the Soviet-style, one-party state, with its ubiquitous security police, systematic corruption and bureaucracy that has crippled the economy. With his tastes for Western music and the Internet, Bashar Assad is presented as the agent of change by the very system that needs reforming.

“The country was shaped by his father, who was the center of the web,” said a diplomat in Damascus. “Now Bashar replaces his father at the center of the web. How can he change the web without weakening his own position?”

The third of five children, Bashar Assad grew up in the shadow of his older brother, Basil. According to Arab tradition and their father’s will, the firstborn son was Assad’s designated heir. Basil entered the ranks of both the army and the Baath Party--training grounds for power--and was counseled by his father in the art of Middle Eastern politics. He was handsome and charismatic and held center stage at family gatherings.

Bashar, who was two years younger, respected the rules and never tried to compete. While Basil embraced fine horses and fast cars, the quiet Bashar delved into the sciences. After graduating from the Lycee Francais in Damascus, he studied medicine at Damascus University, specializing at the Tishrin Military Hospital as an ophthalmologist, and headed for postgraduate training in London.

London is a popular playground for elite Arab youths and a hub of Middle East intrigue, but Bashar shunned parties and politics. For two years, he lived in a modest flat off Oxford Street and often worked shifts of up to 15 hours at St. Mary’s Hospital.

“He was an extremely kind person and a warm personality--determined and well focused to becoming an eye surgeon,” said Dr. Edmund Schulenberg, who was the young doctor’s teacher at St. Mary’s Western Eye Hospital.

“He got on well with patients and had a very good manner when talking to them,” Schulenberg added. “He would have been a good doctor.”

But it wasn’t to be. Basil Assad, rushing to get to the Damascus airport in January 1994, booted his chauffeur out of the driver’s seat and floored the gas pedal of his BMW. The car spun out of control in a traffic circle and flipped over, and Basil was crushed to death. Assad’s second son was called home for a different kind of training--to become president of Syria.

In a country where the ultimate power base is the military, Bashar Assad had no military credentials, little public profile and no experience in leadership. Despite the widely held assumption that he was being groomed as the successor to his father, he told one visitor last year that he felt that his succession was by no means assured. He had to prove himself.

The first stop in his transformation was the military academy in the provincial city of Homs, north of Damascus. The young Assad was sent there on a crash course as a tank battalion commander, and he graduated as a lieutenant. Shortly after, he was promoted to major in the elite Republican Guard.

Taking a Shine to Computer Technology

Eventually, he became a colonel and a brigade commander and set about forging links to other officers of his generation. Like him, his allies are the sons of the Old Guard that came to power in his father’s 1970 “corrective movement,” his coup. They include his brother Maher, a major in the Republican Guard; military intelligence Gen. Asif Shawkat, who is married to Bashar’s sister Bushra; and the sons of the Defense Minister Mustafa Talas.

But unlike his father and late brother, Bashar was not by nature a military man. His aptitude was for science and analysis, and he soon gravitated to a field that was suited to his interests but was unusual for a would-be leader in the Middle East--information technology.

So it was with pleasure that Bashar took over his brother Basil’s duties as leader of the Syrian Computer Society, a small, nonprofit organization that aimed to help technologically backward Syria enter the computer age.

Saadalla Agha Kalaa, the director of the society, quickly noticed a change in working with the younger Assad. Whereas the older brother had merely lent his name to the society, the busy Bashar gave generously of his time and became directly engaged in practical matters.

Bashar was passionate on the theme of “informatics” and wanted computers and the Internet to be widely used in government institutions. In turn, the computer society became a vehicle for him to peer into the inner workings of the education system and other government departments, Agha Kalaa said.

It took only a few meetings with the society before Bashar used his influence to help the group obtain its own building. Later, he would sit with members of the society’s board and go around the table asking questions on technological problems facing the country.

In Syria, the computer society became known as Bashar Assad’s kitchen Cabinet, and it attracted a coterie of technocrats interested in advising him on how to reform Syria.

“It was a way of brainstorming,” Agha Kalaa said. At first, he said, Bashar would sit back, ask questions and listen to the answers. But over time, he began to chair the meetings of the society’s board.

“He listens to all 10 members without paper or pen in his hand, and then at the end he makes a synthesis of all the good ideas that have been discussed. And then for the next meeting, that is what we’d deal with,” Agha Kalaa said.

Through such activities, the young Assad--with his father’s approval--was cultivating an image inside Syria as a champion of progress and modernization. That reputation was reinforced by his participation in a series of Tuesday night economic debates. These forums became state-sanctioned sounding boards for criticism of government policies.

Unmarried--rumors circulated in Damascus this week that he is betrothed or about to be and that his intended is the daughter of a prominent family in Aleppo--Assad moved in with his parents after his return to Syria. According to a government spokesman, his car was an ordinary Nissan or Toyota that he drove himself. Diplomats say he was unassuming in public and was frequently seen dining out in the capital, sometimes accompanied by friends.

All this time, Bashar Assad also was working at the presidential palace. His father was known for his 18-hour workdays, but over the past year, as his health declined, the president’s stamina would permit only four hours of work a day. Toward the end, observers say, more and more matters were turned over to his son, who became recognized within the executive secretariat of his father’s office as the “apprentice” president.

Duties Include the ‘Lebanon File’

Lebanon has been a satellite of Syria for more than a decade, and one of the tasks assigned to Bashar Assad by his father was the “Lebanon file.” Tending to that portfolio, associates say, he became close to prominent figures in Lebanese politics, including Gen. Emile Lahoud--who subsequently became president with Hafez Assad’s approval--and Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who stood next to Bashar Assad this week at his father’s mausoleum.

“He established ties to all political groups,” including those hostile to the Syrian presence, said Issam Zaim, the minister of planning in Syria, who is one of a group of five technocrats appointed to Syria’s Cabinet in March on young Assad’s recommendation.

Bashar Assad also raised his public profile markedly over the past year. He accompanied Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh on official trips abroad as part of the Syrian delegation. He began granting interviews on Middle Eastern affairs to Arab-language newspapers. And last fall, he made what was almost a campaign-style public appearance in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, pressing the flesh in the famous souk there until the crowds grew so large that he had to take refuge in a shop.

But while Bashar has learned the presidential trade and ventured tentatively into the limelight, he still does not have the bases of political support that his father had. Hafez Assad grew up in the village of Qardaha surrounded by an extended family and devotees of the Alawite branch of Islam. He rose through the ranks of the army from soldier to chief of staff and defense minister before launching the coup that made him president. Starting as a student activist, he spent his life in the Baath Party, building alliances and loyalty.

Bashar’s career has proceeded from the top down.

“He was born in Damascus and grew up with the bourgeoisie. He didn’t do any of this step by step. Who are his people? Who owes his career to Bashar?” asked the diplomat.

A Syrian journalist who asked not to be identified added that opponents of Bashar’s reformist ideas are likely to “put sticks in the spokes of his wheel to try to paralyze him.” The question is whether he has enough loyalists around him to fight his eventual enemies.

When loyalty was not enough, Hafez Assad resorted to other means. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood who rose up against him in 1982 were crushed and buried by the thousands beneath the rubble of the shelled city of Hama. His foes in Lebanon were wont to meet sudden death by bomb or bullet. And Nureddin Atassi, the former mentor whom Assad deposed in his 1970 coup, was left to languish in prison for the remainder of his life.

Ousted Prime Minister Commits Suicide

Would Bashar Assad do the same to stay in power? One indication that he might is this year’s so-called anti-corruption campaign, widely credited to the young Assad. The investigations so far have touched several leading lights of the Old Guard who might conceivably have opposed his rise to power, including former Prime Minister Mahmoud Zubi.

Zubi, who was ousted in March amid accusations of embezzlement, reportedly stood before his wife and two sons after being served with an arrest warrant, then fired twice in the air and a third time at his head, killing himself.

“Why did he supposedly commit suicide?” asked the diplomat. “It might be a sign that Bashar is ready to do anything. At the time, this was a message to the Baath Party and to the Old Guard to keep quiet, because they have [corruption] files on them all.”

In the week since his father’s death, Bashar Assad has not uttered a single public remark hinting at his plans for the country. His statements over the past months could be summed up as advocating “honesty” and “efficiency,” but they gave no specifics.

Syrians “should learn from the past, not live in it,” he told the Saudi-owned weekly Al Wasat.

Among diplomats and other observers in Damascus, the betting is against any immediate substantial changes. In foreign affairs, Bashar Assad is committed to the line of his father: not to make peace with Israel unless and until every square inch of the occupied Golan Heights is returned.

In domestic matters, there may be more scope for policy adjustments, but Zaim, the minister of planning, suggests that sweeping economic change is not in the offing.

“We will have economic pluralism with a leading role for the state,” he said.

Before trying to make his own mark on Syria, experts say, Bashar will try to consolidate his hold on power, a process that will begin at the Baath Party conference this weekend, when he is likely to replace up to half of the 21 members of the regional command with people close to him.

The transition of power so far has been almost letter perfect for Bashar Assad, political analysts say, and what follows is up to him.

“If he makes a number of mistakes and falls on his face, things could change,” said another diplomat. “But for now, it is Bashar’s to keep or lose.”